To celebrate Campus Sustainability Month, with the goal of raising the visibility and deepening engagement with sustainability on college campuses, the IU East Campus Library is highlighting equitable access to educational resources. Featured here are Open Access resources, supporting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal #4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Open Access provides free online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as needed.
International Open Access Week is October 24-30th and the theme for 2022 is Open for Climate Justice. This year’s theme seeks to encourage collaboration and connection between the climate justice movement and the open access community. “Sharing Knowledge is a human right and tackling the climate crisis requires the rapid exchange of knowledge across geographic, economic, and disciplinary boundaries” (International Open Access Week, Theme). Below is a list of open access resources, from books to data sets, that can assist in your research on sustainability and climate justice topics.
Open Access Climate Resources
World Development Indicators: The World Development Indicators (WDI) is the primary World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized international sources. It presents the most current and accurate global development data available, and includes national, regional, and global estimates.
Our World in Data: Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. Our World in Data presents research on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), focusing on data covering poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality. This site has several interactive collections such as Plastic Waste Data Explorer, Environmental Impacts of Food Data Explorer, Fossil Fuels Data Explorer, Migration Data Explorer, and Air Pollution Data Explorer.
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB): The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. There are many books published and linked from the DOAB that focus on sustainability and climate justice, titles include: Socially Responsible Higher Education, A Climate of Justice: An Ethical Foundation for Environmentalism, The Climate Crisis, and Migration and Conflict in a Global Warming Era.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): Like the Directory of Open Access Books, DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. Currently, the DOAJ has 85 indexed journals related to “Climate Change” and 170 indexed related to “Sustainability,” with titles like Frontiers in Climate, Challenges in Sustainability, Climate Change Ecology, and Active Travel Studies.
Open Access at IU
There are opportunities for faculty to publish their articles as an open access (OA) article at no cost to them. As a participating member of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the IU libraries are currently piloting an open access publishing agreement with Wiley that runs through December 31, 2022. When an article has been accepted in a Wiley hybrid journal, the author may choose to make it OA. The request will be sent to the IU Librarian, Willa Tavernier for eligibility approval. IU still has plenty of credits to cover the cost of open access publishing through Wiley, so if you are currently considering publishing in Wiley or have had an article recently accepted, please consider publishing your article as open access. This will remove the financial barrier to information and allow your research to reach a broader audience. All faculty members from any of the IU campuses are eligible to participate in this. For more information about this process, you can visit the IU Libraries Open Access Publishing Support Guide.
In celebration of open access week 2022, the IU Libraries is hosting a full day symposium and reception on October 28th at Wells Library. This is a hybrid event, and you can register here to attend virtually. The event will highlight IU authors’ experiences with publishing open access, showcase various models of funding open access publications, and frankly discuss challenges and limitations. The featured afternoon presenter is Maria Eliza Hamilton Abegunde, speaking on “Climate Change, Open Pedagogy and the ALA Civic Imagination Station Project.” There will also be an opportunity to discuss the implications of the recent ‘Nelson Memo’, which has wide reaching implications for all research and publications supported by federal grant agencies.
If you have any questions related to open access publishing or research, contact Assistant Librarian of Access & Technical Services Beth South at eabrockm@iue.edu. If you need assistance in researching any topic related to sustainability and climate change activism, Ask Us! at iueref@iue.edu or click this button:
