ABSTRACT
1.Scope of Scholarly Communication :.
Information which is a central pillar of libraries is both generated and consumed by users. The entire range of endeavors of libraries is directed to facilitate discovery and access to information by its users. Libraries in recent years, however, are also participating in the information generation process..
The academic definition of scholarly communication focused, in earlier years, on the study of how scholars communicate using formal and informal channels..
“by scholarly communication we mean the study of how scholars in any field (e.g., physical, biological, social and behavioral sciences, humanities, technology) use and disseminate information through formal and informal channels. The study of scholarly communication includes the growth of scholarly information, the relationships among research areas and disciplines, the information needs and uses of individual user groups, and the relationship among formal and informal methods of communication” .
This topic was much aligned with the area of bibliometric until late nineties. The issues discussed were communication channels, measures of scholarly outputs and their impact, to name a few. .
The earlier years of the current century was marked what later became known as open access movement. The movement gained momentum for several reasons. One of those is the soaring price and business models of journals. The other was the power of the Web as publishing medium. Extensive conversations and activities on developing open and institutional repositories to promote open access to scholarly output, were witnessed. It is in that context, the term scholarly communication started being used..
With the passage of time and changing scenario, there have been efforts to develop a better scope of the term scholarly communication that can provide guidance on how libraries incorporate the term into their systems and processes. Many factors intertwine to add layers to scholarly communication. Moreover, new issues emerge and add more layers and thus making the topic ever expanding and evolving. The Association of College and Research Libraries defined scholarly communication as .
“the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communication, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic listservs" .
This definition of ACRL is more inclusive and broader than the earlier definitions as it helps to accommodate new and emerging issues that are incorporated in the system as referred to in the definition as well as the environmental factors that cause the change in the system. Thus, to understand scholarly communication, we need to look at the whole ecosystem that is made up of various actors and their actions, issues that influence the process and the agents who are either causing the change or facilitating the changes. This presentation is a bird’s eye view of the ecosystem of scholarly communication and how future libraries will participate in this area.
.
2. Key Actors – how they shaped the area in the past : .
The ecosystem of scholarly communication have several actors. At the central, there are authors who are producing information. A scholarly outcome goes through the process of registration, certification, dissemination, preservation and evaluation. Other key actors who directly or indirectly intervene in this life cycle are funding agencies, employers, publishers. These other actors’ roles as well as power have, traditionally, limited the scholarly communication to journal articles published in journals behind pay-wall, disseminated and preserved at the terms of business houses and evaluated using Journal Impact factor – a highly disputed metrics.
.
3. Big changes in the environment :
.
But several efforts have been initiated in last one decade to introduce changes in several directions. The main driver of these changes is a societal philosophy that considers information as a public good, and promotes the idea that there should be equitable access to information, specifically information that are being generated using public fund. Such philosophy expanded the scope of information and included information generated at any point of research so that research can be transparent and reproducible. Open access movement made the pave work for developing institutional repositories. Open Science stresses on transparency of research process, reproducibility, through the disclosure of a research right from the beginning by registering protocols, methodologies, and data. Funding agencies have moved towards the direction of developing mandate to make scholarly output publicly available. A study conducted in 2015 found that 2009 NIH funded articles in PMC were cited 26% more than 2009 NIH funded articles not in PMC, 5 years after publication. The scholarly output is no more limited to journal article and encompass data, code, protocol and many more. Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) has given a call to bring transparency in assessing the merit of a scholarly output based on the content and not on the impact factor of journal where the output is published. Another change is happening in the domain of peer-review. Peer review is valued by scholars as the general belief is peer review helps to maintain the quality and standard of scholarly work. But the process of peer-review is often the cause of delay in publication and limiting the number of articles that a journal can publish. The process is not above the doubt of oversight that result in flawed result reaching a journal, favoritism for an established school or idea, and thus raising a question if peer-review is in crisis. In response to this crisis, open peer review and post-publication peer-review are taking shape and newer platforms are being developed that support peer-review of newer kind. It is particularly interesting that open peer review advocates for opening the identity of reviewers as well as authors and the review reports.
.
4. Challenges at micro-level :
.
Parallel to new developments, there have been challenges and difficulties at more micro-level. Though there have been a surge of institutional repositories, growth of such repositories in terms of content is not consistent. Users who are to self-archive take a passive role , their motivational issues, and reward system can be detrimental to the growth of repositories in the right sense. The value of the impact factor of those journals, in terms of reward system, often place users in an uncertainty to take the new path. Authors who do not have the facility to avail Article Processing Charge, are uncertain where they can publish and comply with the mandates of the funding agencies. Young authors are concerned how their research can be made visible by peers scattered around the globe. Authors are also wary about journals with questionable publishing practice.
.
5. Libraries as agents :
.
In this fluid situation of changes and challenges, libraries are playing play the role of the agency that attempts to facilitate those changes and address the challenges. In fact, libraries look for the opportunities to collaborate with users and contribute in this area. Libraries are addressing these in several ways: creating positions, redefining or developing job descriptions, creating a learning environment for themselves, collaborating with other expertise, and developing service models. But working in new area requires expertise. There is a wide range of areas that librarians or Scholarly Communication Librarians need to develop expertise . In the absence of any structured course work in Scholarly Communication by library schools, librarians have been learning on the job, in various areas.
.
Funding agencies certainly contributed to create new job descriptions and positions. Empirical data attest to that. The area of institutional repositories or developing digital collection was a priority area in the beginning. Gradually, with a variant degree, the scope was enhanced to include legal issues such as copyright, fair use, permission in the public domain and policy development in this area. After National Science Foundation made a data management plan mandatory for all grant proposals, this aspect was incorporated in the scope of scholarly communication . Positions have been and are being created under the title Scholarly Communication Librarian though often times the functionalities in this area may be distributed among several areas such as collection development, digital scholarship, to name a few.
.
Librarians are acquiring working knowledge collaboratively. Organizations like SPARC and others regularly offer webinars to keep the professional abreast of new developments. Librarians are actively engaged in developing tools that are helpful both for learning and for solving problems.
.
Finally, it is another challenge for libraries on how to deliver services. Educating users about various developments in the area of scholarly publishing is important. However, users tend to avoid information load and avoid such education, unless they face a problem. On the other hand, some users may need a service at much deeper level for which a scholarly communication librarian may not be prepared. Libraries are trying to meet these challenges in a variety of ways. For example, collaboration with units that support faculty development can provide a good platform where user education can be offered. To complement the expertise at home, collaboration with other expertise such as metadata, copyright, data management, and collection development are found increasingly.
.
6. Scholarly communication: looking at the past and strategizing for the future :
.
The area of scholarly communication has been and will be evolving. This fluid environment will bring challenges as well as opportunities for libraries. Future library services in this area will demand more diverse skillsets, specific job descriptions and newer positions. Successfully delivering services, and thus to establish the value of libraries will require collaboration both within and outside the library.
Reference:
1 Borgman, C.L., ed. Scholarly communication and bibliometrics. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, 190. pp13-14
2 https://www.arl.org/focus-areas/scholarly-communication#.XFjRWlVKiUk
3 De Groote SL, Shultz M, Smalheiser NR (2015) Examining the Impact of the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy on the Citation Rates of Journal Articles. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0139951. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139951
4 https://sfdora.org/
5 Baldwin, M. (2017). In referees we trust? Physics Today, Feb, 2017, 44-49
6 Ross-Hellauer T. What is open peer review? A systematic review [version 2; referees: 4 approved]
F1000Research 2017, 6:588. http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.11369.2
7 Dubinsky, E. (2014). A Current Snapshot of Institutional Repositories: Growth Rate, Disciplinary Content and Faculty Contributions. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 2(3):eP1167. http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1167
8 Kim, J. (2010). Faculty self-archiving: motivations and barriers. Journal of The American Society For Information Science And Technology, 61(9):1909–1922, 2010
9 Kim, Y. & Oh, J. (2018). Disciplinary, institutional, and individual factors affecting researchers' depositing articles in institutional repository: an empirical analysis. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 44 ( 6), 824-832. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2018.09.013
10 0Bonn, M (2014). Tooling up: scholarly communication education and training. College and Research Library News, 75(3), https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/9087/9962
11 Xia, J. & Li, Y. (2015). Changed responsibilities in scholarly communication services: an analysis of job descriptions. Serials Review, 41: 15–22. DOI: 10.1080/00987913.2014.998980.
|
