Interested in getting more eyes on your publications? Avoiding paywalls for the articles you want to read? Asserting rights to read and reuse your own work? Read on for five things you can do today to make your research life easier…
1. Skip the paywall
Instantly–and legally–find free versions of articles by adding the Unpaywall extension to Chrome or Firefox.
2. Control your work
Researchers can and should consider changing the terms of the standard author agreements issued by publishers. A brief negotiation of the terms of your author agreement can have a big impact on how you can share and authorize re-use of your works. How does this work?
- Don’t click “I agree” without reading the agreement first.
- Options for negotiating your agreement:
- Contact the editor for a conversation about amending the agreement.
- Edit the agreement prior to signing and returning.
- Attach a standard addendum that changes the terms of the agreement. Our favorite author addendum is the SPARC Author Addendum.
3. Go OA for free
You don’t have to pay to go OA!
Share for free by following publisher policies to deposit your preprint in an archive:
- Find an appropriate and reputable archive for your subject area here: OpenDOAR
- Find your journal’s policies on depositing OA versions of your work: Sherpa Romeo
- Find your funder’s policies on OA, including where you can and must deposit your publications and data: Sherpa Juliet
Sharing freely by depositing a preprint in an archive is legal, ethical, and complies with federal agency grant mandates.
More information about what you can share can be found on JHU’s repository guide: https://guides.library.jhu.edu/open-access/repositories.
4. Avoid scams
The scholarly publications marketplace, like any other economy, is sometimes prey to scams. Using Think Check Submit can help you navigate your selections of publisher, journal title, publication model, and more.
Relying on watchlists can be problematic, since the criteria for inclusion or exclusion is sometimes murky. The Think Check Submit tool walks you through a series of questions to determine the suitability of a publisher for yourself.
5. Increase your impact
Update and share your scholarly author profiles to make sure all your work is discoverable and correctly linked to you and your other work. Here are four places to check to make sure your personal information, affiliation information, and list of publications is correct:
- Build and automatically update your ORCID profile. See JHU’s ORCID guide for more information: https://guides.library.jhu.edu/orcid/home
- Check your Scopus Author Profile. Scopus automatically creates your author profile, but you can request to edit or merge profiles if needed. You can also link your ORCID profile.
- Create and manage your Web of Science Author Profile. This has replaced the old Publons Researcher ID. Make sure your information is correct. You can also link your ORCID profile.
- Create a Google Scholar profile