Scholarly Publishing
The role of scholarly publishing has not changed greatly over the years, but the technological, economic, and cultural environment in which it operates has, presenting traditional publishers with opportunities and challenges. The Scholarly Communication Group monitors trends in scholarly publishing, fosters mutual understanding between the publishing and academic communities, and identifies issues that need resolution.
Scholarly publishing dates back to the seventeenth century and allows academics to communicate their research results in a formal way. It serves an important function in the academic community to:
- Certify the quality of the research (peer review)
- Establish an author’s priority (they did or discovered something first)
- Disseminate the research to the community
- Preserve it for future generations as part of the official record of scholarly endeavour.
Though the role of scholarly publishing has not changed greatly over the years, the technological, economic, and cultural environment in which it operates has been transformed. This has presented traditional publishers with opportunities and challenges. Digital technology and the Internet have transformed publishing, and electronic publishing is the norm in many disciplines. However, demands for open access and the development of institutional repositories pose challenges. Publishers are experimenting with open access, exploring new business models, and changing their policies on copyright and self-archiving.
The Scholarly Communication Group monitors trends in scholarly publishing from both the publisher and academic community perspectives. It organises events to bring both groups together and encourage debate, foster mutual understanding and identify issues that need resolution. It also funds studies to synthesise trends and explore solutions for key issues and barriers.
Guide to Scholarly Publishing
The Internet has profoundly changed the way that scholars disseminate their research results. ‘Traditional’ print-on-paper scholarly publishing models are unsustainable in light of the increase in research output, spiralling journal prices, and user-driven demand for easy access. New digital models like open access enable scholars to make their research freely available on the web for anyone to read and use, through either journals or repositories.
This guide seeks to lay out the current publishing routes open to scholars, set them in the context of the digital age, explain the main issues and provide a list of resources to which scholars can turn should they wish to explore any of these issues further. It sets out the advantages of electronic scholarly resources, such as speed, access, dissemination and linking; and raises issues of concern, such as ownership, archiving and peer review.
Study on Trends in Scholarly Communication
This study of trends in scholarly communication covers formal communication, including serials and monographs in both electronic and print forms, as well as more informal communication such as electronic discussion groups.
Current issues of communication and publishing as well as researchers’ use of publications are examined and some indication of future trends explored. The capacity of the higher education sector to keep pace with developments, in terms of information acquisition and access, is also discussed.
The main conclusions about the key issues centre on the output from scholarly activity, the affordability of the entire process of scholarly communication, the changes and challenges brought about by electronics, the quest for alternative dissemination models and the prime importance of scrutiny and assessment of output to achieve quality assurance.