LibGuides: Social Work Research: Increasing Access to Your Work

Using Open Access to Increase your Impact

Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research to other scholars and the public. Expanded access creates an environment where research can have a wider reach and quicker discovery. Open access to research also means that research funding can have a deeper impact by allowing others to freely and quickly build on that scholarship and data.

Resources:

DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. Aims to cover all subjects and languages.

Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association
An association of respectable publishers that are committed to open access and a great place to find an open access publisher you can feel comfortable publishing with.
SPARC
"SPARC is a global coalition committed to to making Open the default for research and education." Their site is a great place to get started if you want to learn more about open access.

Sharing Your Work

When your author agreement allows for self-archiving rights, take advantage and share your work with the world! If your work lives beyond the paywall of a journal site, it's more likely to be found and cited by a wider audience. Repositories are great archiving options for many reasons.

Repository content is included in Google Scholar searches, so your work is more easily found by other researchers
You'll receive a stable link to the document, which can be easily shared and added to your personal website
Repositories take responsibility for preservation of the document and maintenance/updating of related data

Texas ScholarWorks This link opens in a new window
Most current edition. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Holds digital works and provides related services that constitute an institutional repository for the University of Texas at Austin. Archives and provides persistent and reliable access to the digital works of faculty, staff, and students and aims to provide the greatest possible dissemination and recognition to these works as possible. Digital works include research and scholarship, as well as works that reflect the intellectual and service environment of the campus.
Texas Data Repository This link opens in a new window
Coverage varies. Unlimited.
The Texas Data Repository is a platform for publishing and archiving datasets (and other data products) created by faculty, staff, and students at Texas higher education institutions. The repository is built in an open-source application called Dataverse, developed and used by Harvard University. The repository is hosted by the Texas Digital Library, a consortium of academic libraries in Texas with a proven history of providing shared technology services that support secure, reliable access to digital collections of research and scholarship.
ICPSR: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research This link opens in a new window
1993 - present. Unlimited users.
In order to download datasets and documentation, UT users must create an account and login using their @utexas.edu or @austin.utexas.edu email account, in order to be recognized as being affiliated with a member institution.

ICPSR is the world's largest archive of computer readable social science data, containing more than 500,000 files of research in the social sciences. It hosts 16 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields. Available data can be browsed by topic or searched.

Registry of Research Data Repositories
This registry includes academic and commercial data repositories browsable by subject.

Creative Commons

If you've authored something you're not likely to publish in an academic journal, but would like to share it with the world, make sure to copyright your work and make your reuse preferences clear.

Creative Commons...

Scholar Services

Scholarly Communication

Scholarly Communication Services: Find resources and expertise to support the scholarly publication process including copyright, author rights and open scholarship.
Copyright Crash Course: This online course covers copyright and links to other resources related to Fair Use, Public Domain and Creative Commons.
Open Access at UT Austin: Learn about open access opportunities on campus and open memberships.
Texas ScholarWorks: Online archive managed by UT Libraries where faculty can publicly share articles, conference papers, book chapters, posters, technical reports, and more.

Data

Research Data Services: Resources and services for all phases of the research lifecycle including:
- Guidance on research data management, data curation, and research software selection;
- GIS and geospatial data service s;
- Help with data management plans (DMPs) and use of the DMPTool;
- Curating and publishing data in a research repository, like the Texas Data Repository.
Guides for finding specialized data: Social Sciences Data, STEM Data, Geospatial Data, Humanities Data.
Data Lab in the PCL Scholars Commons and Data Lab in the PCL Scholars Lab: These Data Labs provide specialized software for digital scholarship, including NVivo, R, OpenRefine, SPSS and Stata.
Data & Donuts Workshops: Workshops covering research data tools and techniques are held during fall and spring terms, and are open to all members of the campus community. Current schedule details and resources from past workshops are provided through this guide.

Digital Humanities

Digital Humanities Tools & Resources: An introduction to DH tools, resources and campus activities.
Digital Humanities Workshops: Workshops held fall and spring terms. Find the current schedule and resources from past workshops.
Digital Scholars in Practice: A lecture series that features the work of faculty and student digital scholars.
Digital Scholarship Pedagogy Institute: Two-day workshop series aimed to equip instructors with strategies for integrating digital tools into their classes.
Scan Tech Studio: Studio space within the Scholars Lab that provides technology and support to digitize materials and conduct Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on digitized text.

Other Services/Resources

Citation Management: A guide with information and support for citation managers for research organization.
Find Funding: A guide to finding funding, including PIVOT, a database of funding opportunities with access provided by the UT Libraries.
Systematic Reviews: A guide to conducting systematic reviews.

Author Agreements

When your article is accepted for publication, pay attention to the author agreement and make sure to take advantage of any opportunities you have to make post-prints, or the paper itself, open!

SHERPA/RoMEO is a searchable database of author agreements and a great place to find a journal's policies regarding article sharing and self-archiving.