Free, Full-text and Fabulous
by ariadnesthread101
If you spend 5 minutes in Academia you’ll understand how important it is to be able to access peer-reviewed articles in full. You’ll also learn that you can’t always have this. This hurts. After 5 years in Academia, the words ‘Free, Full-text’ are enough to make me want to jump up and down with joy.
Happily, there’s a movement afoot to provide more open access to peer-reviewed journal content (whether it’s moving fast and far enough is open to debate). One such initiative within this movement is Open Access Week, which started today. As part of this initiative, the Royal Society’s publishing arm is offering all its journal content, in full and for free, until 29th November 2012 (which, hurraaay! is more than a week!), providing you with access to:
- high-quality
- research, reviews and commentary
- in top-ranking journals
- which will specifically provide you with papers on ecology, natural resource management, social-ecological systems, etc (i.e. material that is especially relevant to BS702, if you’re at Essex).
If you are interested:
You could do a blind search, trusting fate to direct you to the article which will enlighten you or start you on the path to a Nobel.
Or you could:
- Go through the list of your forthcoming lectures for all your modules (compulsory + optional; this term + next term) and keep an eye out for the topics that you are especially keen to explore, which are relevant to the kinds of themes I listed above;
- Go here;
- Use the Search box on the top-right to search by topic or keyword;
- Download pdfs
- Enjoy 🙂
As a start, here’s an article that will be very relevant for my lecture on BS702 on the 8th of November.
Remember that even if you do not need certain content today, you might need it later, and then it might not be freely available if the pdf is not already online or if your library doesn’t subscribe to the journal it’s in.
Happy reading!
– Zareen
(Image from tumblr)
Ariadne's Thread 