The UMass Amherst Libraries have developed a means for collecting the intellectual output of the University. Each faculty member (or other researcher at UMass Amherst) may create their own "Selected Works" page that would be accessed through the Libraries' ScholarWorks website, the University's permanent digital archive for these scholarly materials. ScholarWorks is already collecting Masters theses and Doctoral Dissertations, as well as faculty writing, when possible. The Selected Works page could bring together all of a person's work.
Why do this? It is a convenient way for people to find you and your papers, and it can promote visibility for that writing - Google, for instance, includes the pages of ScholarWorks in its searches.
And the Library is committed to keeping the digital output of our community in perpetuity, so your work won't be victim to the ephemeral nature of many websites.
Posting online the full text of your writing raises the question of copyright - many academics have signed over the author's rights to their own work to the publishers of books and journals in order for that work to be published. Most articles and book chapters already published have legal restrictions on what you, the author, may do with your own work.
The Library has been working with other organizations such as SPARC to promote the principle of open access, which would, among other things, allow the author to post their own work on their own website, or a site like ScholarWorks. Using such resources as SHERPA/RoMEO, we can also find out the restrictions any individual publisher has placed on materials they have published, for which they have copyright.
The Library staff can help you to set up a Selected Works page in Scholar Works, or to answer questions you may have about this effort, or about the copyright status of your writings. Please get in touch with us if you are interested.
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