Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-26-2018

Keywords

open access, scientific communication, psychology, scholarly communications

Abstract

In August 2017, APA announced a collaboration with the Center for Open Science to host data and preprints on PsyArXiv. APA journals and those of many other publishers allow posting prepublication manuscripts on the internet. More and more, scholars are pushing against the closed systems of publishing in favor of opening access, narrowly in regards to scholarly publications and more broadly in terms of the entire life cycle of research. When I talk with faculty at my institution, the two general responses I receive to the question, “What does open access look like in your discipline?” is either that it is an email scam from a predatory open publisher or that it involves paying a large sum to their well-respected publisher. In order to ascertain what open access looks like in psychology, I reviewed the recent literature regarding the call for more open scientific communication, especially as it relates to the systems used for dissemination, and documented the many ways that scholars in psychology are openly disseminating their research. Several of these platforms include publishing in open or hybrid journals, or self-archiving using preprint servers such as PsyArXiv, institutional repositories, or other web platforms. I also looked at the various publisher policies regarding self-archiving, especially as they relate to what article versions that can be shared, where they can be posted, and if embargos apply. I argue that publisher policies need to be considered when publishing in order to share work more openly. Not only will such sharing allow for broader dissemination to those who might not otherwise have access, it will lead to easier replicability, research transparency and accountability, and scientific progress.

Comments

Presented at the Western Psychological Association 2018 conference in Portland, OR.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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