Open Access Publishing

Journals which do not charge readers or their institutions for for access to articles, are usually referred to as "open access". If you are interested in publishing in these, the Directory of Open Access Journals has advice for authors and a searchable database of open access journals. Open Access journals usually charge authors to publish in them, although in some cases such as BioMed Central this is paid for centrally. It may be possible to pay for submission from research grants as funding councils now often encourage this type of publication. Open access journals often allow authors to retain copyright, making it easier to share articles with colleagues and students.

Journal Impact Factors

Before you send off a research article for publication, you may want to identify the journals with the highest impact in your field. LIS subscribe to ISI's Journal Citation Reports via Web of Knowledge. New data is published in June in Science and Social Science editions.  JCR does not cover Arts and Humanities although some individual journals may be covered in the Social Science edition. Access off campus requires an Athens username & password. An online tutorial is available for JCR.

Book Publishing

Publishers Global.com is a publisher's directory which allows you to search for publishers by subject and country. Another approach to finding a publisher is simply to look at the books you use most to see who the major publishers in your area are - an Internet search will usually find the company web pages.

Sharing Data

You may want to consider making the raw data collected in your research available to others. To share or  not to share, a report by the Research Information Network, looks at the issues involved.

Patents

If you have an invention which is worth patenting the Intellectual Property Office web site gives the procedure for doing this. The University's Department of Research and Innovation may also be able to give helpful advice. The LIS Science & Engineering Team can give some preliminary help in searching for similar inventions in EspaceNet although you may need to go to a commercial service for a comprehensive search since we don't subscribe to the relevant databases.

Conferences

Giving a conference paper may be another way of disseminating your research. Calls for papers are often advertised in relevant journals and there are web sites which advertise conferences on specific subjects. A general idea of what is coming up can be found from Yahoo - search for something specific such as history conferences rather than just conferences. MiND also covers academic conferences.

Contact LIS (researchlis@swan.ac.uk) if you have any suggestions or queries relating to Disseminating Research.