About ScholarlyCommons

ScholarlyCommons is the University of Pennsylvania's open access institutional repository for gathering, indexing, storing, and making widely available the scholarly output of the Penn community. Reflecting the core values of inclusion, innovation, and impact in the Penn Compact 2022, ScholarlyCommons shares the exceptional works of Penn faculty, staff, and students with a local, national, and global audience. Access to ScholarlyCommons is free to all.

ScholarlyCommons officially launched in early 2005. It was initially developed in collaboration with Penn’s School of Engineering & Applied Science (SEAS) and was quickly adopted by many other Penn schools. Since its launch, ScholarlyCommons has grown beyond traditional print materials to include open access journals, data sets, and other forms of multimodal scholarship.

ScholarlyCommons is a service of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries and is administered by its Research Data and Digital Scholarship group  in coordination with administrators at Penn’s various schools and centers.

ScholarlyCommons uses Digital Commons, a software solution powered by bepress.

Our Collection

ScholarlyCommons includes a variety of content produced by the Penn scholarly community. As one of Penn’s digital libraries, we aim to provide collections in support of the following four overlapping areas of focus:

  1. Unique, library-created materials drawn from Penn collections or Library programs, and materials originating in digital form deemed worthy of preservation.
  2. Distinctive works of Penn schools and centers, faculty, or students.
  3. Research articles, datasets, and related research outputs assembled to provide open access to Penn scholarship, comply with funder mandates, or foster collaborative research. 
  4. Inter-institutional collection partnerships that complement Penn collections and leverage scale or unique capabilities of Penn staff and production assets. 

For examples of noteworthy ScholarlyCommons collections in support of these areas, visit our Types of Materials page.

Learn more about ScholarlyCommons