Radical Access: The SFU Scholarly Publishing blog

Scholarly Publishing and Open Access blog

The latest news and answers to your questions about scholarly publishing and open access.


Fair dealing and OER: Pathways to using copyrighted content

Published by Ioana Liuta
Read to learn about best practices and guidance for reusing copyrighted content in Open Educational Resources under fair dealing, and about a Code of Best Practices in Fair Dealing for Open Educational Resources, published by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), which can help to provide an alternative approach to using copyrighted materials in your OER.

An overview of institutional repositories in Africa

Published by Alison Moore
Open Access Institutional Repositories (OAIR) have brought about a culture of sharing and participation, and African scholars must take advantage of this. How are the barriers to publishing in OAIR overcome?

SFU's commitment to open education

Published by Alison Moore
In June 2022, SFU Senate endorsed a statement in support of open educational resources (OER) and open education more broadly, developed by SFU Library with support from the OER Working Group and the Senate Committee on University Teaching and Learning (SCUTL). Read this conversation with Hope Power, Teaching and Learning Librarian at SFU.

How Community Science opens a new way of knowledge creation: the BC Parks iNaturalist Project

Published by Alison Moore

Did you know that a hiker, birder, or beachcomber can contribute to scientific knowledge while they are exploring nature? Nature enthusiasts can upload a picture and description of plant, animal, insect, fungi or other organism through an app on their cell phone. This article introduces a trend called Community (or Citizen) Science, the website iNaturalist that uses Community Science to identify plant and animal species, and the role of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) in creating easy to use visualizations.

Leveraging Web Mapping Technologies to Communicate Your Research: Introducing our new Web GIS Workshop Series

Screenshot from Restoring Old Havana that shows a map with a painting of a boat superimposed on the left.
Published by Sarah (Tong) Zhang

The Open Scholarship and Knowledge Mobilization movements encourage us to think hard about how digital media and the open web have revolutionarily disrupted the traditional way of publishing.  The ways to disseminate and communicate research has never been more diverse and accessible, targeting a broad audience of specialists and non-specialists. Just think about the novel avenues in which researchers have dabbled to put their intellectual output: blogs, podcasts (or newly invented open peer-reviewed podcasts), and numerous web-based projects. 

Recognizing contributions to research - how should you credit?

Published by Ioana Liuta

This blog looks at changes to the ways researchers or team members are credited in publications. The CRediT system is highlighted as one way to give credit responsibly and recognize different forms of research contribution.