Tag: awards

With gift from MIT Libraries, SocArXiv offers 2019 SOAR awards

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PNC photo / CC-BY-SA / https://flic.kr/p/PG3njh

With the support of a generous gift from MIT Libraries, SocArXiv is delighted to announce the 2019 Sociology Open Access Recognition awards. With SOAR, people who win paper awards from sections of the American Sociological Association — for papers posted on SocArXiv — will get $250 to help cover their travel to the conference in New York City this summer.

So, if you’ve submitted a paper to be considered for an American Sociological Association section award – including a graduate student award – consider posting it on SocArXiv as well. Any paper that is uploaded by April 15 and wins a 2019 ASA section award will receive a SOAR award of $250 in recognition of your achievement. Support open access, gain recognition, and win money all at the same time!

How it works

You upload your paper to SocArXiv by April 15. Once you find out you’ve won a section award, email socarxiv@gmail.com to notify us. We’ll send you a check for $250 to help cover your travel, as well as publicizing your paper and officially conferring a SOAR award. That’s the whole deal.

Sharing your paper through SocArXiv is a win-win. It’s good for you, because you get the word out about your research. It’s good for social science, because more people have access to ungated information. And now, with SOAR prizes for award-winning papers, it can be good for your wallet, too.

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. What happens if I submitted a paper, but don’t notify SocArXiv it’s won a section award?

You will only receive a SOAR award if you let SocArXiv know at socarxiv@gmail.com by August 31, 2019 that your paper has won an ASA section award.

  1. What if I upload my paper after I win the section award?

Any papers uploaded by April 15, 2019 are eligible. We welcome later sharing of papers, but they will not be eligible for SOAR awards.

  1. Does the version submitted to SocArXiv have to be identical with the version submitted to the ASA section?

No. For example, if you upload to SocArXiv a pre-copyediting version of your published paper that you have permission to share, but send the award committee the published version, you are still eligible for the award.

  1. I’d love to upload my paper, but my copyright agreement doesn’t allow me to. What do I do?

First, you may still have the right to upload some version of the paper, even if it is not the final published version. Check your author agreement, or the Sherpa/ROMEO database for the preprint policies of many academic journals. If you really can’t share any version, you are unfortunately not eligible for a SOAR award. But keep in mind for next time that copyright agreements can often be edited or amended. You don’t have to give away all rights to your work.

  1. I am a graduate student submitting a paper for a graduate student section award. Am I still eligible?

Yes. ASA section awards for graduate student papers are also eligible for SOAR.

  1. I am submitting my paper for an award in another disciplinary association. Am I eligible for SOAR?

At present SOAR awards are limited to papers recognized by ASA sections. However, we are always interested in building partnerships with other organizations and disciplines. Please reach out to us at socarxiv@gmail.com if you are interested in developing a similar program for your organization.

SocArXiv grants seven Sociology Open Access Recognition Awards

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Photo pnc / Flickr CC https://flic.kr/p/2ard8ch

by Kelsey Drotning

This year, in recognition of a commitment to open access publishing and research excellence, SocArXiv granted the Sociology Open Access Recognition (SOAR) award to the authors of seven papers. Each paper was shared on SocArXiv, and then won a section award from the American Sociological Association (ASA). These authors elected to make their important research accessible to researchers, practitioners, legislators, students.

Each paper won a $250 travel prize for attending the 2018 ASA meetings.

We want to thank every scholar who shared a paper on SocArXiv, and encourage all researchers to keep posting papers on SocArXiv. Showcasing award-winning papers on SocArXiv helps us get the word out and motivates others to share their work. We don’t have the money to grant the awards again next year (unless someone makes a donation for this purpose!), but we believe that openly sharing research is good for both the field and for the scholars who participate. The practice produces more interested readers, quicker feedback and citations, and more connections between scholars and those they’re trying to reach. Thank you!

If your ASA section or other scholarly community would like to use SocArXiv as a platform for your award submissions, please contact us; we’re happy to help.

Here are the 2018 SOAR award recipients, with links to the papers:

 

Why your section of the American Sociological Association should open its paper award, and how we’ll help

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We’ll get to the monetary incentives below, but first the pitch.

Academia has a lot of research awards. Awards can help bring attention to the best research, and give recognition to under-recognized scholars. On the other hand, they can also encourage petty competition and internal hierarchies. We at SocArXiv want to help more sociologists open up their scholarship, and we think we can do that while promoting some of what’s good about awards.

We know that working openly is better – better for our careers, better for our science, and better for the wider communities we hope to serve. But we also know there are obstacles, including these two.

1. The habit problem. It seems daunting, like doing more work just to help other people (a goal we all share, of course), which takes away from the singular focus we need to get jobs, get tenure, and earn the esteem of our peers and other important people.

2. The prestige problem. There are a lot of junk open journals that will “publish” anything for a buck. And many of the most prestigious journals aren’t open access. In fact, some people are afraid that if they share their work before it’s peer reviewed they will seem desperate, or like they’re not committed to the idea of peer review.

To overcome these obstacles, we have to make it easy to develop the habits of open scholarship, and we have to find ways to promote high quality work that is also open. Our small contribution to that end is Sociology Open Award Recognition (SOAR).

Here’s how it works.

If you are a section of the American Sociological Association, require that papers submitted for your award(s) be posted on SocArXiv before the award deadline. (In the case of already-published papers, these can be the latest version the author has permission to share.) How you promote the award is up to you, but we encourage you to ask authors to use a common hashtag when submitting, and then publishing a list of submitted papers on your website. Think of the buzz this will generate leading up to the conference, as your members proudly share their best work! Then, when you make the award, SocArXiv will reimburse up to $400 for the winner’s travel to the ASA meetings. Just send us a link to your award instructions page — we’ll help you promote it.

If you are an individual and your ASA section does not participate, but you are submitting a paper for their award, upload the paper to SocArXiv before the award submission deadline. If you win the award, let us know and we will give you $250. Again, we encourage, but do not require, that you let the world know you’re doing this.

We know that award rules vary. Some consider only peer-reviewed papers, some only those that have not yet been peer-reviewed and published. For papers that have not yet been published, you can post them on SocArXiv, and then when they are published add the DOI to the SocArXiv record and readers will be directed to the published version — while still having access to original for free. You can also post papers on SocArXiv that have already been published. (You should always check your author agreement or the Sherpa/ROMEO database to see what version, if any, you’re allowed to share). If your award requires the papers to be published already, and people want to submit papers from journals that aren’t friendly to preprint posting, you might not be able to participate as a section, but individual authors still can.

We hope that SOAR will help people, especially junior scholars, develop the habit of sharing their work earlier; and that it will help the leaders in the discipline to see the benefits of promoting openness through their institutional practices. All while drawing attention to award-winning scholars and their research.

If you’re holding an award competition, you’re probably trying to get the word out about the best research to as many interested people as possible. Openness can help. And if you’re an individual willing to share your paper with an award committee, it is ready to share with the public. If you’re willing to submit it for an award, you should be proud enough to promote it publicly. Draw attention to your work, get feedback, meet potential collaborators, make friends, influence people, and maybe win some money.

So if you are a section officer or member, please propose this to your council or at your membership meeting this August in Montreal. We’ll sponsor as many section awards as we can, but we might run out of money, so don’t delay! For more information, visit the SocArXiv Frequently Asked Questions page, or let us know if we can help.

Contact us at: socarxiv@gmail.com. Upload a paper now using the web interface; browse or search SocArXiv on OSF | Preprints. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook for updates, Check out our YouTube videos; make a contribution through the University of Maryland.