Building A Scholarly Communication Center

Building a Scholarly Communication Center is a unique guide based on the successful model for planning the scholarly communication center at Rutgers University. The planning process at Rutgers is used as the springboard to identify issues, potential problems, and solutions in planning and development.

The internet has transformed the ways in which scholars and scientists share their findings with each other and the world, creating a scholarly communication environment that is both more complex and more effective than it was just a few years earlier. "Scholarly communication" itself has become an umbrella term for the increasingly complex ecosystem of publications, platforms, and tools that scholars, scientists, and researchers use to share their work with each other and with other interested readers. Scholarly Communication: What Everyone Needs to Know® offers an accessible overview of the current landscape, examining the state of affairs in the worlds of journal and book publishing, copyright law, emerging access models, digital archiving, university presses, metadata, and much more. Anderson discusses many of the problems that arise due to conflicts between the various values and interests at play within these systems: values that include the public good, academic freedom, the advancement of science, and the efficient use of limited resources. The implications of these issues extend far beyond academia. Organized in an easy-to-use question-and-answer format, this book provides a lively and helpful summary of some of the most important issues and developments in the world of scholarly communication -- a world that affects our everyday lives far more than we may realize.

Peer review processes in scholarly publishing are often hidden behind layers of opacity, leaving authors--and even reviewers--with many questions about the process. Open peer review is one way to improve the practice. It can shorten the time between manuscript submission and publication, hold reviewers accountable for their work, make more apparent the hidden labor of reviewing and editing, allow for collaborative discourse between authors and reviewers, and more. Even with these benefits, open peer review is not widely accepted or understood. Few academic librarians have experienced it, and each implementation can be different; anything open is highly nuanced and contextual. Ultimately, when we discuss "open," we must discuss the stories around it. What is the aim? What are the pitfalls? What are the gains? And are we trying to simply replicate a broken system instead of reinventing it? Stories of Open: Opening Peer Review through Narrative Inquiry examines the methods and processes of peer review, as well as the stories of those who have been through it. Eleven chapters are divided into three parts: * Part 1: Orientation. This section offers a conceptual frame for the book, providing details about narrative inquiry as a methodology and the author's worldview and research approach. * Part 2: The Stories (The Story Middle). What is the standard experience of peer review in our field? This section shares stories told from a variety of viewpoints and roles--author, editor, and referee--and explores how these roles interact, the tension between them, and the duality and sometimes multiplicity of roles experienced by any one individual. * Part 3: Coda. These four chapters tie the stories to the idea of open and look in detail at the research method, as well as imagine how we might move forward--reflecting on our past stories to create future ones. When we open ourselves to others' experiences, we reflect on our own. Stories of Open offers questions for reflection at the end of many chapters in order to assist in the continued exploration of your own experiences with peer review, and encourages the use of these reflections in creating new and improved peer review methods. This book is also available as an open access edition at https://bit.ly/ACRLStoriesofOpen

Open and Equitable Scholarly Communications is an action-oriented research agenda designed to provide practical, actionable information for academic librarians; include the perspectives of historically underrepresented communities in order to expand the profession's understanding of research environments and scholarly communication systems; and point librarians and other scholars toward important research questions to investigate.

ACRL is committed to working to reshape the current system of scholarly communication, focusing in the areas of education, advocacy, coalition building and research. In January 2002, ACRL launched its Scholarly Communication initiative, with goals of creating increased access to scholarly information; fostering cost-effective alternative means of publishing, especially those that take advantage of electronic information technologies; and encouraging scholars to assert greater control over scholarly communications.

Scholarly Communications: A History from Content as King to Content as Kingmaker traces the development of scholarly communications from the creation of the first scientific journal through the wide diversity of professional information services today. Unlike any other book, this work is an authoritative history by the past President of Elsevier and current Professor at Long Island University, which examines the changing nature of scholarly communication throughout its history, including its research importance as well as its business value. It specifically covers four key themes: the value of scholarly content and information at various stages of it development and use; the role that technology has played on the use, importance, and value of scholarly information and research communications; the changing business models affecting the system of scholarly communication from the way it is produced to how it is distributed and consumed; and some of the implications of mobile, cloud, and social computing technologies on the future of scholarly communications. Attention is paid to analyzing the structural changes that the professional publishing community now faces. Regazzi examines research content as an economic good; how technology and business models have greatly affected the value of scholarly publishing; and the drivers of the future sustainability of our system of scholarly communication.

Meeting the Needs of Student Users in Academic Libraries surveys and evaluates the current practice of learning commons and research services within the academic library community in order to determine if these learning spaces are functioning as intended. To evaluate their findings, the authors examine the measurement tools that libraries have used to evaluate usage and satisfaction, including contemporary anthropological studies that provide a more detailed view of the student’s approach to research. The book takes a candid look at these redesigns and asks if improvements have lived up to expectations of increased service and user satisfaction. Are librarians using these findings to inform the evolution and implementation of new service models, or have they simply put a new shade of lipstick on the pig? Takes an honest look at learning commons in academic libraries and discusses what is working and what is not Explores behind the statistics as to why users come to the library; does the librarians’ concept of ‘the library as place’ match user perception? Looks at the anthropology of the user to gauge satisfaction with the services and space provided by the library via recent survey findings