Educational Leadership & Policy Research

Open Access is the free, online availability of research to other scholars and the public. Expanded access creates an environment where research and research funding can have wider reach and deeper impact. Others scholars can more readily use and cite your scholarship and data, especially international scholars with limited access to expensive journals. It also creates access for teachers and other practitioners who are often unable to access the scholarly literature necessary to do evidence-based work.

Publishing in an OA journal isn't your only option for sharing your work. Some paywalled journals will make an article "open" for a fee. Depositing a post-print version of your article in our UT's document repository, Texas ScholarWorks, is also a good option. Learn more below, in Archiving & Sharing Your Data & Publications.

Resources: 

Directory of Open Access Journals - A directory of open access journals from all disciplines. Not every included title is high-impact, but there is a rigorous attempt to week out predatory and illegitimate publishers.

SPARC - "A global coalition committed to to making Open the default for research and education." This is a great place to start if you want to learn more about open access.

If your work lives beyond the paywall of a journal site, it's more likely to be found and cited by a wider audience. Institutional or disciplinary repositories are great archiving options for many reasons...

• Repository content is included in Google Scholar, so your work is more easily found by other researchers
• Repository content is open, so people who don't have access to expensive journals can still see your work
• You'll receive a stable link to the document, which can be easily shared and added to your personal website
• Repositories often do to work of uploading your documents and creating metadata (to increase discovery of your work)

Texas ScholarWorks - A document repository for research by UT scholars. Here you can share a post-print version of papers you've published in journals. A post-print is a PDF copy of the final document, with all edits, before it goes to press.

Texas Data Repository - A data repository for research by UT scholars. Here you can share a wide variety of data and materials that supplement your research publications (data sets, spreadsheets, scripts/code, questionnaires, etc.). This allows you to publish your data in a way that's easy to cite and track usage. It's a great option when a journal requires that you provide a link to the data used in your studies.

ERIC - A disciplinary repository. IES funded research is must be deposited in ERIC.

Open Science Foundation - A non-profilt platform to share your research at any stage (study design, data, publication)

If your research was funded by federal dollars, you are required to make your research available to the public. Your librarian is happy to answer questions or help you navigate this process.

• IES policy - Final version of the manuscript accepted for publication should be submitted to ERIC. 
• NIH policy - Final version of the manuscript accepted for publication should be shared with PubMed Central.
• NSF policy - Final version of the manuscript accepted for publication should be deposited with the NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR)
• Sherpa Juliet is a useful database for finding more about funder sharing policies

In addition to sharing your manuscripts, your data must also be made public.This always begins with a good Data Management Plan in your grant application. Don't hesitate to ask your librarian for help when developing your DMP as they can make or break an otherwise great funding proposal.

Data sharing statements from major education publishers

• Elsevier
• Sage
• Taylor & Francis
• Wiley