5 Chapter 5 Sharing your Work
As a student, you are a regular consumer of information. Whether you’re reading an announcement from your instructor or the latest consumer report, you’re taking in a lot of information everyday! But you’re not just a consumer of information, you are a creator too. Information is a valuable commodity that drives your everyday decisions.
There are many ways to share your work broadly:
Institutional Repositories: Your university may have an institutional repository, which is an archive of work created by different members of your school’s community. A repository can showcase work such as class assignments, publications, and media such as video or audio. Most often the library hosts your institution’s repository, check in with them to see how you can publish your work!
Publishing: Research papers and dissertations often meet the criteria to be published in academic journals. After you submit your work, it will be reviewed multiple times by the journal’s editors before they reach a decision to publish or not. If your article is accepted, you may be asked to make some changes. This process can take a few months! In addition to academic journals, you may also wish to publish in an Open Educational Resource (such as this textbook!). OER textbooks and journals are openly licensed and free to use. Your instructor may design assignments where you contribute to an OER.
Blogs: Do you enjoy reading blogs or have one of your own? Blogging counts as publishing too! Blogs can cover just about any subject. They can also be academically focused or serve as popular entertainment. There are many blogs written by both amateur and professional historians.
Social media: Think of a recent social media post you’ve interacted with. Maybe it was a birthday announcement or a celebrating a job milestone. You are already accustomed to sharing information, and a great way to share your work is announcing it in your social media! Universities and publishers regularly share posts about new publications too. If you would like to have some separation between your work and personal life, try designating some profiles for personal announcements and other profiles for sharing your work.
