CSI Library News and Events

Webinar: The Life-Changing Magic of Open Access

On March 24, 2020, Professors Jill Cirasella and Adriana Palmer of the Graduate Center hosted a remote workshop titled "The Life-Changing Magic of Open Access." The presentation (https://bit.ly/lifechangingOA2020) covered both how to find open-access resources as well as how to make your own research openly available. The scope of the term open access is a subject of debate within the OA community in terms of whether it should include resources that do not have re-use rights. For this presentation, re-use rights are not necessary to be considered open access.

Finding Open Access Research

Professor Cirasella provided several helpful tools you can use to find Open Access resources.

• For CSI faculty and students, if you use CSI's customized Google Scholar link, items in the results that are available through our library subscription will be linked (login with CSI credentials is required). Those with access to other library subscription databases will be able to find this link on their library's website, usually in the list of databases.
• Unpaywall is a browser extension that will seamlessly add a link to any resource page if it is available. (https://unpaywall.org/products/extension)
• Like Unpaywall, Open Access Button (https://openaccessbutton.org/) facilitates access to existing OA resources, but if the article is not Open Access, you can make a request through Open Access Button.

Making Your Research Open Access

Professor Palmer indicated that scholars can make research available via an institutional repository, disciplinary repositories, via the publisher, or on a personal website. The benefits of posting your work in a repository include increasing your potential audience, making your research more discoverable, and building a scholarly profile.

(Methods that should NOT be used are pirating sites, for-profit academic networks such as academia.edu and ResearchGate, a personal website that is not your own).

CUNY faculty can make their work available via https://academicworks.cuny.edu/, which is included in One Search. Note that you can post the same resaerch to multiple repositories if so desired. For example, you can post to your institutional repository as well as a disciplinary repository.

OA during COVID-19

During this time of remote work, Open Access research can be particularly helpful to students and other scholars looking for resources. Please contact the library if you need any assistance with finding Open Access materials!