This week, the Vancouver ScholCommLab packed things in early and hit the bowling lanes. Team bonding, apparently, is best achieved by participating in competitive individual “sports.” Each of us had their own unique strategic, from granny-style bowling to a carefully orchestrated gutter-bounce approach.

A new study finds a surprising number of Open Access journals “reverse flip” back to closed access. Co-author Lisa Matthias tells us all about it.

Published April 8, 2019 by Kate Shuttleworth on the Radical Access Blog The University of California recently took a bold step in support of open access publishing by terminating subscriptions with Elsevier, the world’s largest scientific publisher. We asked SFU Faculty for their thoughts on the cancellation and what this means for open access. What happened?

“The good news is, we’re not too dumb for democracy,” David Moscrop told a packed room of media, activists, book lovers, academics, and more. “The bad news is, we’re encouraged to be.” On March 21, Moscrop celebrated the launch of his new book, Too Dumb for Democracy?

Three students share their thoughts on the President’s Dream Colloquium on Making Knowledge Public.

“What might be possible for us if we were to retain the social commitment that motivates our critical work, while stepping off the field of competition?” Kathleen Fitzpatrick asked a rapt audience at SFU’s Harbour Centre last Wednesday, “We would have to open ourselves to the possibility that our ideas might be wrong.” Fitzpatrick is Director of Digital Humanities at Michigan State University, the former Director of Scholarly Communication at

The ScholCommLab is excited to welcome three new faces to the lab this spring. Iara Vidal, Isabelle Dorsch, and Lisa Matthias will join us as Visiting Scholars in each of our two locations—Matthias and Vidal in Vancouver, Dorsch in Ottawa—to collaborate on a research project of their choosing. Vidal has a background in library science and is currently finishing her PhD in Information Science in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

What does making research knowledge public mean to you? We asked Juan Pablo Alperin and Hannah McGregor—winners of a new award for public scholarship—to share their thoughts.

How can scholars communicate their work in more accessible, engaging ways? Where should they publish and promote their findings? What does “research communication” actually mean? On Tuesday, January 15, ScholCommLab researcher Michelle La will explore these questions and more in a short talk at SFU’s Graduate and Postdoctoral Student Photo Reception.

This November, the city of Niterói in Rio de Janeiro received the first edition of LATmetrics, an international conference dedicated to the advancement of altmetrics and open science research in Latin America. Bringing together researchers, science communicators, librarians, and other stakeholders, the event featured a diverse array of speakers on everything from social media metrics and open data to the impact of science in society.

Last week, the ScholCommLab welcomed some smiling new faces to Vancouver. On Friday, Nov 9, attendees of ASIS&T’s 2018 Annual Meeting joined us from Dusseldorf, Detroit, Ottawa, and beyond for a quick lab tour, some dinner and conversation, and one very crowded, very happy selfie. At the conference, speakers and attendees from around the globe met in Vancouver to discuss the latest advances in information science.