Chemistry

In 2003, ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) defined scholarly communication as "the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communication, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic listservs." 

ACRL has produced an extremely helpful Scholarly Communications Toolkit, which lives HERE.

There are so many tools and platforms where you can share your work and create an author profile. You have a faculty page at CSI. You may have your own website to establish a web presence. You may have your articles posted on an open access directory like Academia.edu. But how can you tell others who "you" really are?

Here are a list of tips and tricks to help you coordinate your efforts:

If you've published an article in a scholarly journal, then you have signed a contract. The contract you sign grants the journal the rights to publish your piece. If you've ever signed one you know it has multiple pages of details and many legal clauses. What rights are you actually granting them? Which rights are you keeping?

If you post your article online anywhere after publishing it---on your website, on your blog, in an open access repository like Academia.edu, ResearchGate, or CUNY's Academic Works---you need to make sure you have the rights to post it.

If you have questions about this or want to know more, feel free to email me using the link under my photo.

Before submitting your work to a journal, you should take to time to figure out if the journal is the right place for your work. After all, you've spent countless hours writing your article, and this will be its future home. Things to take into consideration:

• Scope of the journal-- check out their mission statement and peruse a few issues to see if they publish the type of work you write.
• Is it peer-reviewed? Is it double-blind peer reviewed? The journal's website should tell you this.
• How do readers access the journal? Journals indexed in numerous databases will be easier for academics to find them. If it's an open access journal, are they part of any consortiums or published by a well-known university or association?
• Impact Factor: journals that are better trusted and widely read tend to publish articles that get cited more often. You can check on the "impact factor" or citation metrics of a journal in one of the links below!

Predatory Publishing is a term coined by Jeffrey Beall, who created Beall's list as a way of critically analyzing Open Access Journal practices to make sure those journals are not exploiting publishing pressures placed on faculty & an existing Gold OA structure where authors pay nominal editorial fees to release their works as Open Access. Beall is a controversial figure, but one thing does seem clear: predatory publishing is real.

Have you ever gotten a flattering email directly from a journal asking you to publish your work with them? Then you research the journal and discover ... the editorial board is fake, the publisher is not affiliated with any legitimate organization, and low and behold there is a fee for publication? This describes a predatory journal.

THINK, CHECK, SUBMIT! thinkchecksubmit.org has created a handy checklist you can follow before submitting to any journal. The website lives HERE.

The list below are links to articles published ABOUT predatory publishing.

The OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association) has published these "best practices" for scholarly journals...

Principles of Transparency

1. Peer review process: All of a journal’s content, apart from any editorial material that is clearly marked as such, shall be subjected to peer review. Peer review is defined as obtaining advice on individual manuscripts from reviewers expert in the field who are not part of the journal’s editorial staff. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, shall be clearly described on the journal’s Web site.

2. Governing Body: Journals shall have editorial boards or other governing bodies whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors shall be provided on the journal’s Web site.

3. Editorial team/contact information Journals shall provide the full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors on the journal’s Web site as well as contact information for the editorial office.

4. Author fees: Any fees or charges that are required for manuscript processing and/or publishing materials in the journal shall be clearly stated in a place that is easy for potential authors to find prior to submitting their manuscripts for review or explained to authors before they begin preparing their manuscript for submission.

5. Copyright: Copyright and licensing information shall be clearly described on the journal’s Web site, and licensing terms shall be indicated on all published articles, both HTML and PDFs.

6. Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct: Publishers and editors shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. In no case shall a journal or its editors encourage such misconduct, or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place. In the event that a journal’s publisher or editors are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article in their journal – the publisher or editor shall follow COPE’s guidelines (or equivalent) in dealing with allegations.

7. Ownership and management: Information about the ownership and/or management of a journal shall be clearly indicated on the journal’s Web site. Publishers shall not use organizational names that would mislead potential authors and editors about the nature of the journal’s owner.

8. Web site: A journal’s Web site, including the text that it contains, shall demonstrate that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.

9. Name of journal: The Journal name shall be unique and not be one that is easily confused with another journal or that might mislead potential authors and readers about the Journal’s origin or association with other journals.

10. Conflicts of interest: A journal shall have clear policies on handling potential conflicts of interest of editors, authors, and reviewers and the policies should be clearly stated.

11. Access: The way(s) in which the journal and individual articles are available to readers and whether there are associated subscription or pay per view fees shall be stated.

12. Revenue sources: Business models or revenue sources (eg, author fees, subscriptions, advertising, reprints, institutional support, and organizational support) shall be clearly stated or otherwise evident on the journal’s Web site.

13. Advertising: Journals shall state their advertising policy if relevant, including what types of ads will be considered, who makes decisions regarding accepting ads and whether they are linked to content or reader behavior (online only) or are displayed at random.

14. Publishing schedule: The periodicity at which a journal publishes shall be clearly indicated.

15. Archiving: A journal’s plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content (for example, access to main articles via CLOCKSS or PubMedCentral) in the event a journal is no longer published shall be clearly indicated.

16. Direct marketing: Any direct marketing activities, including solicitation of manuscripts that are conducted on behalf of the journal, shall be appropriate, well targeted, and unobtrusive.

In the event that a member organization is found to have violated these best practices, OASPA/DOAJ/COPE/WAME shall in the first instance try to work with them in order to address any concerns that have been raised. In the event that the member organization is unable or unwilling to address these concerns, their membership in the organization may be suspended or terminated. All of the member organizations have procedures for dealing with concerns raised about member journals.

You can accomplish this by including your previously published work in Academic Works, CUNY's Institutional Repository.

What is an Institutional Repository? It is a digital archive of academic articles and other works that have been authored/created by CUNY faculty, staff, and current students. It is similar to ResearchGate and Academia.edu except that unlike both of those examples this is a non-commercial, legitimately non-profit archive hosted and supported by our institution, CUNY. Academic Works is a way to set your work free so that anyone can read it online, engage with it, and potentially cite it in future articles.

You are likely to have a lot of questions about how this works, and I am happy to help. In the meantime, check out a Research Guide that I made for ACADEMIC WORKS.

Open educational resources (OER) are free and openly licensed educational materials that can be used for teaching, learning, research, and other purposes. Using OER in your classes falls under the "education" hat, but authoring OER is a form of Scholarly Communication. Either way, we have an excellent Research Guide to this that lives HERE.