The Osgoode Hall Law School has been providing open access to most of Osgoode’s research and scholarship since Osgoode Digital Commons (ODC) was launched by our the Osgoode Hall Law School Library in February 2014. With 18,000 archived academic papers, commissioned reports, case commentaries, theses, book reviews, photographs, videos, podcasts, recordings of special lectures and glimpses into life at Osgoode, ODC has seen over 3 million full-texts downloads.

Writing about the milestone of reaching 1 million downloads in 2016, our former Chief Law Librarian, Louis Mirando, described ODC this way:

“Osgoode Digital Commons has been a cornerstone of Osgoode’s institutional digital initiatives and research intensification activities, as well as the Library’s commitment to scholarly communication, the preservation of the School’s research archive and the provision of open access to research. It has been instrumental in making Osgoode research available not only to the wider international scholarly community but to a world of people hungry for quality information about the law, all of it free and open access.”

And indeed, Osgoode scholarship has reached readers and researchers in more than 200 countries from all over the globe. The majority have been from Canada, the U.S., the U.K., India, China and Australia but readers have also been able to freely access Osgoode’s scholarship from Botswana, Nepal, Serbia, Costa Rica and Jamaica too name a few. This remarkable success is a tribute to the unwavering support of the Law School, Osgoode faculty and the quality of their scholarship.

The ODC hosts 5 law journals including the Osgoode Hall Law Journal and the Journal of Law and Social Policy. That means that in addition to Osgoode faculty scholarship you will also find scholarly writing by faculty from a variety of other law schools as well as up and coming student writers and graduate researchers. And, because ODC is part of the greater Digital Commons Network visitors will also find links to the over 600 law schools and institutions that participate as part of the “Commons.”

It’s great to know that if you find a citation for a paper written by an Osgoode faculty member, chances are, when you enter that title into your favourite search engine, you will discover the paper freely accessible on Osgoode Digital Commons. Osgoode scholarship has been archived there, and it's waiting for you, helping you to build on your own research.