Open Research Action Plan, Data Sharing, Open Access, Open Code & Software, Open Resarch Awards, Preprints, Preregistration & Registered Reports

This guide will help you determine whether open access is right for you and your work and, if so, how to make your work openly accessible. This primer on open access explains what “open access” means, addresses common concerns and misconceptions you may have about open access, and provides you with practical steps to take if you wish to make your work openly accessible.

Understanding Open Access: When, Why & How to Make Your Work Openly Accessible provides a scholarly author-oriented look at the ins and outs of open access publishing. The guide addresses common concerns about what “open access” means, how institutional and funder open access policies work, and why authors might consider making their works openly accessible online. It also provides information on how to openly license works, how to tailor licensing permissions, and where authors can consider making their open access works available. The guide includes real-life strategies that authors can use to work with publishers, institutions, and funders to make their works available on the terms most consistent with their dissemination goals.

The OER, consisting of an Instructor’s Guide and accompanying presentation Slide Deck with speaking notes, emphasizes three primary themes:
- Principles and practices of community engagement for knowledge exchange;
- Meaningful access to research for non-academic audiences;
- Research ethics in historically marginalized underrepresented communities.

We have organized the OER to consist of a “core” module, “Community-based knowledge exchange and mitigating information privilege” and three pathways: 1) “Information access and alternative formats,” 2) “Supporting community led research,” and 3) “Community engagement and services.” Instructors can “mix and match” content from the pathways depending on available class time, course structure, and student interests. The core and pathway modules include learning objectives, a wide selection of open access academic and professional articles, books, blogs, websites, videos and multimedia, and active learning activities for in-person or online delivery.

This Workshop in a Box (WIB) contains everything you need to prepare for and deliver a workshop for faculty, researchers, and students on open access. After attending this workshop, participants will have a better understanding as to whether open access is right for them and their works and, if so, how to make their works openly accessible.

“What’s the difference between ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and the institutional repository?”

“I put my papers in ResearchGate, is that enough for the open access policy?

These and similar questions have been common at open access events over the past couple of years. Authors want to better understand the differences between these platforms and when they should use one, the other, or some combination.

This blog post is a primer on understanding the differences between academic social networking sites and institutional repositories (IRs).