9 - Critical Issues and the Future of Scholarly Communication

Summary

Introduction

Scholarly communication is a fast-moving area. It is partly because digital publishing has now become predominant: when scholarly information is no longer confined within the bricks and mortar of academic libraries, new publishers emerge and challenge the status quo of academic publishing and scholarly communication. Open access advocates negotiate the ways by which commercial and public interests can be balanced, involving the development of scholar-led diamond open access journals, for-profit and non-profit gold open access journals and hybrid journals with gold open access options. Digital publishing also enables alternative ways of communicating research not confined to traditional academic publications, evident by the increased number of preprints, blogs, podcasts, videocasts and social media posts. The emergence of new publishers and non-traditional publication channels means that changes in research assessment criteria are necessary to determine what can be counted as research outputs and how they will be recognised and rewarded, not to mention the tension between best practices of open research and the expectations of publishing in established ‘high-impact’ journals. There are also concerns about copyright and licensing options that can result in changes in the intellectual property policy of universities and research institutions. Together, digital publishing enables faster dissemination of and open access to scholarly information. However, it has also initiated reconsideration and reconfiguration of many assumptions and questions in the scholarly communication landscape, concomitant with socio-technological and political changes involving the wide use of social media and the necessity of societal impact. The different configurations have implications for the academic publishing market, research dissemination and of course, the work of research support in scholarly communication.

The role of scholarly communication in research support is exhilarating and challenging. It is a position where a librarian is not only supporting researchers in the many aspects of scholarly communication from consultation services on publishing to the use of social media, but can also involve advocacy work in open access, research assessment and copyright reform. Some also develop and establish library publishing and similar initiatives. The work of scholarly communication librarians is primarily to support researchers to select the best venues for research dissemination for enhancing research and societal impacts, while it is also important to note that the choices made as to where to publish actively shape the academic publishing market and the scholarly communication landscape.