Tag Archives: Open Access

“How Can I Share It” Website Simplifies Scholarly Article Sharing

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Getting a scholarly article published is a satisfying and exciting end point for research teams who likely spent months or even years carrying out their research projects. Journal publishers are key partners in helping researchers get the results of this work out and into the scientific record. Regardless of whether the journal is open access (where authors generally hold onto the article copyrights) or follows a more traditional publishing model (where a copyright transfer to the publisher occurs as part of the submission process), all publishers are eager to help their authors get the word out about the research once the paper is published.

Sharing their article, however, can sometimes get a bit complicated for authors as the sharing landscape is somewhat unclear with different journal publishers often having different copyright-related restrictions in place. In comes How Can I Share It, a website developed by a number of scholarly publishing organizations that “have agreed to work together to develop and continually improve the information, resources and tools on this site to facilitate sharing, which benefits researchers, institutions, and society as a whole.” Researchers simply need to plug in an article DOI to bring up article-specific guidance; the advice will vary depending on whether the researcher is a co-author or not.

From: https://www.howcanishareit.com/about-us

“The Can I Share It look-up tool provides academic researchers with an easy way to check where a journal article can be shared in line with the paper’s access and usage rights.“

“How Can I share It also includes information on how you can share, where you can share and recommendations for sharing sites where you can engage and collaborate with the research community. How Can I Share It endorses the voluntary principles for article sharing on scholarly collaboration networks as drafted by the STM Association.”

In the DOI search results are listed resources and tools where an author can share, organized in four categories, including: tools where…

1)      “You can share the metadata and abstract as well as a link to the article on the respective publishers’ platforms on”

2)      “You can share your author’s original (preprint) on”

3)      “You can share the accepted manuscript on”

4)      “You can share the version of record on”

This website also serves as an information hub for Scholarly Collaboration Networks (SCNs) that “are platforms that allow researchers to develop and maintain professional relationships. SCNs also enable researchers to share information and ideas, participate in discussions and embark on collaborations. Some networks do not facilitate possibilities for social interactions, but do enable collaboration through article sharing.”


For more information related to scholarly publishing be sure to check out the Support for Authors LibGuide or Ask Us at the MSK Library!

Celebrate International Open Access Week 2022 with the MSK Library

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International Open Access Week will be taking place October 24-30, 2022. Join us as we celebrate this year’s theme, “Open For Climate Justice” and seize the opportunity to help us raise awareness on how open access can support climate justice, as well as other areas of research interests.

The MSK Library promotes Open Access by adding relevant open access journals to our curated list of eJournals, managing the SKOAP fund which helps MSK authors who need financial support for article processing fees, and sharing information about this important topic to keep our interested library users in the know!

Synapse is another way we bring attention to open access publications. Visitors to the site are able to discover which open access journals MSK authors publish in by locating in the citation record the orange button (e.g., Synapse work record). Synapse is our public-facing and authoritative bibliographic database showcasing the intellectual output of all our researchers.

Throughout this week, the MSK Library will be featuring open access publications by MSK authors and will share one each day (Monday to Friday) as a Today’s Science Sparks on the Library Website. If you are curious about past Today’s Science Sparks, you can browse the Archives. In support of Open Access if you find a Today’s Science Sparks that has been marked as Open Access, feel free to click on the Tweet icon next to the highlighted paper to easily share this publication on Twitter.

Finally, another way to participate in the open access week experience, you can follow the conversation on Twitter, as well as share your thoughts. Don’t forget to include the official hashtag — #OAWeek.

If you have any questions about Open Access, don’t hesitate to contact me!

Donna Gibson
Director, Library Services

Can I Trust this Publisher? Is this Journal Reputable?

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New journal titles continue to appear on the scholarly publishing landscape on a regular basis, and more and more of them are choosing to follow an open access (OA) publishing model. What distinguishes these OA journals is that, unlike “traditional” journals that follow a model where the author transfers their copyrights to the publisher but does not pay a publication fee, OA journals generally charge Article Processing Charges (APCs) and allow the authors to retain their copyrights to the published work.

One of the unintended negative consequences of the “author-pays” OA model has been the introduction of “predatory” publishers into this landscape. Predatory publishers mislead authors into thinking that their journal provides a rigorous peer review and high-quality scholarly publication process, when in fact, the operation is really just a scam to collect author article processing charges that provides little in return in terms of legitimate peer-reviewed journal article publishing author services. Bottom line for authors – there is no benefit or reward to be had by the author for publishing their research in a publication that is not reputable – only negative consequences (i.e., a waste of their valuable scholarly efforts).

It basically comes down to a consumer protection issue, with the Federal Trade Commission even going after some of the biggest offenders and winning a $50 million court judgment in 2019. Beyond getting individually scammed, there are broader societal implications of contributing to this “publication-pollution” – in the words of NYC Ethicist, Arthur Caplan –  as he described in his 2015 article where he discusses why it is so important for the sake of trust in research that everyone do their part to mitigate the threat of predatory publishing.

What can MSK authors do to verify that a journal is reputable?

The MSK Library’s “Support for Authors” LibGuide includes a variety of both subscription and free resources that can be used to investigate the legitimacy of a journal. The “Evaluating Journal Quality” MSK Library class provides training and live demonstrations of many of these resources that can help authors determine if a potential journal publisher is trustworthy.

Authors can also look for guidance using a resource called Think. Check. Submit, a tool even endorsed by the NIH (see NOT-OD-18-011: Statement on Article Publication Resulting from NIH Funded Research).

 From their website: About | Think. Check. Submit. (thinkchecksubmit.org)

Think. Check. Submit. helps researchers identify trusted journals and publishers for their research. Through a range of tools and practical resources, this international, cross-sector initiative aims to educate researchers, promote integrity, and build trust in credible research and publications.

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library.