By Michael S. Lewis-Beck, F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science

As emeritus faculty, I’ve spent my career researching and writing about politics. I published my first academic paper in 1974. Then as it is today, having your academic work cited is critical. But now the methods of scholarly publishing are very different. Academic publishers and academic libraries alike are faced with financial challenges of changing technologies and greater demand for information.

Over the course of my career I’ve authored or co-authored more than 200 articles and books in comparative elections, election forecasting, political economy and quantitative methodology. I can’t hazard a guess as to how many students, researchers and others have read my ideas in the past 40 years.

Then three years ago, 24 of my articles and book chapters were uploaded into Iowa Research Online (http://ir.uiowa.edu). Now each month, I receive notification of how many times an article has been downloaded. It’s exciting to see those numbers grow. But what might be even more exhilarating is the fact that my work will be available to students and researchers in perpetuity.