Project MUSE provides free access to gun violence research

Project MUSE, Johns Hopkins' massive online collection of scholarship, is providing temporary free access to more than a dozen journal articles and books focused on understanding and preventing gun violence. The collection, called "MUSE in Focus: Addressing Gun Violence," aims to encourage the broadest possible engagement with research and expertise as gun policy debates and discussions continue in the wake of recent mass shootings in California, Texas, and Ohio.

"We wanted to work quickly to assemble this material," said Wendy Queen, director of Project MUSE. "While MUSE content is available to millions of researchers worldwide through their subscribing institutions, it was important to us that this work be made available to everyone."

Administered by Johns Hopkins University Press, Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social science content for the scholarly community. Project MUSE staff selected the material for the collection in consultation with other university publishers to provide a broad range of perspectives and expertise relevant to gun policy.

The collection includes Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis, edited by Hopkins researchers Daniel Webster and Jon Vernick. After the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, JHU Press director Barbara Kline Pope made the book available as an open-access PDF.

"It's enormously sad—it's astonishing, frankly—that this is the fourth time in less than two years at JHU Press that I have been part of an effort to make material like this available to the public in the wake of horrific gun violence," Pope said. "It's tremendously important that the voices of experts and the insights of years of relevant research have full weight in the discussion of gun policy by lawmakers, journalists, and the public. Lives literally depend on understanding that research-based solutions and consensus are possible."

Since 1995, the MUSE Journal Collections have supported a wide array of research needs at academic, public, special, and school libraries worldwide. MUSE houses complete, full-text versions of scholarly journals from many of the world's leading university presses and scholarly societies, with more than 120 publishers currently participating. Participating publishers for the "MUSE in Focus: Addressing Gun Violence" collection include Johns Hopkins University Press, Michigan State University Press, Penn State University Press, University of Massachusetts Press, University of Michigan Press, University of North Carolina Press, and University of Pennsylvania Press.