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Libraries and the Communication of Scholarship: Changing Times, Changing Roles
David Ruddy
Scholarly communication
“The creation, transformation, dissemination and preservation of knowledge related to teaching, research and scholarly endeavors”
--Wikipedia
Functions of scholarly communication*• Registration
– Establishes claims of priority for scholarly research
• Certification– Validates the registered scholarly research claim
• Awareness– Promotes the communication of new scholarly research
• Archive– Preserves the record of scholarly research
* Roosendaal & Geurts. Forces and functions in scientific communication: an analysis of their interplay (1997).
Traditional scholarly comm. chain• Registration
– Publishers
• Certification– Researchers (through a process managed by publishers)
• Awareness– Publishers, libraries, and readers (researchers)
• Archive– Publishers and libraries
Recent disruptions in scholarly comm.• Increasing cost of scholarship
– Diminished access to scholarship– Increased financial stress on libraries
•Development and growth of a worldwide networked communication system (the Web)
– Opens new ways in which the functions of the scholarly communication system can be met
– Allows for new distribution and business models– Complicates archiving/preservation
Libraries and publishing
• Increasing library interest in offering publishing services
• Library strengths– Technology– Knowledge organization and management– Service orientation– Willingness to experiment – Preservation focus
• Challenges– Narrowly focused– Content evaluation– Marketing experience
Library Publishing Coalition
•Mission: The Library Publishing Coalition promotes the development of innovative, sustainable publishing services in academic and research libraries to support scholars as they create, advance, and disseminate knowledge.
• The Coalition’s current focus is on building and sharing knowledge
–http://www.librarypublishing.org
• Library Publishing Toolkit–http://www.publishingtoolkit.org/
Libraries and university presses
•Many productive collaborations, based on combining distinct expertise toward a common goal
•Many university presses:– Struggle with technology– Have limited resources– Are risk adverse
• And yet have skills in:– Selecting content– Building respectable credentialing status– Marketing
Case study: Project Euclid
• Aggregator of content, with disciplinary focus (mathematics & statistics)
• Joint library / press operation– Cornell University Library & Duke University Press
• Cost recovery operation
•Over 65 journals, 1.7 million pages, and maintaining approximately 70% of its content open
• Primary innovations:– Collaborative operation– Business model
Institutional repositories
• Important activities and issues for academic libraries
– Capture, preserve, and deliver theses and dissertations– Supporting mandatory faculty deposits of scholarship– Data curation– IR policy development
Additional new roles for librarians•Managing alternative scholarly communication systems
– For example: arXiv.org
• Participating in the adjudication of publication quality
– For example: Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory publishers
• Copyright advice for faculty
• Educating faculty about publishing options
In conclusion
• The scholarly communication system is undergoing change
• The four functions of scholarly communication must still be met (at least in the long-term)
• Librarians will play an increasingly active role in the new ways in which these functions are carried out
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