Image from Creative Commons
If I read another news brief that begins with “In these scary/extraordinary/extreme/whatever times…” I will cough on it, so instead, take these bits of updates on free data and use them wisely, whether you’re trying to pass the time until we all Flatten the Curve or you’re just a massive information literacy nerd like I am. Whatever works!
Louisiana State University and the American Chemical Society are now giving out financial aid to folks who publish their papers with an open access license. A lot of open access journals charge author fees to make up for rights revenues, and that puts scholars in a bind - do they cough up their own money to make sure their papers can be used freely, or do they publish for free in journals that are prohibitively expensive for the readers? For the next year, at least, the LSU chemistry department doesn’t have to make that choice, which is what we’ll call a win-win.
Open Access is especially important in academic publishing because putting scholarship behind paywalls prohibits students and libraries from accessing everything they need, and teachers can’t always use their own work the way they need to for educational purposes. (Some author agreements are so friggin’ draconian you violate them by making copies of your own writing for class readings and stuff like that.)
So yay for LSU. Somewhere deep in my mom’s photo albums, I’m eight years old and holding a giant pickled alligator head from their biology department in celebration (true facts).Scholar Commons is basically a big digital database where academics submit their published papers for free access to everybody in their institution. It’s described as a free web-based distribution method for information that’s copyright-free or has the permission of the copyright holder. Again, super important because hitting a database paywall is a major pain in the ass - I mean setback of your research. (My mom likes to remind me that when she was in grad school, she had to scroll through microfiche, which is the research equivalent of “uphill both ways in the snow.”)
One of our in-house journals recently decided to put all their stuff on our Scholar Commons site, so helping with that is one of my work-from-home projects, and I’m super excited to get hands-on experience with this. Processes differ from institution to institution, but in our department, professors send us electronic copies of what they want to put in our Scholar Commons repository (“we are aware we have a naming problem”), and we librarian folk upload them into the actual database after checking with a higher-up to make sure we’re all good to go. Then we add metadata like topic tags, and voila, it’s freely available to our institution users.
I do wish there was one database like this for the entire country/world’s academic papers, but that requires a huge amount of cooperation from not just the people who produce that scholarship but the publishers who still make big bucks from it in some form or another. The publishers will not go gently into the Open Access night, I’m afraid, but there’s a great effort to start this project with as much voluntary information as possible.JSTOR, like THE biggest academic database because it’s got so much covered, is touting the information it’s unlocked for everybody during the COVID-19 pandemic. Which I got excited about, until one of my coworkers noticed that they’re just advertising the stuff that they’ve *always* offered for free and public use. Boooo. That’s just taking an optics advantage while displaced students and educators are even more dependent on internet resources than ever. JSTOR made such a parade about it that the New York Times reported on it in one of its daily briefings.
However, credit where credit is due - there are over 150 journals and 6,000 ebooks freely available to everybody on JSTOR (per their ush, remember). Which is honestly kind of a drop in the bucket but is something. And they are working with institutions to give more access to displaced students who have academic logins. That’ll end June 30, which, I don’t know about y’all but we just got an email that both of our summer sessions are going to be distance learning as well, so.
Remember, check that fine print, and read on to find the real information hiding in the PR.
Don’t forget, if your local library’s physical locations are closed for the foreseeable future, you should totally be able to still get their electronic stuff like ebooks, audiobooks, and whatever other resources they put on their website. Most librarians can in fact work from home (even those of us from the circulation desks), and since we have more time to concentrate on long-term projects that get pushed aside every time something in the real world comes up, I’m expecting great things to blossom upon the internet during *waves hands* all this.
Plus, literacy superstars like Dolly Parton are doing electronic story times for all the restless young’uns, or anybody else! (Editorial Assistant Timothy Dogton, Esq., seems to enjoy when I read aloud from our copy of So You Have a Yorkshire Terrier.) Reading is for all, y’all.
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Open Access Bits to Keep You Occupied
YES! Broadway did a similar shitty PR move “all free for 15 days like always” 🙄 I loathe paywalls. LSU?! Ha. Thats AMAZING. I’m in a love hate w BR. Work there some on state Ed stuff. Have friends there. Know lots goes on at LSU. But look up their LAZY RIVER. OMG.