Gateway Carousel Journalism
Next time you publish: claim your rights
Your article has been accepted for publication in a journal and, like your colleagues, you want it to have the widest possible distribution and impact in the scholarly community. In the past, this required print publication. Today you have other options, like online archiving, but the publication agreement you’ll likely encounter will actually prevent broad distribution of your work.
You would never knowingly keep your research from a readership that could benefit from it, but signing a restrictive publication agreement limits your scholarly universe and lessens your impact as an author.
Why? According to the traditional publication agreement, all rights —including copyright — go to the journal. You probably want to include sections of your article in later works. You might want to give copies to your class or distribute it among colleagues. And you likely want to place it on your Web page or in an online repository if you had the choice. These are all ways to give your research wide exposure and fulfill your goals as a scholar, but they are inhibited by the traditional agreement. If you sign on the publisher’s dotted line, is there any way to retain these critical rights?
Yes. The SPARC Author Addendum is a legal instrument that modifies the publisher’s agreement and allows you to keep key rights to your articles. Learn more.
This open access message has been brought to you by SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.
Extended Chat Hours
Need research help? You can ask a librarian for help using our chat service–now available almost 24 hours a day.
During the day you can chat with MU librarians and library staff. At night, we offer access to a chat reference service called ChatStaff. They will be able to answer most research questions, except for some that are Mizzou-specific.
To access the chat service and see what hours chat reference is available, visit libraryanswers.missouri.edu.
Try out Google Cardboard at the Journalism Library!
Welcome to the world of Virtual Reality
Your Cardboard viewer is a medium like we have never seen before
By Clyde Bentley, Associate Professor
The Google Cardboard is one of the recent wave of devices that allows the viewer to experience a scene almost like being there. It was developed about the same time as the Oculus Rift, for which Facebook paid $2 billion. A pair of Google engineers, however, wanted to see how inexpensively they could make an Oculus-type viewer. They put two cheap plastic lenses into a folded box and powered it with a mobile phone. Google opened the design to the public, allowing anyone to manufacture it. You can go online and get instructions to cut one out of a pizza box, buy a fold-out version $15 or pay much more for a plastic or metal version with quality optics.
Here is a quick guide to exploring the Cardboard:
The door at the back of the Cardboard opens to accept your phone. Some programs make you place it in a certain direction, but most don’t care. Experiment.
On the Version 1 Cardboards, you could slide a ring magnet on the right side to “click” or change pages. It really only worked well on Android phones, though, so Version 2 has a paper button coated with the conductive material you often see on glove fingers. All it is really doing is touching the screen, which you can also do with your own finger.
First, install the official Cardboard App on your iOS or Android phone. You don’t need it to use a Cardboard, but it is a good base for checking out the technology. It has a number of awe-inspiring still scenes – my favorite is the Eiffel Tower. The app uses the “old” way of navigating – change pages by tipping the Cardboard on its side.
The key to using the Cardboard is to move your body. Crank your head up to see the top of the Eiffel tower, down to see the pigeons on the sidewalk or turn around to see the street vendors. Don’t just shift your eyes – move.
There are more than 100 apps using Cardboard, dozens of websites and a whole section of YouTube. Some require you to download the file, others stream it. Search for “Google Cardboard” to find the latest, but here are a few worth trying.
- Jaunt VR is a site used by some news organizations. Check Inside Syria, a compelling report done by ABC. There are also a lot of good music videos.
- Vrse is the original Cardboard documentary film site. Long pieces worth watching
- VR Stories also has news pieces, including one on the Selma march.
- RYOT is better, though. Especially Welcome to Aleppo.YouVisit takes you on tours of universities and citiesBut let’s have fun.
- Skydive 360 puts you in the air, then drops you. You can turn and see the plane fade away or turn and see the ground getting closer by the second. Keep Tums handy.
- 360Heros is by GoPro, so it’s full of crazy skiing, kayaking and testosterone thrills. I rather like the bulls running at Pamplona (San Fermin 2015). It is probably the only way to be right in the herd without being trampled or gored.
- MUST HAVE – in360Tube, the YouTube app for Cardboard. It has a terrible navigation system, but offers lots of videos. It is probably best to Search YouTube 360 on a computer, find the videos you want and make a playlist that you can email to your phone. Here are some good ones, however:CAUGHT ON 360 CAM!! Low quality, but a real hoot and a good introduction to what you can do with 360-degree video. It’s by blogger Roman Atwood.
o Hajj 360 – experience the journey to Mecca in 360 degrees by Al Jazeera. This is a fascinating experience that puts you in the middle of one of the world’s largest religious events. Remember to look around you to get the full feel of the Hajj.
o Jay Leno's Garage: Ride-Along Get into a wild car that you will never own with a guy you know but will never meet.
o Solitary Confinement in 360° Virtual Reality – RYOT VR This was far more terrifying to me than skydiving. You are placed in a 8×10 prison cell and simply left there for as long as you can take it. All you see are four walls, a ceiling and a floor. Spin, turn, look at the dirty toilet and wait for the door to open. There is a narration, but try watching it in a dark room with the sound off.
o Three-D Journalism is our repository for class and project work. It is mostly unedited test work, but you can see what some of our students are doing.
If you browse through YouTube, the Web and the App Store you can find pieces that range from exciting to thoughtful to silly. It is a great format for games and children’s programs. It puts a new spin on the music video. You can also use it to watch standard 3D movies or look at 3D photographs.
And it has great opportunities for journalism.
If you want to try your hand, use Google Street View to snap 20+ photos to make your own “photosphere.” Better yet, check out my Emerging Technologies in Journalism class and the MU3D Project. We have an arsenal of 360-degree and 3D cameras ranging from simple to a six-camera, high-def Freedom360.
Clyde Bentley, bentleycl@missouri.edu
Proquest’s Historical Newspapers
The MU Libraries now subscribes to five ProQuest Historical Newspaper databases for The Chicago Tribune (1849-1990), The Wall Street Journal (1889-1996) and The Washington Post (1877-1997). We now have access to five historical newspapers: Those mentioned above plus the historical New York Times and Chicago Defender. Access is available from the libraries’ database pages and on our Find News – News Databases page.