Social science without walls

From the SocArXiv Steering Committee:

As many social scientists prepare for the March for Science on April 22, here is a reflection on the moment we’re in.

This is a time in which many social scientists feel a greater urgency in our work, and a heightened motivation to solve the problems we knew we faced already. All the reasons we became social scientists seem more important than ever before in our careers. That’s why we’re glad to have SocArXiv, which is here for social scientists to realize our goals:

• We want our work to be better, to benefit from the knowledge and collaboration of our peers as well as experts and concerned people outside of academia, and around the world.
• We want our work to be more efficient, to get more done with less money, to produce better results while moving more quickly from insight through publication.
• We want our work to me more relevant, to bring our expertise to bear on the issues of today — and tomorrow — without being blocked by national, disciplinary, or financial barriers.
• We want our work to be less hierarchical, to be more democratic in its development, more open in its dissemination, and more responsive to the people we study and serve.

Open scholarship is how we approach these goals. Open source, open access research infrastructure allows us to make the best use of our resources, improve the process and products of our work, bring it to more people faster, and dissolve the obstacles to interaction that plague our industry. In short, we want a social science without walls.

SocArXiv is a key part of our plan to build that future social science. If you’re feeling the imperative to raise your voice, to tell your communities that social science is real, to express that we are part of the solution, and to draw more people into the world of research and the search for knowledge, we hope you will agree.

Upload a paper or browse the archive now at SocArXiv.org. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook for updates, email to get involved, check out our YouTube videos, or make a contribution through the University of Maryland.