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