WSU Research Exchange Adds New Features to Support Faculty, Students

WSU Research Exchange, the university’s digital repository designed to preserve and circulate research and educational resources created by WSU researchers, has moved to a new platform, Esploro, that offers improved research information management to users.

“We are excited about Esploro, the new platform for capturing and sharing WSU research. We believe it will highlight WSU faculty work in new and exciting ways,” said WSU Libraries Dean Jay Starratt. “Esploro helps capture and organize research output and data and allows for greater dissemination of faculty work. It maximizes visibility and provides elegant faculty profiles that showcase WSU researchers.”

“With support from the WSU Office of Research, we have shifted to using a product developed by Ex Libris that we believe will bring even more visibility to WSU research,” said WSU Scholarly Communication Librarian Talea Anderson. “Ex Libris provides us with the opportunity of integrating services to help researchers quickly and easily communicate their research interests and outputs.”

Research Exchange now offers the following new features:

• The ability to create a faculty profile that includes links to publications and other research materials. When requested, the profile can be partially assembled by drawing in past citations and research interests from sources like Pivot and ORCID.
• The option to integrate news mentions, research projects, and grant awards into faculty profiles.
• The ability to easily upload files that can be shared in full. Materials uploaded to Research Exchange can be viewed via an embedded reader or player.
• The ability to receive Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for datasets, reports, or other materials. DOIs enable easy sharing of materials and support continued access to content posted online.
• The option of accessing metrics about how materials are being downloaded and viewed.

Since 2005, Research Exchange has archived datasets, research papers, books, newsletters, presentations, dissertations, and materials created for projects like Cedar Mesa, the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance, and Cereal Leaf Beetle Research. Research Exchange now contains more than 36,000 items that have been downloaded more than one million times.

To get started with Research Exchange, email libraries.research@wsu.edu or see the Research Exchange FAQ.