Open Access: how to disseminate published research

In many countries around the world, people do not have access to research publications. The fees are too big to be paid by researchers themselves and institutions are not ready to sign complicated and expensive deals with publishing companies and on-line libraries.

The issue in itself is very problematic and totally un-fair. On one hand, researchers do research without paying to gather the information they accumulate; on the other hand, publishing houses restrict access to the knowledge produced and disseminate it among those who have the money to pay for it.

As a reaction to this problem, some publishing houses started to publish open access ( for example UCL Press), other research publications turned this policy into their favour (e.g. HAU Journal).

Interestingly enough, universities in the UK ask their staff to up-load on their open access platforms Author's Pre-Publication Versions of their articles. Only if up-loaded there their publications matter for the next REF. Goldsmiths has a Ref 2021 Eligibility & Open Access guide where researchers are asked to up-load their published articles no later than three months after publication.
 It is true that articles do not look so beautiful as they would look, once published and formatted. And also that one cannot really know how to quote properly (what page should they put? ). But, at least, in a more rough form, we can say that we see an interest in making research' outcomes more open.

A very good website where one can check publisher's copyright policies is 
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php
Another one is
Scopus

For the first one, just introduce the name of the article.

The Merger, and other films at the Migration Film Festival 02 December 2018

I was invited by Alternative Fictions, which works with film and multimedia to explore issues around representation and storytelling,   to attend round-table discussions around migration and representation in the London Migration Film Festival.

For some reasons, I did not see the invitation and I did not manage to attend this great initiative. Looking at the list of films screened I saw the trailer for The Merger.

 

I like the title of this movie and the very idea of merging.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7891470/

It is a comedy, and yes we know that very often experiences of migration are far from humorous... But at the same time I think dislocation, and all the bitterness and hardships surrounding the migration process, offers to all those who live through it, and to all those who support 'the migrants,' also possibilities of wonder and of irony and humour, and last but not least playfulness - with all the staging that it presupposes. What it is needed in a society to be accepted?

https://www.migrationcollective.com/lmff-2018-programme
https://www.alternative-fictions.com/

Maybe the very act of merging, which is so difficult to be done in classical museum displays, is something that could be used in future exhibitions about migration.