The Scholarly Communications team supports the creation, preservation, and use of open access materials for the UMW community. We do this by curating the institutional repository, assisting with copyright questions, promoting open access publishing, and supporting the use of open and affordable course materials.

Eagle Scholar

Eagle Scholar is an online repository for hosting, preserving, and providing access to the creative and scholarly works of the UMW community.

Benefits include:

• Open Access – your work can be followed and cited by anyone in the world without the limitations of a paywall.
• Discovery – your work is indexed and searchable in commercial search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
• Preservation – hosted files are given permanent URLs to provide for the long-term preservation of your documents.
• Author Dashboard – create an Eagle Scholar account to access statistics on the countries and institutions that read your work.

Copyright

The Scholarly Communications team provides non-legal guidance on the application of copyright law to facilitate teaching, research, and proper use of library materials.

Open Access Publishing Agreements

The Simpson Library collaborates with VIVA, Virginia’s Academic Library Consortium, to offer faculty a pathway to publish their work in reputable open access journals.

• Open Access Initatives

Open and Affordable Course Materials

The Simpson Library is committed to helping student save money on the price of textbooks by offering free alternatives to faculty and students. This is accomplished through two primary strategies:

• Open Educational Resources (open)– free materials published under a Creative Commons license.
• Course Reserves (affordable) – copyrighted materials available for free through the library.
  • VIVA Faculty Textbook Portal - search this portal to locate free e-books that can be used as an alternative to high priced textbooks. If you cannot find a book in this Portal, you should contact the library for assistance.

VIVA Open Grants

VIVA Open Grants provide monetary awards to faculty that adopt, adapt and create open and affordable course materials that can be made available to students at little or no cost.

VIVA Grants must be approved by the University before you apply: https://provost.umw.edu/grantsoffice/.

Library Contacts

• Head of Reference and Scholarly Communications
  Paul Boger
  (540)654-1748
  pboger@umw.edu
• Head of Special Collections and Digital Scholarship
  Angie Kemp
  (540)654-1756
  awhite4@umw.edu
• Course Reserves Supervisor
  Laura Greeley
  (540)654-1746
  lgreeley@umw.edu