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  • International Open Access Week

    Hilary Kraus

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    Celebrate International Open Access Week

    “The Cost of Knowledge” is the theme for this year’s International Open Access Week (October 19-25). Learn more about Brown Library’s Open Access guides and resources.

    Open Access Week Workshops

    During International Open Access Week, the Brown Library’s Open Science Librarian will present two workshops:

    Paths for Making a Journal Article Open Access

    Monday, 10/19, noon to 1 p.m. (online only: register to receive the Zoom link)

    This workshop introduces the Brown Faculty Open Access Policy, paths for making preprints and accepted author manuscripts open access, and current agreements that Brown has with publishers to waive fee for publishing open access in participating journals (will be recorded for those unable to attend).

    Complying with the NIH Public Access Policy

    Thursday, 10/22, noon to 1 p.m. (online only: register to receive the Zoom link)

    This workshop introduces the NIH Public Access Policy and process of depositing an accepted manuscript in PubMed Central (PMC), journal-implemented barriers to embargo-free PMC deposit, and alternative options for NIH-funded authors. We will also review new authorship guidelines from the Brown Division of Research pertaining to federally-funded authors’ public access compliance.

    New Sage Open Access Publishing Agreement

    Brown University authors can now publish open access in many Sage journals without paying an article processing charge (APC). The participating hybrid journals (link downloads an Excel spreadsheet) include many titles in the health sciences and public health.

    To be eligible for the fee waiver, the corresponding author must be affiliated with Brown and have an article accepted for publication in a participating journal that has entered or will enter production between January 1, 2026, and December 31, 2028. 

    More details on Brown’s open access fee waiver agreements and discounts with other publishers can be found on our guide to paying for open access publications.

    Supporting the Sharing of Preprints

    Did you know that Brown is among the institutions contributing to supporting ArXiv, the preprint server for the physical sciences, as well as BioRxiv and MedRxiv, for sharing preprints in the biological and health sciences?

    Check out Brown’s dedicated channel of preprints shared via BioRxiv and MedRxiv. 

    Sharing Clinical Data

    Brown currently is in the second year of its pilot membership with the open access data sharing repository Vivli. Vivli is a controlled-access repository for sharing anonymized data from clinical trials and other protocol-driven, prospective clinical studies, including Real World Data (RWD). This means that other researchers have to apply for access by providing details about their study and IRB approval/exemption and signing a Data Use Agreement (DUA).

    Sunsetting of OSF Projects

    The Center for Open Science (COS) is ending support for OSF Projects, the project management/data repository component of the Open Science Framework (OSF). Please note: this will not impact OSF Preprints, OSF Preregistrations, or OSF Registered Reports.

    As of November 16, 2026, OSF Projects users will no longer be able to create new OSF Projects or child components within existing projects. On February 19, 2027, all existing OSF Projects will be read-only. You will continue to have access to all project materials, but no further changes or additions can be made. All public projects will remain persistent, discoverable, and accessible at the same URLs and DOIs. Private content will remain accessible to collaborators via an existing view-only-link. 

    COS has provided extensive information regarding the reasoning behind and logistics for sunsetting OSF Projects. If you are an active OSF Projects user, we strongly recommend you review their detailed transition guide, which includes recommendations of other file and data repositories. If you have questions about how to proceed, or would like to migrate copies of your OSF Projects materials to in-house platforms such as the Brown Digital Repository (BDR) or LabArchives@Brown, please contact data_management@brown.edu.

  • The Bread and Butter of Digital Humanities: Enduring Tools and Methods in the Field

    Jennifer Braga

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    photo of people sitting around a U shaped conference table looking at laptops
    Digital Humanities event in the Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab

    Technology is changing quickly, and especially so in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It can feel overwhelming to learn something new only to have that knowledge quickly become out of date shortly after. This workshop series, presented by the Library’s Center for Digital Scholarship, pauses to take a breath and look at enduring skills and knowledge in the field of digital humanities that remain relevant in the midst of rapid technological change. 

    Join us to learn about seven core “bread and butter,” or consistently important, foundational forms of knowledge in the field of Digital Humanities:

    • Data modeling, or the process of structuring and organizing your data. 
    • Data cleaning, or taking your data and determining the best ways to organize it for findability 
    • Natural Language Processing with Python, a branch of AI that has roots in the 1950s that can process “natural language” in order to process documents or other materials for speech recognition and other forms of text classification. 
    • Introduction to HTML: HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language used to create and structure the foundation of all web pages on the Internet. 
    • Vibe Coding: AI has made creating computer code easier. Vibe coding uses natural language prompts to tell an AI what to build without the user coding themself. This workshop will share how to read the output and how to think critically while you’re coding with AI. 
    • GitHub and Git: a popular cloud-based platform and version control system, primarily used for software and code, but also useful for long-form prose and educational resources 
    • Creating a Digital Archive in Collection Builder: Do you want to make an argument with a collection of images or other files for long-term access? Collection Builder is an open source tool for creating digital collection and exhibit websites that are driven by metadata and powered by static web technology. 

    Join us for one workshop or all seven! Lunch is provided for all workshops at noon. 

    Schedule

    Learn More and Register

    Registration is not required, but strongly encouraged. We look forward to seeing you soon!

  • Namwali Serpell, “On Morrison” Book Talk

    Jennifer Braga

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    Join award-winning author Namwali Serpell for a reading and discussion of her new book On Morrison, a critical work on the writings of Toni Morrison.

    Date: Tuesday, September 29, 2026
    Time: 4 to 5:30 p.m.
    Location: Racial Justice Resource Center, 2nd floor, Rockefeller Library, and online

    Registration Required

    Free and open to the public. Registration required. REGISTER HERE.

    The author will open the event with a short reading from On Morrison followed by discussion with Professor Kevin Quashie, Brown University Department of English, and audience Q&A. Copies of On Morrison will be available for purchase on-site through the Brown Bookstore.

    The event is sponsored by The George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation and Brown University Library.

    cover of On Morrison with black and white photo of Toni Morrison on black background with title in purple and author name in yellow

    On Morrison

    On Morrison is a national best seller, named a best book of the year so far by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vulture, Esquire, The Guardian, and Lit Hub. 

    Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, “she is our only truly canonical black female writer — and her work is highly complex.” In On Morrison, Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and a professor who teaches a course on Morrison at Harvard University to illuminate her masterful experiments with literary form.

    This is Morrison as you’ve never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre—her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry—with contextual guidance and original close readings. At once accessible and uncompromisingly rigorous, On Morrison is a primer not only on how to read one of the most significant American authors of all time but also on how to read great works of literature in general. This dialogue on the page between two black women artist-readers is stylish, edifying, and thrilling in its scope and intelligence. – Penguin Random House 

    Namwali Serpell

    photo of woman's head and shoulders in floral shirt on a black background
    Namwali Serpell © Jordan Kines Photography

    Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. She is a fiction writer, a literary critic, and a professor of English at Harvard University. She is the author of three works of criticism, Seven Modes of Uncertainty (2014), Stranger Faces (2020), and On Morrison (2026), and two novels: The Old Drift (2019) and The Furrows (2022), for which she was awarded the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship in 2020 toward the advance of its completion.

    Kevin Quashie

    Kevin Quashie teaches black cultural and literary studies and is a professor in the department of English at Brown University. Primarily, he focuses on black feminism, queer studies, and aesthetics, especially poetics. He is the author or editor of four books, most recently The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture (2012) and Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being (2021). Black Aliveness has been awarded two prizes: the James Russell Lowell Prize from the Modern Language Association (2022) and the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism from the Poetry Foundation (2022).

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