University of North Carolina, Wilmington
AC-11: Open Access to Research

UNCW's Randall Library offers repository hosting of scholarly works by its employees via Seahawk Docks.

This resolution was passed by UNCW Faculty Senate May 2023. It is opt-in but university-wide.

The UNCW Faculty Senate passed motion 2023-05-02:

Open Access Resolution for the Faculty Senate of University of North Carolina Wilmington

The Faculty of the University of North Carolina Wilmington is committed to disseminating its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In particular, as part of a public university system, the Faculty is dedicated to making its scholarship available to the people of North Carolina and the world. Furthermore, the Faculty recognizes the benefits that accrue to themselves as individual scholars and to the scholarly enterprise from such wide dissemination, including greater recognition, more thorough review, consideration and critique, and a general increase in scientific, scholarly, and critical knowledge. In keeping with these considerations, and for the primary purpose of making our scholarly works widely and freely accessible, the Faculty adopts the following resolution.

To facilitate open access scholarly communication Faculty members are encouraged to seek venues for their works that will disseminate research and scholarship as widely as possible. In particular, when consistent with their professional development, members of the Faculty should endeavor to:

Include the costs of open access publishing in externally funded research budgets whenever possible;

Seek publishers for their works committed to free and unfettered access (open access publishers) whenever consistent with their professional goals;

Take advantage of negotiated open access publishing agreements to publish open access without cost (https://libguides.uncw.edu/c.php?g=1270376&p=9520491)

Amend copyright agreements to retain the right to use their own work and deposit such work in Seahawk DOCKS (http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncw/) or another repository that is freely accessible to the general public; or

Submit a final manuscript of accepted, peer-reviewed publications to Seahawk DOCKS or another repository whenever consistent with the copyright agreement.

The program is currently on hiatus but is expected to be reinstated. Information on the program can be found here: https://library.uncw.edu/guidelines. We also have several agreements with publishers to allow employees to publish at no charge. More information here: https://libguides.uncw.edu/c.php?g=1270376&p=9520491