If you are looking for ways and places to share your research, consider
"Open Access" (OA) is the practice of making research and writing free over the Internet. Authors, peer reviewers, scholarly societies and even commercial publishers participate. The international movement began in the 1990s and grows stronger every year, as more researchers place their writing in journals and books available to the public for free. As more open access journals and books come online, the landscape has also become increasingly sophisticated. For example, there are different "levels" of open access (e.g., green vs. gold vs. hybrid open access), and some (though not all) open access journals collect what are referred to as "article processing charges" (APCs) or other publication charges.
To learn more about open access, including open educational resources (OERs), please visit our Open Access & OER LibGuide. To see what open access journals are available -- for submitting your manuscripts for potential publication or seeking out sources for your own research -- please check the Directory of Open Access Journals.There are also many books and scholarly articles about open access to research in theory and practice, such as Peter Suber's open access book, Knowledge Unbound: Selected Writings on Open Access, 2002-2011 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), https://knowledgeunbound.mitpress.mit.edu/.
Please contact your library liaison if you have any questions or would like assistance locating open access resources.
Although it is more typical for librarians to conduct research to identify discrete articles and books on a given topic, we can also use those skills to develop a list of those who publish most frequently on the topic of your current research. If there are any research platforms that are new to you, we can also help to profile those platforms -- e.g., whether they are peer-reviewed, how discoverable they are, or who their main audiences are.
These same skills might also be handy when you are completing a book or grant proposal. Associated forms often ask for scholars to place their work in the field, describe it with relevant keywords, or connect it to its audiences. Our familiarity with the relevant processes and systems which shape the scholarly publishing environment may suggest ways to help you answer such questions.
If you would like to explore where and how to place your research, make an appointment with your liaison to discuss possibilities.