[Note: The assignment below was created in November 2015 by Virginia Pannabecker, and was posted to the Psychology graduate research methods course, one week prior to the open access discussion session. This reading assignment is licensed for reuse with a CC BY 4.0 license.] 

Hello,

This is Ginny Pannabecker with VT University Libraries. Next Tuesday, [date], in [course name/number], we'll be discussing 'open access’ publishing, author rights, and what these mean to you as researchers interested in communicating with colleagues in your field, researchers in other fields, and the world at large. 

To get us all started with a basis for reference, please complete the following three readings before class on Tuesday, [date].

Thanks, and I'm looking forward to talking with you!

~Ginny

Open Access to Research Communication - Readings

1. Open Access Overview, by Peter Suber (2015 - latest revision), Director of Harvard University Office of Scholarly Communication (CC BY 3.0 license)

---> For this one, it's fine to skim most, but please read at least the first bullet point of each section

2. Promoting an Open Research Culture, - by Nosek, B. A., Alter, G., Banks, G. C., Borsboom, D., Breckler, S. J., . . . Yarkoni, T. (2015). [If the link above does not provide full text access, it is also available here from PubMed Central: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4550299/]

--> For this one, please read all - it's from the journal Science and is only 2 pages

3. Who's Afraid of Peer Review?* by John Bohannon (2013) 

--> Please read all – this one is a short 5 pages with images.

[*Note: At the time of sharing, March 2016, “Who’s afraid of peer review?” was available for free online via Science magazine. However, if no longer available for free access, two alternative readings could be: “Improving the peer-review process and editorial quality: key errors escaping the review and editorial process in top scientific journals,” by Antoni Margalida and M Àngels Colomer; Academic Editor: Ana Marusic (2016) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4756748/ or “Peer Review Quality and Transparency of the Peer-Review Process in Open Access and Subscription Journals” by Jelte M. Wicherts; Gemma Elizabeth Derrick, Editor, (2016) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4732690/.]

Virginia (Ginny) Pannabecker
Health, Life Science, and Scholarly Communications Librarian
University Libraries, Virginia Tech
(540) 231-7980
vpannabe@vt.edu​​