I tried to find an open access article in my area of research with no luck, but did send one from the positive psychology field on positive education:
https://internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/index.php/ijow/article/view/588
I found a list of open access journals in psychology and they seem to be marginal journals, and some don’t have many publications. I did not look enough to know the level of peer review but I am skeptical about the validity of these of journals.
I have also been looking at the websites of various researchers whose work I admire – most of them do not have great, up-to-date websites! (If they have recent books, there are ways to buy their books from the websites, but not much else is being communicated.)
I am now following a couple of these authors on Twitter – and some have something to say but others do not.
Still not sure how I will use these tools we are exploring.
I am interested in getting research findings out there but at the present time it won’t be through submitting to online journals or paying a ton of money to have an article be open access – I am hoping to do something with a better website with some kind of engaging summaries of articles/chapters (maybe explore the video clips idea? Maybe a few summary slides of some sort?)
Questions for Joe (or others):
1. Is there a way we can we put pdfs of published articles (and chapters) on a website even if the journal is not open access?
2. I currently am only marginally involved in ResearchGate – should I be more involved in that? (Can I put pdfs there even if journal not open access?)
3. How about Google Scholar?
4. Trying to decide if I should be organizing my own publications on a website vs. rely on some of these other things out there – advice from anyone appreciated!
Thanks,
Sarah
Your best resource for opening up your research is usually in the library. At Kenyon, it’s Jenna Nolt, our Digital Initiatives Librarian. Her responsibilities include managing our institutional repository, Digital Kenyon, and she’s done a lot of work with adding open access copies of articles to that site. Even if the journal itself is not open access, sometimes there are stipulations in the publication agreement which would allow you to post an open version in Digital Kenyon. I’m sure Jenna would love to talk to you about it.
I’d like to defer to others on things like ResearchGate or Academia.edu. I’m pretty skeptical of both sites but I have trouble articulating why, other than a certain level of discomfort at their business model. I’m very interested in how important these sites seem to be… in your discipline, is it important to be findable there?
Google Scholar is good at picking up open access materials out of institutional repositories like Digital Kenyon. I’m going to have to look closer at that “profile” option.
I think there are a lot of benefits to having your own website, starting with having a simple domain name you can send people to. There’s also a speed issue – I’m noticing at my conferences that I appreciate people who can say “I’ve already posted these slides to my website” instead of “these will eventually be on the conference site” or “email me for a copy of the paper.” And obviously I think that even irregular blogging is a valuable reflective process and contribution to disciplinary conversations.
But… it is work to run your own site! If one of these other sites (including Digital Kenyon) provides most of the same services for less work, I can respect the tradeoff.