The DC Dev Team and Your IR

As a new Digital Commons subscriber, you might wonder how much time you and your IT need to spend on the technical side of running a repository. The goal of the Development team is to help you think about that question as little as possible so you can get on with the main event: growing a successful IR.

Our 20+ person engineering, systems, and product team is dedicated to maintaining, monitoring, and improving the platform. They work tirelessly to keep Digital Commons going 24/7, which allows you to focus your efforts on managing content, sharing your institution’s scholarship, and performing campus outreach.

An institutional repository has a lot of moving parts, from the overall structure and daily operation to detailed analytics, backup and storage, and third-party integration. The Dev team is responsible for quickly identifying and fixing issues in each of these areas, while keeping a close eye on security and accessibility issues.

In addition, they handle seamless upgrades to the platform and conduct research and development of new features that will benefit our community of subscribers. We favor features that establish and grow the relevance of the repository across your entire community of users, and continually review use cases to help us accomplish this.

This round-the-clock commitment is part of what sets Digital Commons apart from free platforms—we’ve got your back!

When To Contact Your IT

Of course, there are still certain occasions when contacting your institution’s IT department is the best route. Some archive setup steps or external authentication needs may require working with your institution IT department. If you are ever uncertain, don’t hesitate to contact your consultant! If we need information from your IT department, your consultant will be happy to let you know exactly what to ask for.