“Academic life” by uonottingham is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 “For researchers, there is immense pressure to publish in journals that are highly competitive,” says Naomi Penfold, associate director of the scientist-driven nonprofit ASAPbio.

By Juan Pablo Alperin, Esteban Morales and Erin McKiernan.  First published on the LSE Impact Blog on July 17, 2019. The language of Open Access (OA) is littered with so many colours, metals, and precious stones, that you would be forgiven for losing track.

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.

It all started with a tweet. Scholarly communications analyst Najko Jahn was exploring the library catalogues of Springer Nature when he stumbled across something he hadn’t noticed before.

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?

First published on February 28, 2019 on the Radical Access Blog. Changing the academic system to be more accessible “You shouldn’t have to pay a large sum of tuition to have access to basic information,” Melissa Roach says when I ask her what she’d like to change about our academic system.

“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.

“Sometimes people need to be told that your work is for them, or invited in some way,” says Hannah McGregor, an assistant professor in Simon Fraser University’s Publishing Department and the host and producer of the podcast Secret Feminist Agenda . “There are lots of ways to invite people into your work, but I think one of the best is to think about the kind of language and media that you use.” The podcast, which she describes as “a

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.