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.


Can I publish my thesis?

Published by Jennifer Zerkee

Your Masters or PhD thesis is the result of years spent in study of a specific topic. It's no surprise that many grads would like to turn their thesis into an article, a series of articles, a book chapter or a monograph.

Do you have the right to do this? What are SFU's rights to your thesis? Will publishers want a work that is based on a thesis, especially once the thesis is publicly available in Summit?

Dear Distinguished Faculty: How to assess a call for papers and avoid predatory publishers

Published by Ioana Liuta

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: 

Reflections from OpenCon 2018 by Scholarship Recipient Anointing Momoh

Published by Ioana Liuta

Anointing Momoh attended OpenCon 2018 in Toronto, ON, November 2-4, as the recipient of the SFU Library OpenCon 2018 travel scholarship.

Anointing reports on this "enlightening" experience and the opportunity to engage in discussions around Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education.

OpenCon 2018 report

By Anointing Momoh, Recipient of the SFU Library OpenCon 2018 Travel Scholarship

A recap of Open Access Week 2018 at SFU Library

Published by Ioana Liuta

Every year, SFU Library participates in Open Access Week to raise awareness of open scholarship and celebrate the work that the SFU community is doing to make knowledge public.

Take a look back at some of the activities we held in the Library for OA Week 2018, centred around the theme of Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge.

Commercial scholarly networks: is there another way?

Published by Alison Moore

Are you tired of receiving emails from commercial scholarly networking sites like Academia.edu, ResearchGate, or LinkedIn, asking you to pay for premium services?

Do you wish that there was another way to showcase your work online?

There is! It’s called ORCID.

Plan S and cOAlition S: A commitment to open access in the EU

Published by Ioana Liuta

One of the strongest commitments to open access publishing to-date was announced in the European Union this week, and is enhancing the way scientific research will be shared and disseminated.

Eleven European research funding organizations, along with the European Commission including the European Research Council, have announced a plan to make immediate open access publishing mandatory for all publicly-funded research in the EU by January 2020.