NC DOCKS - UNCG's Institutional Repository

In support of the research and teaching missions of UNCG, the University Libraries has undertaken an initiative to collect, preserve, index, and distribute scholarly works of UNCG's faculty, as well as selected scholarly works of UNCG’s students, in order to make their works available to a global audience via the Internet. NC DOCKS is an open-access database for collecting, preserving, and disseminating the scholarly and creative works of UNCG's faculty and students.  “Open Access” means that all works in NC DOCKS are freely accessible through the Internet.  Although most works in NC DOCKS are peer-reviewed journal articles, the repository also includes technical and government reports, conference papers, book reviews, book chapters, educational documents, dissertations, theses, student papers, audio, video, and more. Publishers rarely allow books and book chapters in institutional repositories, especially if the book is still in-print; however, NC DOCKS does include several books and book chapters.

Benefits from Archiving Works in NC DOCKS

  • Each work is archived permanently with a stable server, and it has a URL that will never break (personal Web pages can change and will eventually disappear).
  • Each work is discoverable for researchers worldwide through Internet search engines (like Google), which crawl repositories like NC DOCKS and provide preferential treatment and keyword access to the full-text. In a keyword Google search, works in NC DOCKS tend to fall out early in the results list, which greatly increases discoverability. 
  • Google, Google Scholar, and other Internet search engines are primary discovery tools for a vast number of researchers.
  • As a result of this discoverability and free access to the text, articles that are posted in repositories like NC DOCKS tend to be read more and cited more.
  • Statistics on how often each work has been viewed are automatically generated and appear with each citation on the author's homepage.
  • For UNCG, NC DOCKS is a great way of validating and showcasing the value of the faculty and student research and creative works to society outside the classroom.

Faculty Content for NC DOCKS must meet the following criteria

  • Each work must be the intellectual property of a UNCG faculty member
  • It must be a scholarly, research, or educational work.
  • It must be complete and in final form.
  • It must be the author's personal WORD or other word-processing copy, or it must be published in HTML, or the publisher must allow archiving of the publisher's PDF.
  • It must be made available for global access at no cost via the Web.
  • The author/creator of each work must, in writing, grant to UNCG Libraries the non-exclusive right to preserve and distribute the work in perpetuity.
  • Contributions to NC DOCKS are entirely voluntary; should the author later wish to remove any contribution, the Libraries will comply with the request.

Student Content for NC DOCKS must meet the following criteria

All electronic theses and dissertations are automatically archived under the direction of the Graduate School.

For other non-published student work archived in NC DOCKS:

  • Each work must be the intellectual property of a UNCG student or group of students
  • It must be a scholarly, research, or educational work that has been nominated for inclusion by a sponsoring UNCG faculty member
  • It must be in electronic form
  • It must be made available for global access at no cost via the Web.
  • The author(s)/creator(s) of each work must, in writing, grant to UNCG Libraries the non-exclusive right to preserve and distribute the work in perpetuity.
  • For written works, the first page must have Title, Author(s)’s Name(s), Date, and Name of Faculty Sponsor or Advisor

For published student work archived in NC DOCKS

  • Each work must be the intellectual property of a UNCG student
  • It must have been written and/or published while the individual was enrolled at UNCG.
  • It must be a scholarly, research, or educational work.
  • It must be complete and in final form.
  • It must be the author's personal WORD or other word-processing copy, or it must be published in HTML, or the publisher must allow archiving of the publisher's PDF.
  • It must be made available for global access at no cost via the Web.
  • The author/creator of each work must, in writing, grant to UNCG Libraries the non-exclusive right to preserve and distribute the work in perpetuity.

Contributing Works to NC DOCKS

Any faculty member interested in contributing works or sponsoring student works in NC DOCKS should contact Anna Craft, Coordinator of Metadata Services, [email protected]