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Advancing the Research Mission

  • Changes in Scholarly Communication

Changes in Scholarly Communication

OCLC Research Library Partnership

This OCLC Research Library Partnership activity will explore recent changes in modes and emphases of scholarly communication, changes which reflect a shifting center of gravity from the journal-centric model to alternatives (e.g., deposit in repositories for open access), the trend toward collaborations that disregard institutional boundaries, and scholars' embrace of social media. The initial investigation is a study of disciplinary repositories, focusing on sustainability.

Background

Scholarly communication is one of the cornerstones of academia. Its development over recent decades has, for the most part, centered around peer-reviewed journal articles. An ecosystem of journal publishers, abstracting and indexing services, and other support providers has developed. The networked world in which researchers now work has allowed for other patterns to emerge. The Open Access movement is providing an alternative to the journal-centric model. The connection that researchers have always felt with others in their field is increasingly manifesting itself in direct collaborations that ignore institutional boundaries. New modes of communicating (blogs, e-mail lists, Twitter and so forth) are flourishing.

Impact

OCLC Research and the OCLC Research Library Partnership will explore some of these new directions. While the first activity will explore sustainability of disciplinary repositories, we welcome suggestions for other activities. The goal of this work is to help libraries find new ways to support their institutions' research mission.

Outputs

Related Work

This activity is a part of the Research Information Management Theme, and is related to the following activities:

Most recent updates: Page content: 2011-12-15

Lead

Ricky Erway

Team Members

Jennifer Schaffner

This activity is a part of the Advancing the Research Mission theme.

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