Scholarly Communications News: Home

Why do we need to be aware of these disruptive influences on the Scholarly Communications environment?

• There are philosophical issues about the openess of scholarly work.
• There are intellectual property issues involved as copyright is reconsidered.
• There are significant financial implications depending upon how materials are peer-reviewed and distributed.
• There are regulatory and legal implications based upon agency and sponsor expectations and conditions.

Who needs to be involved in these conversations?

• authors, editors, peer-reviewers, publishers, societies (who rely on publication revenue), administrators, and librarians.

What are the next steps?

• Document the current trends, requirements, proposals, and options.
• Discuss the immediate and long-term implications of these actions on students, scholars, and institutions.
• Develop institutional policies and practices, and provide required infrastructures for compliance.
• Maintain awareness of new developments.

The ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit provides content and context on a broad range of relevant topics.

The Association of American Publishers AAP 2020 trends report shows total industry sales are up 9.7% this year, with revenue up 24.5%. Higher education sales are relatively flat, with a 19% drop in revenue. University Presses sales increased 3%, while revenue dropped 14%.

The Case for an Institutionally Owned Knowledge Infrastructure. Discusses the many bottlenecks that the commercial monopoly on research information dissemination has created, and suggests possibilities for better options if the research community takes back the underlying infrastructure.

Discussion document describing the predatory publishing phenomenon, in which journal publishers provide questionable value journals for profit motives. 

A recent example of the de-stabalization of the current business model is The American Library Association (ALA) denounces the new library ebook lending model announced today by Macmillan Publishers. Under the new model, a library may purchase one copy upon release of a new title in ebook format, after which the publisher will impose an eight-week embargo on additional copies of that title sold to libraries.

See our other Tabs on this site for links and additional information.

                        David Stern, Library Director, Saint Xavier University