About DSpace@WUSM

DSpace@WUSM is an institutional repository managed by the Bernard Becker Medical Library to capture, store, index, and make available the intellectual output of the Washington University School of Medicine. DSpace will accept pre-prints, post-prints, conference posters, departmental newsletters, departmental histories, student papers or posters, conference proceedings, and other works in a variety of formats ranging from text, audio, video, and images.

DSpace is a core component of the Becker Medical Library’s Scholarly Communications initiative. Scholarly communications pertains to the creation, transformation, dissemination and preservation of knowledge related to teaching, research and scholarly endeavors. The complexity of scientific and medical research in the 21st century, coupled with the transformation of traditional publishing models and new digital applications, has presented additional challenges for faculty, scientists and students. Among the many scholarly communications issues include author rights, the economics of scholarly resources, new models of publishing including open access, institutional repositories, rights and access to federally funded research, and preservation of intellectual assets.

An institutional repository is described by Clifford A. Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information, as:

a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution.

DSpace is comprised of Communities - groups that contribute content to DSpace. The Communities are organized into Collections, which contain the content items or files. Communities might be departments, divisions, labs, research centers, or some other administrative unit within the Medical School. Communities determine their own content guidelines and decide who has access to the community’s contributions. A DSpace Administrator works with the head of a community to establish collections and workflows for the submission and approval of items.

For more information about contributing to DSpace, please contact dspace@wusm.wustl.edu.