This fall, the Graduate Center’s Mina Rees Library is offering three online workshops about scholarly publishing and research evaluation. All members of the CUNY community are welcome, regardless of campus. The workshops are especially well suited to graduate students, faculty, administrators, and others engaged in the discovery, production, or evaluation of research publications — including anyone concerned about how profit and the economy of prestige drive and distort the scholarly publishing industry.
Each workshop stands on its own — there is no need to attend one in order to attend another. Simply register for whichever one(s) speak to your interests or needs. And if there’s a workshop that interests you that you can’t make, register anyway. The presentations will be recorded and shared with all registrants.
“Predatory” Journals: How to Avoid the Shams and Scams
Friday, October 6 at 11am-noon (Zoom)
Link to details and registration
As a researcher, you are eager to publish your work. But don’t let your eagerness allow you to be fooled by fake (often called “predatory”) journals. These low-quality outlets exist for the sole purpose of profit, not for the dissemination of peer-reviewed research. Indeed, they frequently lie about their peer review practices and engage in other forms of deceit. Come learn how to spot these bad actors, and how to critically evaluate any journal before submitting a paper. We’ll also touch on “predatory” conferences and book publishers.
Open Access Explained: Best Practices for Finding Others’ Research and Publicly Sharing Yours
Friday, October 20 at 11am-noon (Zoom)
Link to details and registration
You probably know that you can find open access (i.e., cost-free and publicly accessible) copies of many journal articles online. But do you know how to determine if a specific article is available open access? This workshop will clear up some common confusions about open access, highlight some sites where open access publications can be found, and demonstrate some tools for finding open access versions of articles. Further, we will cover a range of options for making your own scholarly work publicly accessible, and consider some reasons why you might want to. We’ll pay particular attention to CUNY’s own public access repository, CUNY Academic Works.
Impact Factor and Other Research Metrics: What They Mean and What They Don’t
Friday, November 10 at 11am-noon (Zoom)
Link to details and registration
How important is a certain article? How influential is a certain scholar? How good is a certain journal? These are complex questions that require nuanced answers. Nevertheless, there is widespread interest in, and reliance on, research metrics that attempt to answer these qualitative questions with simple numbers. In this workshop, we will examine how Journal Impact Factor, h-index, and other metrics are calculated, and discuss what they do and don’t communicate about a work, a researcher, or a journal. We will also look at various problems with citation-based metrics, including the “gender citation gap.” Finally, we will touch on alternative approaches to assessment.
An additional offering for the Graduate Center community: Every Thursday at 3-4pm, Associate Librarian for Scholarly Communication Jill Cirasella holds drop-in Zoom office hours for GC students, faculty, and staff with questions about scholarly publishing. Drop by with your questions, or contact Jill at jcirasella@gc.cuny.edu to set up a consultation at a different time.
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