Welcome to UT Tyler's Scholarly Communication guide! This guide is intended to help authors understand scholarly communications, and empower authors to take action and make the best choices to further the reach of their work. Topics include copyright, author rights, open access, information on how you can support and make your own works open access, an introduction into Scholar Works at UT Tyler, information about Open Educational Resources, and finally, how to evaluate journals to ensure you are publishing in reputable journals. Most importantly, before signing any transfer or copyright agreement, know your rights!
The Association of Colleges & Research Libraries defines scholarly communication as “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communications, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic listservs." As an author, you should be informed about the basic issues surrounding scholarly communication, including:
The Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine will help you generate a PDF form that you can attach to a journal publisher's copyright agreement to ensure that you retain certain rights.
Search for copyright & self-archiving policies of your publications.
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
A simple checklist researchers can use to assess the credentials of a journal or publisher.
