Using Open Access Institutional Repositories to Save the Student Symposium during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, colleges and universities around the world were forced to close or move to online instruction. Many institutions host yearly student research symposiums. This article describes how two universities used their institutional repositories to adapt their student research symposiums to virtual events in a matter of weeks. Both universities use the bepress Digital Commons platform for their institutional repositories. Even though the two universities’ symposium strategies differed, some commonalities emerged, particularly with regard to learning the best practices to highlight student work and support their universities’ efforts to host research symposiums virtually.