Frequently Asked Questions


What is JayScholar?

JayScholar is Elizabeththown's institutional repository - an online, open-access, showcase of the College community's scholarly and artistic works. Collections include:

  • Student scholarship
    • Posters, presentations, and media files shared at the College’s annual Scholarship and Creative Arts Day (SCAD)
    • Projects completed for the Summer Scholarship, Creative Arts and Research Projects (SCARP) program
    • Honors and Honors in the Discipline theses and capstone projects
    • Finalist papers for the annual Anna Carper Excellence in Library Research Award
    • Coursework or independent research that faculty approve for inclusion—art, music, podcasts, and more!
    • Student-run journals like Fine Print, the College's literary magazine.
  • Faculty scholarship
    • Articles
    • Books and book chapters
    • Conference presentations
    • Artistic works
  • Materials from the College's Hess Archives and Special Collections
    • Conestogan and Etonian yearbooks.
    • The Etownian and Our College Times student newspapers
    • Elizabethtown College Magazine issues
    • Course catalogs
    • Images of Amish daily life from photographer Dennis Hughes

    • What are the benefits of contributing work?

    JayScholar gives prominence to your research or artistry within the larger community, as the open-access platform increases the visibility of each existing publication or new project. Each work receives high relevancy rankings in Google and Google Scholar searches. The permalinks to individual items also help with the seamless inclusion of your work in resumes, websites, and e-portfolios. And of course, JayScholar serves as an online compilation of the scholarly and creative achievements of the College community..

    How may students submit?

    If you’d like to see your work in JayScholar, just fill out the Student Submission Form. The library staff will then share your submission request with your faculty advisor(s) and will post your project upon approval. As soon as your project appears in JayScholar, you’ll receive a permalink to your work!

    How may faculty and staff submit?

    Each time you complete the Achievements & News Form on the College’s website, simply indicate that you’d like to include your work in JayScholar. A member of the library staff will then contact you with more details about next steps. If you’d prefer, you may also send an email—with full citation details, 3-5 author-supplied keywords, an abstract, and all relevant files—directly to jayscholar@etown.edu.

    If your publication is already available online, the library staff will research the copyright permissions to determine which version to post. (If a publisher prohibits the inclusion of your actual work, JayScholar will still provide a complete citation and a link to the full-text version on the publisher’s website.) As the visibility of your work obviously leads to greater readership, consider submitting your publication or project in order to broaden the reach of your research!

    How may alumni submit?

    The Hess Archives and Special Collections houses hundreds of Honors and Honors in the Discipline theses and capstone projects. As current students often consult the papers, either for bibliographic mining or as sources of inspiration for their own research, the library hopes to make these collections more accessible. If you’d like to nominate your thesis or capstone project for inclusion in JayScholar, or if you’d like to submit a published work that you completed after graduation, please email jayscholar@etown.edu or call the Archivist at 717-361-1506.

    Does JayScholar support journal publishing?

    JayScholar supports all stages of online journal publishing, from the submission of content to peer-review workflows, hosting, branding, and unlimited training for each new editor. The software also supplies readership analytics. To view an example of a published journal, take a look at Fine Print, the College’s literary magazine, or at any number of journals included within the Undergraduate Research Commons. Feel free to contact the library staff to learn more about publishing a student-, faculty- or staff-run journal in JayScholar!

    What are JayScholar's terms of use?

    For all work included in JayScholar, whether previously published or unpublished, the copyright holder has granted permission to post the material in the College’s institutional repository. Any use of a work (including reproducing, republishing, posting, transmitting, or distributing in any physical or digital form) that falls outside of fair use (Title 17, §107 U.S.C.) may require the explicit written permission of the copyright holder.

    For any work that displays a Creative Commons license, all use is governed by the terms of the specific license that the creator(s) selected. For more information about Creative Commons, or to license your own work, go to https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/.

    How may I change or delete a submission?

    Please email jayscholar@etown.edu with any revision or deletion requests.

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