It’s Day 1 of #OAWeek2016 and I’ve just signed up to take action to open up research and scholarship during Open Access Week and beyond. This is something I am already committed to doing anyway. But the nice form on the OAWeek website allows you to tick boxes of things you can achieve within the next year. Here’s what I committed to do:
Make a list of Open Access journals in my discipline I would consider publishing in and share it with colleagues
I have decided to create a page on this website for exactly this purpose, and I’ll try to keep adding to it as regularly as I can. I think I will create a shareable Google Doc so people can add to it.
Start a conversation about Open Access during a research group meeting, journal club, or staff meeting
I will be talking about Open Access to my postgraduate students, and I will endeavour to have conversations with colleagues as much as possible.
Send at least one manuscript to an open-access journal within the next year
This one is easy because I submitted an article to Hybrid Pedagogy yesterday, so this box is already ticked. I have more work up my sleeve, so more to come. . .
Deposit at least one of my articles into an open-access repository during Open Access Week
I have sent two articles into CORA my institutional repository – OA Week is the push I needed, as these really should have been submitted before now! At least it’s done now. If you want to read them, they are already published in OA journals (click here for an article comparing the song lyrics of Rage Against the Machine with the poetry of Lorna Dee Cervantes, and click here for an article on representations of Cuban identity in the TV show, Dexter).
Sign up for Impactstory and get an ORCID
I have just signed up for Impactstory and am in the process of uploading information to my ORCID. Hopefully my Impactstory page will update soon to show more activity than it is right now. The good news is that it has already analysed my writing style from one article so far and apparently I write in a very accessible way! I am a little worried about the fact that it is only recognising a small percentage of my publications as OA. In fact all of my articles are OA, not to mention various other digital research objects. On the other hand, I spotted a few dead links and some other things that needed updating. In all, this has been a very useful exercise beyond the main goal of supporting open access activities as I have been able to do a bit of spring cleaning of my digital identity too!