OAPEN is a site that provides free access to academic monographs on a wide range of topics from major sector publishers. Typing “women” into the search bar yields over 18,000 hits of books and chapters.
Archive for Research Tips
Thousands of Freely Accessible Publications on Women’s Suffrage
The open access portion of JSTOR provides literally thousands of articles, book chapters, documents, and primary sources on this movement ranging from newspapers to scholarly journals.
Scholarly, Open Access Resources on African American Studies
The open access portion of Project MUSE has hundreds of books, chapters, articles, and book reviews from numerous academic publishers. JSTOR also has open access material, including primary sources and images, on this topic from scholastic publishers/institutions. The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) contains almost 80,000 full-text monographs on a wide variety of subjects, among them African American culture, literature, and history.
Research Tip: Open Access in Project MUSE
Project MUSE is an academic aggregator primarily in the fields of the humanities and social sciences; it is found in some colleges/universities. It is, however, a very expensive tool that is beyond the research of many institutions of higher education.
In this era of open access, this database provides a researcher not affiliated with an IHE that subscribes to this full text index, entry into many open access books, journals, and reviews.
Black Digital Humanities Projects & Resources
A lengthy listing of current projects treating a wide vartiety of topics in Black American history/culture.
Handbook of Latin American Studies
| “The Handbook of Latin American Studies is a bibliography on Latin America consisting of works selected and annotated by scholars. Edited by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress, the multidisciplinary Handbook alternates annually between the social sciences and the humanities. Each year, more than 130 academics from around the world choose between 2,000-3,000 works for inclusion in the Handbook. Continuously published since 1936, the Handbook offers Latin Americanists an essential guide to available resources.” |
Free LGBTQIA+ Resources from Sage
Sage Journals is making available selected articles from its vast collection of social science and biomedical titles that pertain to LGBTQIA+ issues. Topics include queer theory, Gender Identity, queer justice, hegemonic heterosexuality, sexual orientation, and intersectionality. Access is also granted to certain relevant videos (scroll down to the bottom of the page to see them).
Access to Over 210,000,000 Open Access Items
CORE aggregates millions of open access items from an indefinite number of disciplines from thousands of repositories worldwide. Book reviews, peer-reviewed articles, dissertations, theses, papers, book chapters are all retrieved using this service; numerous filters allow one to drill down to a more specific level. Well worth a look.
Guides to U.S. Women’s History
There are innumerable entry points into the vast field of women’s studies; this blog will point out some of those of great value.
Discovering American Women’s History Online contains links to over 700 sites that feature online primary sources. Culled from universities, non-profits, governmental sites, this overarching site allows access to a wide variety of primary sources from letters to images. Well worth a look.
The Library of Congress has hundreds of research guides; a goodly number deal with women – look under “Gender and Women’s Studies” for a complete list of the fifty-four guides that lead to a wealth of resources stored at the Library of Congress and at external resources as well.
Internet Women’s History Sourcebook presents excerpts and full text from primary sources ranging from ancient times through the 19th century.
Independent Voices features thousands of issue of the alternative press; here are the feminist titles.
Women Working, 1800-1930 from Harvard University examines women and economic life during these years.
Bibliographies in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of Wisconsin offers over 90 subject-specific titles that include pointers toward online resources and primary sources.
Open Access at MIT Press
The MIT Press has been a pioneer in open access publishing producing its first open access book in 1995. There are now well over one hundred monographs available ranging from Economics in the Age of COVID-19 (2020) to Frankenstein Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds (2017).
MIT also publishes several open access peer-reviewed journals as well.
Is There a Substitute for Interlibrary Loan?
With the suspension of interlibrary loan in many areas of the country, are there any other options? Yes, there are. They won’t fully answer the amazing service that is interlibrary loan, but these tips can possibly mitigate the dire predicament we find ourselves in.
For journal articles, these steps might be handy:
1. Look for the title of the article in Google Scholar; you may find a full text version that way.
2. Possibly the Google Scholar search will not produce the article in question, but it may list other articles that have cited the original article and possibly those articles might suffice.
3. Look for the c.v. of the author. Many authors have secured pdf versions of their articles and posted them in their c.v.
4. Register for free at ResearchGate, a portal containing numerous articles from a wide variety of disciplines. Also, academia.edu provides a similar service.
5. Search through preprint and depository sites.
6.JSTOR has Early Journal Content containing hundreds of journals. JSTOR also has free limited access to 2,000 journals through its register and read page
7. You can contact the author directly and ask for a copy of the article.
8. If it is absolutely necessary, one can always purchase the articles directly from the publisher though this a a very expensive alternative
For books, there are literally millions available online; here is a sampling of sites:
- Baen Free Library
- Book Wire (Extensive online directory of the publishing industry)
- Digital Book Index : an union catalog of electronic books, texts & documents
- ebooks @ Adelaide (Australian university library’s collection on classic works of literature, philosophy, science, and history)
- FreeComputerBooks.com (A huge collection of free online computer, mathematics, engineering, and technical books, lecture notes and tutorials)
- Free Online Biomedical Texts
- The Getty Conservation Institute Publications
- Google Books
- Gutenburg-e (historical monographs published by Columbia University Press in collaboration with the American Historical Association)
- HathiTrust Digital Library (provides free access to seven million titles)
- Historical Math Monographs (Published by Cornell University Library, it site has over 1000 math books in different languages)
- Internet Archive: Text Archive (millions of downloadable books available from a variety of sources)
- Internet Classics Archive (English Language Versions of Ancient Greek and Latin Authors)
- JSTOR has 6000+ open access titles from major academic publishers
- LIBRO: The Library of Iberian Resources Online
- National Academies Press (Publisher for the National Academies, over 3000 books in various subjects available free online)
- On-Line Books Page ( Over 3,000,000 free books on the web. Hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.
- Project Gutenberg (Free downloadable texts from hundreds of authors from ancient times to early 20th century.)
- RAND Corporation (Hundreds of monographs on diverse topics)
- The Universal Digital Library (Million Book Collection – full text books in a variety of languages
- Wright American Fiction (Online texts of 3000 volumes.)
It might also be useful to consult Amazon where many of the books have a “look inside” feature; Google Books also contains a similar accessing point.
How to Determine a Journal’s Ranking
The CWTS Journal Indicators presents bibliometric data on 20,000 scientific journals scattered among dozens of disciplines. This interactive feature allows a granular analysis of a journal’s impact in a specific sub-field; the methodologies employed are clearly delineated. The differences between the rankings in this tool and the “journal impact factor” are explained.
Continuously Updated Bibliographies On Terrorism and Related Subjects
Perspectives on Terrorism, a bimonthly publications from the Terrorism Research Initiative, contains a wealth of material of especial interest to those in the security field. Some examples of what each issue includes are:
Recent Online Resources for the Analysis of Terrorism and Related Subjects – a bimonthly listing of copious, linked sources culled from a wide variety of sites and dealing not just with terrorism but also delving into the areas of cybersecurity and resilience studies;
a guide to open access theses/dissertations on specific topics, such as 475 Academic Theses (Ph.D. and MA) on Countering Violence Extremism (CVE), Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) and Terrorism Prevention;
a recurrent feature highlighting recent books on terrorism, here is the most recent example- Counterterrorism Bookshelf: 12 Books on Terrorism & Counter-Terrorism-Related Subjects;
an ongoing examination of terrorism by region, here is the latest entry – Bibliography: Terrorism by Region—Indian Subcontinent;
multi-part examinations of a specific topic such as Bibliography: Terrorism and the Media (including the Internet) (Part 4);
and topical bibliographies on selected terrorist groups such as Bibliography: Boko Haram .
The bibliographies can be quite long, 40+ pages, and if there are operational links, they are included; in most cases, these bibliographies contain hundreds of active links.
Access to the entire archives is here.
IEEE Open Access Option
When searching the IEEE digital library, on the advanced search screen, you have the ability to limit your search to “open access”. While not retrieving every document you are searching for because of the reduced availability of references in this mode, the open access option will give you an entree to full text journal articles and conference papers on your topic. Both searches for “cybersecurity” and “drones” garnered hundreds of full text sources. When searching, utilize the “full text and metadata” choice.
National Academies Press
The NAP is the publishing arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Engineering – all are among the most prestigious STEM organizations in the world and as such produces highly regarded monographs, reports, briefings, and consensus documents on a whole host of topics from agriculture to national security. Well over 9,000 volumes are freely available online, sorted into specific topic areas. If one listens to the news, one will inevitably hear about a report issued by the NAP; the latest one to inform the general public dealt with The Public Health Consequences of E-Cigarettes. One can always look at the latest releases section to see what new reports have been generated; more than 200 are published every year. And you can stay in touch with the NAP via various media platforms as well
New Edition of Department of Defense Dictionary Published
This new iteration, correctly entitled DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, dated February 2018, incorporates new terms such as “maritime environment”. It also lists those terms that were removed/replaced as well as terms added or modified. For those researching the military sector, this work is especially useful for the specific definitions/contexts of terms one encounters.
How To Spot Fake News
This is the title of a very informative piece from FactCheck.org; it’s what we librarians do on a daily basis.
Selected Topics in Nursing
Three times a year, The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, publishes Journal Topics that is an issue-driven examination of some important aspect of nursing. Each issue is edited by an expert in the field, the articles are professional and erudite, links are given where/when available, and the supporting bibliographies act as a guide to relevant literature. Sixty of these presentations have been published so far; they range from Cornerstone Documents in Healthcare to Compassion Fatigue: Caregivers at Risk. So if you are looking for a topic to explore, why not review those listed at this site?
Old School Research
Before the Internet, before electronic catalogs and networks, how did researchers find the locations of books they needed? They relied on printed union catalogs – tools that listed the combined holdings of libraries. The largest one produced was nicknamed “Mansell” in honor of the publisher who produced the massive 754-volume The National union catalog, pre-1956 imprints ; a cumulative author list representing Library of Congress printed cards and titles reported by other American libraries. The title, however, is a misnomer; it was not a truly a “national” catalog but rather a guide to the holdings of major public and private libraries. This is not the place to have found what your town library held. But it was of immense help to scholars trying to track down copies of needed works; we can personally attest to its importance. An article detailing the history and the continued usefulness of this paper product in the electronic age can be found here.
Plagiarism
Etymology: A borrowing from Latin. Etymon: Latin plagiārius. < classical Latin plagiārius person who abducts the child or slave of another, kidnapper, seducer, also a literary thief (Martial 1. 52. 9), in post-classical Latin also (adjective) concerning plagiarism (15th cent.) < plagium kidnapping (see plagium n.) + -ārius -ary
-“plagiary, adj. and n.”. OED Online. March 2016. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/144942 (accessed March 29, 2016
Charges of plagiarism are not limited to education. Historians, journalists, politicians, and government officials have all been accused of plagiarism; even rock gods are not immune from these accusations. In some areas, plagiarism is rampant – check out this June 5, 2016 article from The Atlantic.
What is your institution’s stance on plagiarism? Here is NJCU’s: Academic Integrity Policy and from the 2009 Faculty Handbook
Sources
Avoiding Plagiarism (from the respected Purdue OWL – Open Writing Lab)
Plagiarism (from the American Historical Association. It is slightly dated, but it contains of wealth of information)
Plagiarism (selected articles from InsideHigherEd)
Plagiarism (selected articles from The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Plagiarism (University of North Carolina – Writing Center)
Retraction Watch (among other areas of chicanery examined, plagiarism ranks high)
Congressman Frank J. Guarini Library Blog 