Students

What can students do?

As Information Users:

  • Learn to identify, analyze and evaluate information.
  • Learn to use the research tools of your discipline(s) critically and effectively.
  • Inform yourself about the social, economic and legal issues pertaining to the use of information. Be sure you are accessing and using information in ways that are legal and ethical, including by familiarizing yourself with fair use of copyrighted content.
  • The Libraries provide help with citing your sources and avoiding plagiarism.

As Authors:

You are the next generation of scholars. The decisions you make about publishing the results of your work will be important in ensuring that your contributions have broad distribution and become building blocks for continuing research.

  • Inform yourselves about the issues related to publishing and intellectual property rights through reading and attending presentations.
  • Learn and assess the publishing practices of your scholarly society.
  • Discuss publishing options with your advisors, and consider the following points when you are ready to publish:

    Describe your work well. The title should accurately reflect the contents of the document and the abstract should be complete and descriptive. If you assign keywords, think about how a researcher might search for your publication in a database or on the Internet.

    Check (and double check) your references for comprehensiveness and accuracy. Good, complete references will make your work more credible.

    Publish in venues that are respected and valued in your field. Make sure that these publications are indexed by major databases in your field (such as Web of Science, Compendex, SciFinder Scholar or Econlit) so that others can search and easily find your article.

    Think about the accessibility of your work to other researchers. Will your work be restricted by stringent copyright agreements? Will the copyright be held by a highly priced journal that has a limited circulation? Learn about the open access movement and how it benefits you and the research community. The links found here provide a good starting place.

    Don’t relinquish all your rights as an author. When you sign a contract with a publisher, make sure it allows you to place your article on your personal web site and submit it to an open access repository (see MIT Copyright Amendment Form). In addition to giving your work exposure, submitting a copy of your article to an institutional archive (like DSpace@MIT) ensures that others will be able to access your work long after you’ve written it.

  • View “Publishing Smart,” a class session for graduate students that covers many of these points.

Find out more about students and open access:

  • See the student group Open Access at MIT, coordinated by Benjamin Mako Hill.