USF Libraries Digital Scholarship Services

USF Libraries Digital Scholarship Services is a service unit within the University of South Florida Libraries, based primarily at the Tampa campus in Florida. It functions as the library's scholarly communications and digital publishing arm, supporting USF faculty and graduate students across the research lifecycle. Its work is closely tied to the broader USF Libraries system, which serves campus communities in Tampa, St. Petersburg (Nelson Poynter Memorial Library), and the Sarasota-Manatee teach-out site, and which describes itself as one library serving an AAU member university. The unit's core mission is to build open-access, high-impact digital research collections and to enhance the reach of USF scholarship across the global research landscape. To that end, it operates the USF institutional repository, hosts online conferences, journals, textbooks, and open educational resources (OERs), and provides customized research profiles. It also offers DOI and ISBN registration, helping researchers make their outputs persistently identifiable and citable. Beyond hosting, Digital Scholarship Services advocates for author rights and promotes scholarly publishing literacy through curated resources such as the Understanding Open Access guide. It partners with faculty and researchers to move projects through the various stages of the research lifecycle, build collections, and disseminate research online, while preserving long-term access to scholarly publications, primary source collections, and institutional history. A related offering, Integrated Research & Impact Services (IRIS), acts as a collaborative hub for faculty seeking to integrate high-impact, public-facing components into their research. IRIS supports grant proposals, community-engaged projects, and impact assessment, and includes copyright and intellectual property guidance with tiered consultation levels. Together, these services position USF Libraries Digital Scholarship Services as an academic publishing and research-support brand rather than a conventional commercial publisher, with its primary market being the USF research community and, through open access, the wider global scholarly audience.

USF Libraries Digital Scholarship Services is a unit of the University of South Florida Libraries, a library system serving the University of South Florida, an AAU member institution with campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg, and a Sarasota-Manatee teach-out site. The libraries describe themselves as "one library serving our campus communities" and provide access to over 3.8 million print and eBooks, 110,000 eJournal subscriptions, and over 24 million digital images. The Digital Scholarship Services unit emerged from the broader scholarly communications movement in academic libraries, in which libraries took on roles as publishers, repository managers, and advocates for open access. Its work is organized around the research lifecycle: helping faculty and graduate students create, manage, publish, and preserve their scholarship. The unit operates the USF institutional repository, which preserves long-term access to scholarly publications, primary source collections, and institutional history. Over time the service portfolio expanded to include open online hosting of conferences, journals, textbooks, and OERs; customized research profiles; and DOI and ISBN registration. The unit also maintains curated resources such as the Understanding Open Access guide and provides instruction sessions and consultations. A related initiative, Integrated Research & Impact Services (IRIS), was developed as a collaborative hub to help faculty integrate high-impact, public-facing components into their research, strengthen grant proposals, and assess impact with verifiable evidence. IRIS includes copyright and intellectual property guidance offered at tiered levels, from introductory consultation to location of rights holders, permissions requesting, copyright registration, and specialized training. Because it is a library service rather than a commercial publisher, its history is tied to the strategic priorities of the University of South Florida Libraries and the university's research mission. The unit's identity in knowledge bases is often recorded as an American academic publisher associated with the University of South Florida, reflecting its role in hosting and disseminating scholarly content.

An academic library-based digital scholarship and scholarly communications service brand supporting open-access publishing and research impact for the University of South Florida community.

• USF institutional repository

  Preserves long-term access to scholarly publications, primary source collections, and institutional history.

• Open access publishing support

  Advocates for author rights and promotes scholarly publishing literacy with curated resources on the Understanding Open Access guide.

• Open online hosting

  Hosts conferences, journals, textbooks, OERs, and research collections online.

• DOI and ISBN registration

  Provides persistent identifiers for research outputs.

• Customized research profiles

  Creates profiles to showcase and disseminate research.

• Integrated Research & Impact Services (IRIS)

  A collaborative hub for faculty seeking to integrate high-impact, public-facing components into their research, including copyright and IP guidance.

1. 1USF Libraries - Scholarly Communicationslib.usf.edu
2. 2USF Libraries - Integrated Research & Impact Services (IRIS)lib.usf.edu
3. 3USF Libraries - About USF Librarieslib.usf.edu
4. 4USF Libraries - Library Serviceslib.usf.edu
5. 5USF Libraries Digital Scholarship Services - Wikidatawikidata.org