Associate professor of marketing Iman Naderi, PhD, has seen his article, “Me First, Then the Environment,” downloaded 2,500 times in the past year alone, by interested parties in places ranging from the Philippines to Britain, Hong Kong, and Chile. The article, which provides findings that can influence the way environmental advocates, policy makers, and marketers promote their policies toward millennials, has been viewed by people in universities, business, and government.

How do we know? Because Dr. Naderi, like so many others at Fairfield Dolan, posts his scholarly works to Digital Commons, a repository used by hundreds of universities, libraries, and research centers around the world. The open source platform is designed to encourage sharing of scholarly work for research and educational purposes.

Downloads of faculty research are the heaviest in English-speaking countries such as Canada, Britain, and Australia. More surprising might be the interest in Dolan faculty research from individuals residing in the Sudan, Kazakhstan, and Fiji, just last year. People from Reykjavik, Iceland seem deeply invested in articles written by management professor Lisa Mainiero, PhD, on the relationship between sex, job dependency, and empowerment strategy, while readers at universities in Moscow have pored over “The Effect of Affect and Trust on Commitment in Retail Store Relationships” by marketing professor Arjun Chaudhuri, PhD.

To date, the writings of Fairfield Dolan faculty members have been viewed more than 80,000 times in upwards of 190 countries since faculty members began using the platform in 2005.

“I use Digital Commons to find articles that are useful for my own scholarship,” said accounting professor Joan Lee, CPA, PhD. The site notifies list managers of newly published content, thus allowing other scholars the chance to check out new publications they might find helpful. “It’s also useful for researchers to know what work has appeal and should therefore be expanded upon,” added Dr. Lee.

Case in point: An article that Dr. Lee co-authored with fellow accounting professor Dawn Massey, CPA, PhD, “Applying Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm to the Creation of an Accounting Ethics Course,” was one of the most often-viewed Dolan faculty articles in 2020, even though it was originally written in 2010. The concepts in the paper, she noted, are timeless, dating back to the Jesuit’s 450-year-old approach to education, which serve as a framework for contemporary, principles-based accounting practices.

Associate professor of management Mousumi Bhattacharya, PhD, has also seen the benefits of the open source platform. “Using it helps draw attention to your work and get your name out there in the global arena,” she said. “I could not imagine that I would have people from Africa, the United Kingdom, and Spain citing my work if it only appeared in The Journal of Management. Sites like this are what drive the traffic.” 

Dr. Bhattacharya has been contacted several times by doctoral candidates wishing to expand upon the human resource flexibility scales she and co-author Donald Gibson, PhD, put forth in their paper, “The Effects of Flexibility in Employee Skills, Employee Behaviors, and Human Resource Practices on Firm Performance” (2005). “These scales have no cultural influences, so they’re universally applicable,” she noted.

To learn more about Dolan faculty publications visit the Fairfield Dolan Digital Commons dashboard. DigitalCommons@Fairfield is an institutional repository service of the DiMenna-Nyselius Library.