It can be daunting to think about your thesis or dissertation being openly available in Summit for anyone to find and read. You may have heard concerns about plagiarism, predatory publishers or limitations on your ability to publish a manuscript based on your openly available thesis. Be reassured that, for the most part, these concerns are unwarranted. Most universities in Canada make their students' theses and dissertations open.

We discussed predatory journals in a previous blog post, but you may have also heard of predatory conferences. Conferences are an important piece of the scholarly publishing world, and give you valuable opportunities to present research and network with colleagues. Just as it’s important to do research on journals before publishing, it’s important to look into conferences you are thinking of attending. Poor quality and deceptive conferences can be hard to spot; here is some information on what to look for, and how they operate. 

By Emily Guerrero, former SFU Reference Librarian.

One of the first steps in getting your work published, open or otherwise, is picking the journals to submit to. With predatory journals on the rise, it's becoming even more important to assess any call for papers that might come your way via email.

As you look at calls to publish, here are a few general rules to keep in mind: