NERM 2006: The Future of Scholarly Communications

Introduction to Scholarly

CommunicationsElizabeth Brownebrown@binghamton.eduBinghamton University LibrariesFriday, October 6, 2006

Overview of Scholarly Communications1. Timeline for developments in Scholarly

Communications2. Evolution of Scholarship3. What has driven this evolution?4. Constituencies affected by change 5. Why should you care? How will this affect

research?6. Future trends in Scholarly Communications7. Resources / Web Sites / Initiatives

1. Timeline for developments in Scholarly Communications

1665 First scholarly journal published

1675 Introduction of peer review

1969 ARPAnet created (Birth of the internet)

1991 Creation of arXiv.org at Los Alamos

Early 1990s Science “serials crisis”

1995 First scholarly electronic journal online

1999-2000 Electronic journal archives available online

2002 Open Access movement begins

2006 Open Peer Review

2. Evolution of ScholarshipManuscripts – hand-written, hand-lettered texts

Printed text

Electronic text adapted and converted from print

Electronic text “born digital” and converted to print

Electronic only text

3. What has driven this evolution?Academic:Serials crisis of the early 1990’s – high journal costsRise of interdisciplinary researchChannels of communication among researchers have changed

Technological:Growth of the internetLow cost of digitization of print materialsOpen source software movementRise of Social Software and Web 2.0 tools

3. What has driven this evolution?Advocacy:

Greater awareness of copyright and intellectual property rights

Movement to make publicly funded research available to all

Discussion on maintaining author rights to published research articles

Creation of institutional repositories – materials unique to a location

Need to have permanent archives for electronic materials

4. Constituencies Affected by change Scientists and scholarly researchers Policymakers / Lawmakers Commercial and Society Publishers Librarians Archivists Information Technology / Computer

Programmers Students and General Public

5. Why should you care? How will this affect future research? Immediate Benefits:Quicker publication of research results:

Faster recognition Wider distribution among colleagues

Lower journal costs for institution? (some debate)

Long-Term Benefits:Institutional memory preserved – repositories and other

local contentMore control over scholarly output from authors and

institutions

6. Future trends in Scholarly Communications

Make more government funded research publications available to the general public

Open Access option for journal article publishing available from more publishers

Newer alternative journal funding models as alternatives to Open Access

Greater collaboration between constituencies to make change

More demand to make scholarly research results available to more people

7. Resources / Web Sites / Initiatives SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic

Resources Coalition) Open Access News blog (Peter Suber) Google Book Search Managing Your Copyrights – Massachusetts

Institute of Technology (Author Rights) LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) Portico (Electronic Archiving) Open Content Alliance (collaborative archive) Open Peer Review & Collaboration (Heather Morris)