There is a serious, systemic problem in scholarly publishing that disadvantages academic authors, their institutions, the global research community, and the general public. The problem stems from the subscription-based model of scholarly publishing, whereby publishers place academic journal articles behind paywalls so that anyone who can’t pay can’t read them.
Open Access (OA) is a movement based on the principle that this situation is fundamentally unethical, and that the fruits of academic endeavor should be freely available to everyone. OA archiving and publishing are the two main strategies for accomplishing this goal, and they promise to benefit both the global research community and individual authors, moving published research into the open and thereby broadening its readership and generating more citations. OA is also fast becoming a requirement for recipients of research funding, as many public and private funding agencies have enacted public access policies to make the results of funded research accessible to all.
Open Access Week, Oct. 23-29, is an opportunity for the global research community to learn more about this important movement and the many ongoing efforts to make it the new norm in research and scholarship. To celebrate the occasion, FSU Libraries is hosting a number of workshops related to openness in research and education, and we hope you’ll join us to learn more about OA and how it can benefit you as a student, teacher, or researcher:
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free to access, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. This workshop will cover the benefits of using OER, resources for finding and evaluating OER, and considerations for sharing OER-based courseware and assignments with the world. This workshop will also provide a brief introduction to Creative Commons (CC) licenses and their role in the creation of Open Educational Resources (OER).
Interested in Open Access (OA) publishing, but concerned about the growing problem of “predatory” publishers? What are the benefits of OA publishing, and what tools and strategies can you use to evaluate the quality of OA journals? What about options for funding (or obtaining waivers) to cover OA article processing charges? This workshop will provide answers to these questions and more.
Wondering how to find the best conferences and publication venues in your discipline? What about building your scholarly profile and communicating the impact of your research in ways that will resonate with a broader audience? And, once you’ve got your work out there, what can you do to assess and quantify the impact of your research? This workshop will cover a range of tools and strategies that early-career researchers can use to accomplish these objectives and more.
In addition, we’d also like to take this opportunity to highlight some important ways that the Libraries support the FSU community in taking action to advance openness in research and education:
- Our Open Access Publishing Fund provides FSU authors with funding to assist with publication charges for open access journals and books
- Our Open Access Publisher Memberships support publishers with innovative and sustainable business models and provide FSU authors with discounts on publication charges
- Our efforts to implement FSU’s Faculty Senate Open Access Policy, including personalized support for sharing scholarly work on DigiNole, FSU’s Research Repository
- Our Alternative Textbook Grants support FSU instructors in replacing expensive commercial textbooks with open educational resources (OER) that save students money and ensure that they have the materials they need to succeed.
So, what can you do to advance the cause of OA through your own research and teaching?
- Check out these short video interviews with FSU faculty: Xan Nowakowski, Mark Riley
- Come to one of our OA Week workshops to learn more about OA and OER (see above)
- Read your publication contracts and understand your rights as an author
- Deposit your papers in DigiNole, FSU’s research repository
- Explore OA publication venues like the Public Library of Science
- Use the OA Publishing Fund to pay article processing charges for eligible OA journals
- Apply for an Alternative Textbook Grant to replace a commercial textbook with an open alternative
- Contact us to schedule a presentation on OA publishing for your next departmental meeting, graduate seminar, or campus event
For more information, see our research guides on Open Access Publishing and the Open Textbook Movement , or contact Devin Soper, Scholarly Communications Librarian at FSU Libraries’ Office of Digital Research & Scholarship. And don’t forget to follow the conversation on Twitter! #OAweekFSU
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