About VTechWorks

VTechWorks, Virginia Tech's institutional repository, provides global, permanent, legal access to the scholarly work of Virginia Tech faculty, students, and staff: journal articles, books, theses, dissertations, conference papers, slide presentations, technical reports, working papers, administrative documents, videos, images, and more. VTechWorks is a full text repository and does not accept abstracts, citations, or links to items elsewhere (though a few legacy items exist). Any member of the Virginia Tech community can upload material to VTechWorks. Read more in a VT News article, VTechWorks provides global access to Virginia Tech scholarship (August 2019). Research data can be deposited in the Virginia Tech Data Repository.

VTechWorks supports a hierarchical structure composed of Communities and Collections. Communities include colleges, departments, research centers, institutes, or other entities. Communities contain Collections and sub-communities, and Collections hold the digital works. VTechWorks was launched in 2011 and runs on the widely-used DSpace platform. VTechWorks is managed by the Virginia Tech Libraries for the purpose of stewarding the intellectual output of the university in its land-grant mission to serve the Commonwealth of Virginia, the nation, and the world community through the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge. VTechWorks is a member of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), and is listed in OpenDOAR and the DuraSpace Registry.

How VTechWorks benefits researchers

  • Items in VTechWorks are free to access for anyone in the world with an Internet connection.
  • Items in VTechWorks are indexed by Google Scholar, Unpaywall, BASE, and all search engines, in addition to the library catalog and the Virginia Tech's home page search.
  • Most studies show a citation advantage for open access journal articles compared to paywalled journal articles, as well as an altmetrics advantage (links from news sites, policy documents, and social media). Everyone at Virginia Tech can use the open access policy to deposit accepted versions of scholarly articles.
  • Open access provides access to colleagues at other universities (particularly in low and middle income countries) as well as government policymakers, non-governmental organizations, and our alumni, in addition to the general public.
  • VTechWorks provides a permanent link to the item ("handle") that can be used on CVs and personal websites, and is a reliable link for others to cite.
  • VTechWorks provides download statistics for each item.
  • Research in VTechWorks will be preserved by the University Libraries. Personal websites in the VT domain are deleted once you leave the university, and proprietary sites can end their service at any time.
  • VTechWorks claims no exclusive rights, so deposited items can be posted or published elsewhere.
  • Staff can be contacted at vtechworks@vt.edu for questions, issues, starting new collections, or contributing student works.