Communication Studies Graduate Student Research Guide: Publishing & Scholarly Communication

Datasets databases are available to current faculty, staff, students:

Data Planet: Left column, Browse by Subject > Education

Data.gov: Education icon available to browse subject. @Datagov

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR): Top column, Find Data > Browse by Subject Term. @ICPSR

National Center for Education Statistic (NCES) Data Tools: @NCES

NCES IPEDS is a system of interrelated surveys conducted annually by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). IPEDS gathers information from every college, university, and technical and vocational institution that participates in the federal student financial aid programs. @IPEDS

Sage Data: US Statistics (1990s to present. Some series date back to 1977) on healthcare, crime, education, employment, religion, and government finances that can be browsed by location or by topic, and compared across locations or time. Mapping and graphing tools enhance exploration and comparison and data is exportable.

Have your own data you're working with? See these related Alkek Library guides:

Data Management and Planning: Use this guide to learn the basics of Data Management and Data Management Planning, to prepare to write a Data Management Plan (DMP), or use it as a reference tool for various aspects of the same. Learn how to use DMPTool.org to write your data management plan: [TUTORIAL]

Dataverse: A Research Data Repository at Texas State University: Dataverse is an open access data repository for researchers affiliated with Texas State University. The repository consists of datasets produced by the University community, available for public access and re-use. Each dataset includes citation information and a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), facilitating attribution, usage tracking and linking of data to research publications. The Repository can play an important role in fulfilling Data Management Plan requirements by funding agencies, such as NSF and NIH, and provide for data re-use and archiving. @Dataverse

More Information

Our Copyright Officer, Stephanie Towery, has drafted a Copyright guide that presents the basics on copyright and fair use. The guide provides an easy checklist that can help you assess "fair use". Complete and retain a copy of this checklist for copyrighted work used. This worksheet serves as a “reasonable and good faith” effort to document fair use. 

Your published work can be added to our Digital Collections for open access. Generally, publishers allow the Post-Print or Author's Accepted Manuscript to be added toa repository.

Once you have found journals you'd like to consider for your manuscript, it's important to understand your publishing rights as an author. Consult the Author's Rights & Publishing Agreements guide to gain information about rights to your works and what to look for in publishing agreements. Also, review Trends in Scholarship and Research.

Claim your ORCiD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID): In order to import publications, Faculty can log into Faculty Qualifications; graduate students can set up their ORCiD by choosing Register Now. An ORCiD is a unique identifier for researchers. It allows research activities to be accurately attached to individuals over time, between institutions, and across multiple information systems. For more details visit: What is ORCID?

Why Publish Your Work in Digital Collections (DC)?

• It's a perfect open access tool for members to showcase their research.   
• You can link from your DC community to your own website. 
• Using the repository can relieve you of maintenance chores for your files but you can still link to your collection or individual papers from your personal or department website.
• Provide access to your scholarship and creative works, increasing your global visibility and profile.
• The repository software creates a persistent address (URL) for each item that will not change over time. They will be enduring citations. 
• By providing a durable URL, it can be shared with colleagues and can be found easily.
• It insures that your research, scholarship and/or creative works are permanently available to a global audience.
• DC communities have a higher likelihood of being cited due to increased visibility in search engines and other harvesters, both popular and scholarly, which can result in an increased interest in research collaborations.
• Almost any format (image, video, print, born digital) can be accommodated in DC. 
• Allows you to host self-created content for your courses or your colleagues.
• Recruitment and public relations tool, allows job candidates see the kind of research and quality of research produced at Texas State.
• While it does not fulfill the requirements of federally funded grants, such as the NIH or NSF, to publish your research in their open access repository, it is allowable to also put it in your institution’s repository.
• Even though your works are freely available, you still maintain copyright to the works unless stipulated otherwise by publisher contracts. 
• DC can be used to establish primacy of your work or scholarship.
• Immediate access to your research, no need to wait several years for an article to be published. If allowed by your publisher’s copyright agreement. 
• Statistics are available for each individual item in DC so you can easily check to see how often and from where (country) your work is being accessed.
• Views and downloading statistics are available to you via email.  Monthly statistics for each item you have in the repository will be sent to you, upon request.