Most social scientists want our research to be relevant, to reflect as well as interact with the social actors for whom it is relevant; we want it to be efficient, to maximize collaboration and exchange, and to make the most of our limited resources; and we want it to be accessible, to be read and debated by a wide audience beyond our disciplinary boundaries and university walls. These challenges seem more acute now than at any time in recent memory, and yet our scholarly communication system, especially journal publishing, remains mired in the structures of the past—moving too slowly and costing too much—which impedes the quality, quantity, efficiency, and responsiveness of our research. Open scholarship is a broad response to these deficiencies. In this presentation, Philip Cohen will make a case for open scholarship—and the use of preprints and working papers in particular—through the SocArXiv project, a new open source, open access non-profit archive for social science research, modeled after arXiv in math and physics.
At this meet and greet, Philip will give a brief presentation, which will be followed by time for questions, comments, and discussion.
Speaker: Philip N. Cohen, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and director of SocArxiv.