This document discusses open access for academics in the humanities and social sciences. It defines open access as making research and teaching resources freely available online without paywalls by self-archiving in repositories or publishing in open access journals. The benefits of open access include increasing the reach, impact and citations of research as well as meeting many funders' requirements. It describes different types of open access repositories and materials that can be archived, and highlights issues like copyright and promoting open access outputs.

1. Open Access for Academics in
the Humanities and Social
Sciences
Deborah Lupton, Department of Sociology
and Social Policy, University of Sydney
@DALupton

2. What is open access?
• Releasing your research or teaching resources from behind
journal/book paywalls and self-archiving it
• Making your data open source

3. Types of open access
• Blogs, magazine or newspaper articles
• Platforms such as SlideShare and YouTube
• Publishing in open access journals/paying to make your article
OA
• Placing written material and research data in repositories

4. Why do it?
• Allows anyone with an internet connection to access your
research, presentations, data or teaching resources
• Increases public awareness of what you do
• Increases citations to your work
• Many major funding bodies now require it
• Attracts students to your classes and to your university
• Enhances sharing of material among academic networks
In short: engagement and impact!

5. Types of repositories
• University e-repository
• Academia.edu
• ResearchGate
• Figshare
• Social Science Network
• SlideShare

6. What can you archive on OA sites?
• Journal articles
• Book chapters
• Conference papers
• PowerPoint/Prezi presentations
• Working papers
• Research data
• Audio-visual material

7. Preprints and postprints
• Preprints are the author’s version of a piece of writing before
it is submitted to a journal or book editor – the author has
copyright of this material – can be usually self-archived
without contravening any publisher’s agreement
• Postprints are the author’s version of a piece of writing after it
has been submitted to a journal or book editor, has gone
through peer-review and has been revised – many journals
and book publishers allow authors to self-archive these only
after an embargo period has elapsed following publication of
the material in the journal or book

8. ‘Green’ and ‘gold’ OA
• Green OA means archiving your material in a repository (free
of charge)
• Gold OA means paying to make your material OA (paying
journals to submit the article to them (author processing
charges) or to publish the article in an otherwise non-OA
journal (can cost $1000s)

9. What to be careful of
• Check journal and book publishers’ author copyright
agreements carefully
• When formatting material for self-archiving, try to make it
look as attractive as possible and double-check for typos and
referencing errors
• Include a statement detailing how the material should be cited
and any statements required by the publisher’s guidelines

10. Using social media as part of OA
Use your blog, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn to tell the world
about the material you have placed on OA

11. Further information
• My blog post: ‘Opening up your research: self-archiving for
sociologists’
• LSE Impact of the Social Sciences website: many useful articles
about OA
• The Budapest Open Access Initiative website: lots of detailed
advice here