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Open Access and Scholarly Communications

The Health Sciences Library supports Open Access, Open Archives, and Open Repositories as methods to encourage the widest possible access to scholarly content.

Open Access
Scholarly content made available free of charge to anyone upon publication.
Open Archives
Scholarly content in subscription publications made available free of charge after an initial embargo period.
Open Repositories
Digital collections of scholarly content on a particular subject or the collected intellectual works of an institution or group of institutions.
NIH Public Access Legislation Passes

All peer reviewed articles arising from NIH funds are required to be submitted to PubMed Central effective April 7, 2008.

Information about the requirement is available on NIH Public Access:

Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Web Cast Archive
Institutional Compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy - Ensuring Deposit Rights

SPARC/Science Commons/ARL Joint White Paper
Complying with the NIH Public Access Policy - Copyright Considerations and Options

Send questions or requests for assistance to HSL's Ask a Librarian.



  • Publishing Choices: Know Your Rights and Expand Your Impact. With Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC. View video of Heather Joseph's presentation at UNC, April 2007.
  • Reading the Fine Print. Chronicle article by UNC's Deborah Gerhardt on negotiating publication contracts.
  • Organizing the World's Organization: Google's Vision for the 21st Century. View video of Craig Silverstein's presentation at UNC, October 2006.
  • UNC-CH Authored Articles in Open Access Journals (PubMed search)
  • Scholarly Communications in a Digital World: A Convocation (January 27-28, 2005)
  • UNC-Chapel Hill Scholarly Communications Working Group
  • CRADLe - Center for Research and Development of Digital Libraries


  • Open Access (Association of Research Libraries)
  • Open Access - A Primer (Funk)
  • Six things that researchers need to know about open access (Suber)
  • Factors influencing publication choice: why faculty choose open access (Warlick & Vaughan)
  • "Impact Factor" Revisited (Dong, Loh & Mondry)
  • Open Access News Blog (Suber)
  • Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (Bailey)

    		•

    number 1 Keep Your Copyrights

     
  • Copyright Resources for Authors (SPARC)

    • number 2 Publish in Open Access Journals

     
  • Funding Supports Open Access Fees
    •     Get Application for UNC-CH Funding

     
  • BioMed Central
    •  
      Our institutional membership, effective until Feb 2008, covers article processing fees for UNC-Chapel Hill authors.
     
  • Public Library of Science
    •  
      Our institutional membership currently covers 10% of UNC-Chapel Hill author’s fees.
     
  • Directory of Open Access Journals
    		•

    number 3 Deposit Your Work in a Repository

     
  • PubMed Central
    •  
      Author Manuscripts and NIH Public Access Policy
     
  • OpenDoar
    •  
      Provides a quality-assured listing of open access repositories around the world.