Shameless Self-Promotion Workshop Guide

Promoting your Research

Traditionally, research is shared through closed systems. You can recognize a closed system when: 

• It asks for money (“hitting a paywall”).
• It requires account creation or personal information in exchange for access.

The ISU Library’s yearly materials budget is over $11 million.

Most people cannot afford to access or engage in these systems, because: 

• they are not affiliated with an institution, (this includes alumni)
• their institution cannot afford to pay subscription fees, or
• due to other barriers that have become evident, such as accessibility.

When you can't access research in your discipline, you can't do your best work. 

When other people can't access your research, you can't promote yourself or your work widely. 

So, how do you navigate these barriers?

 Go Open!

  Open Access (OA) is a global movement for access to information created and supported by researchers, librarians, and students.

The ultimate goal of the Open Access movement is to make research available to all, in many formats. If a work is "open," that means there is a copy of the work available to access for free, without readers having to log in or pay a fee.

You can make your work open in a few different ways: 

1. Share your preprint prior to publication, to communicate your research findings to a wider audience and get feedback from your peers.
2. Publish in an open access journal or with an open access book publisher.
3. Share a copy of your work in an open access repository (like the Iowa State Digital Repository or DataShare).

Interested in making your journal article open? Watch our video on three paths to OA:

The Open Access route is just another way of making your work seen

• Open Access articles are traditionally peer-reviewed and copyrighted by their owners. There isn't anything particularly different about them, except that they are free to access!
• Some Open Access works have attached transparent license agreements (such as Creative Commons), which make it clear what users can and cannot do with that work.
• Open Access is often associated only with publications, such as journal articles, but it can also be used with other research outputs such as dissertations and theses, code, images, datasets, and more.