Archives for January 2012

Opposing the Research Works Act

There is a new bill that was introduced in Congress and referred to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called the Research Works Act. I strongly oppose this bill and welcome others to form opinions and take action (e.g. contact your representative in Congress).

Currently, all research in the U.S. funded through public dollars is required to be made available to the public – open access with no paywall to read research publications. The Research Works Act would like to introduce a paywall for the public to read all research that was publicly and privately funded. Essentially, the public would end up paying for publicly funded research twice.

To learn more about  this bill, read ProPublica’s story and check out Harvard’s Open Access Project Notes on the Research Works Act (thanks, Peter Suber for the G+ share).

Social media for social scientists

Through the ABCT Couples SIG listserv, I recently learned about the LSE’s Impact of Social Sciences Project. The purpose of the project is to measure and evaluate the impact of social science research on the public. An essential part of the project is helping social scientists disseminate their work through the use of social media — check out their resource guide, which covers topics like how to leverage Twitter and podcasts for your research. Their Handbook on maximizing the impact of research on the public is also available online.