Recently I had a somewhat unusual question from a library student who is working in a library where part of her assignment is to look for grant funding opportunities related to developing a scholarly communications program.\u00a0 After telling me that the whole concept of scholarly communications was somewhat bewildering, the student asked me what search terms I thought she should use when looking in databases of grants and funders.<\/p>\n
The question was sufficiently off center, I think, that it forced me to reflect on the meaning of this “baggy monster” discipline from a different perspective and to formulate a fairly succinct but comprehensive reply.\u00a0 Here is my answer:<\/p>\n
“Let my answer this by suggesting four words that I would search on and, with a bit of explanation about each word, maybe give you some perspective on what scholarly communications means (in my opinion, anyway).<\/p>\n
\u201cPublishing\u201d \u2013 the origin of most scholarly communications work is in trying to understand how the publishing process for scholarship is changing in the light of new technologies, and what the library role is in assisting or adapting to those changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cCopyright\u201d \u2013 when some institutions talk about scholarly communications, their major need is advanced knowledge about copyright law.\u00a0 This has become a problem on lots of campuses, again because of advances in technology, and it explains why so many people who are hired into scholarly communications positions (including me) are lawyers.<\/p>\n
\u201cOpen Access\u201d \u2013 this is the area where the seems to be the most push for change to traditional publishing models, and the place where libraries are developing lots of programs.\u00a0 Libraries often administer institutional repositories, for example, which provide open access to faculty and student scholarship.\u00a0 These efforts co-exist, usually, with traditional publication, and figuring out if and how scholarly publishing will transition to open access is the big issue for scholarly communications right now.\u00a0 BTW, other open access projects in libraries include hosting open journal publishing platforms, administering funds to pay the article processing charges that some open access journals charge, and advocating for public access programs like the NIH\u2019s PubMed Central requirement.<\/p>\n
\u201cResearch process\u201d \u2013 at its core I believe that libraries\u2019 attention to scholarly communications means a deeper involvement with the whole research process as it occurs on our campuses, where in the past we have focused only on the output and input (published works) stages.\u00a0 This means that libraries may be more involved in help to curate research data, manage versions of research output, and focus on access to the local resources of a particular campus, rather than on those published resources that are increasingly available to all without the intervention of libraries.<\/p>\n
Looking back on what I have written, I guess I would add \u201ctechnology\u201d and \u201cinstitutional repository\u201d as search words.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
While I hope this reply was helpful to the student, I realize how incomplete and sketchy it is.\u00a0 It seems like a perfect opportunity to ask others to comment. So please leave a comment and suggest other words that would be appropriate search terms and other ways to describe and discuss the ones I have mentioned.\u00a0 Let’s see if this can be a useful thought experiment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently I had a somewhat unusual question from a library student who is working in a library where part of her assignment is to look for grant funding opportunities related to developing a scholarly communications program.\u00a0 After telling me that the whole concept of scholarly communications was somewhat bewildering, the student asked me what search … Continue reading What does scholarly communications mean to you?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,36,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-access-topics","category-scholarly-publishing","category-technologies"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat does scholarly communications mean to you? - Scholarly Communications @ Duke<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.library.duke.edu\/scholcomm\/2011\/08\/12\/what-does-scholarly-communications-mean-to-you\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What does scholarly communications mean to you? 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