J apan. Turkey. Mali. Spain. Venezuela. Australia.

These are just a handful of locations where researchers have downloaded materials from the Knowledge Box - Georgia College’s institutional repository.

Since its inception in 2014, Georgia College scholars have deposited 2,398 works into the Knowledge Box. These works include theses and dissertations, undergraduate research, faculty scholarship and Library Special Collections. 

Recently, the Knowledge Box reached an exciting milestone of 200,000 downloads, a testament to the value of the research contained in the repository.

The most downloaded articles in the Knowledge Box are from “The Corinthian,” Georgia College’s annually published journal on graduate and undergraduate research. To put this in perspective, consider the numbers: The Corinthian accounts for just 8 percent of the total items deposited, but its articles have been downloaded 111,502 times.  

“Graduate and undergraduate research from Georgia College is very impactful, as evidenced by the variety of scholarly and governmental institutions accessing this material,” said Jennifer Townes, assistant professor of library science and scholarly communication librarian. “Students can use these metrics in their resumes, CVs, and in graduate school applications to give them an edge.”

“Our students are producing research that is useful for both scholars and practitioners,” said Walker. “Our most popular paper, ‘Music Education for Students with Disabilities: A Guide for Teachers, Parents and Students,’ which has been downloaded almost 7,500 times, is a student publication.”

April 2020 was the busiest month to date for the Knowledge Box, due, in part, to the university transitioning to online learning as a result of COVID-19. In April 2020 alone, there were 11,725 downloads.

“Open access is extraordinarily important, particularly in this time of the pandemic and all-virtual access to information,” explained Townes. “Interlibrary loan services are dealing with increased demand, and institutional budgets are increasingly dedicated to digital materials. When research is available with no restriction, it not only gets cited more often, but it is more available for classroom use as well.”

For Walker, access to information is crucial in advancing the library’s mission.

“Open Access is vitally important because the scholarly communication system as we know it is fundamentally broken and unsustainable.  Georgia College is very fortunate, particularly for an institution of its size, to have the infrastructure to support open access, including the Knowledge Box and Jennifer’s position as scholarly communication librarian,” said Walker. “We have the capacity to make the research that is produced here more discoverable to the public, which to me, is very much in line with our mission as Georgia’s designated public liberal arts university.”

With open access becoming the standard in global research, Walker sees the opportunity for more contributions to the Knowledge Box.

"My hope is that we will collect even more research from the Georgia Community, especially the faculty, as well as the various institutes and centers on campus,” she said. “I’m also interested in using the Knowledge Box to support research data management.”

The following are just a few of the highlights from the Knowledge Box:

The top three most popular items from the Knowledge Box come from “The Corinthian.”

Music Education for Students with Disabilities: A Guide for Teachers, Parents, and Students
7,384 downloads since 2017. Most of these downloads are from researchers at educational institutions such as the North Carolina Research and Education Network, the Georgia Department of Education, the US Department of Education and the New South Wales (Australia) Department of Education.

Rhetoric in Comedy: How Comedians Use Persuasion and How Society Uses Comedians 
5,937 downloads. The researchers using this article are from many colleges and universities, such as the University of Missouri, University of Central Florida, Appalachian State and University of California Irvine. This article has also been mentioned on Twitter.

A Research into the Problems of Students Not Completing Homework Assignments in the Middle School: The Case of Weaver Middle School in Bibb County, Georgia, has been downloaded 5,912 times, which is exceptional for an article written in 2007. It has been accessed by researchers in 132 countries.

• GC student research events: 462 abstracts deposited and downloaded 4,313 times 
• College of Arts & Sciences: 32 theses deposited and downloaded 3,464 times
• College of Health Sciences: 49 music therapy theses and doctor of nursing practice research projects deposited and downloaded 12,224 times
• College of Education: 12 Ed.S theses deposited and downloaded 12,440 times

For more information on the Knowledge Box, please visit https://kb.gcsu.edu