The CDR, Coronavirus and Access to Public Research

Last week, Anne Gilliland, the University’s Scholarly Communications Officer, and Rebekah Kati, Institutional Repository Librarian, spoke to The Well about UNC’s Open Access Policy and the CDR’s project to make UNC’s coronavirus research publicly available. At the CDR, we strongly believe in making research available to everyone and were excited to tell the UNC community more about the work that we’re doing to help fight COVID-19. 

Since UNC is a public university and much of its research output is funded by grants and other public funds, it is important that articles and data generated from that research be made available to the public. This is especially important during the COVID-19 pandemicin which “researchers are collaborating at unprecedented levels and would benefit from an environment unencumbered by paywalls and other restrictions. Therefore, the CDR staff have prioritized deposit of UNC research that is directly related to coronaviruses or has been produced by UNC researchers who are currently devoting their time to coronavirus activities. We are reviewing the CVs of these researchers to identify the articles which are eligible for deposit, notifying the researcher and depositing their work in the CDR. 

Despite the current focus, the CDR does accept all types of scholarly research from all subject areas. UNC’s Open Access Policy ensures that faculty-authored works will stay publicly available, even if the journal puts it behind a paywall. It also allows UNC to store an archival copy of researchers’ work. If you would like to deposit your work in the CDR, we are happy to look over your CV and deposit your eligible articles. Please contact cdr@unc.edu for more information.

 
The CDR is one part of the UNC University Libraries’ efforts to promote sustainable scholarship. For more information on the University Libraries’ Sustainable Scholarship initiative, see the Sustainable Scholarship website. 

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