About Scholarly Communication

Scholarly communications pertains to the creation, transformation, dissemination and preservation of knowledge related to teaching, research and scholarly activities.*

What is the scholarly publishing crisis?

It is the loss of access to the scholarly research literature due to:

1. Unsustainable traditional publishing models and shrinking library budgets. Journal subscription costs have risen sharply and commercial publishers control an increasing number of publications through mergers and acquisitions. Combine this with declining library budgets, and the results are major cuts in journal subscriptions and monograph purchases. Read more at The Facts: The Economics of Publishing.
2. Control of copyrights. Publishers traditionally require authors to sign over their intellectual property rights. This limits access to research, and scholars often find themselves requesting or purchasing access to post their own work on web pages or in course packets. Find out more about how to Manage Your Intellectual Property.
3. Impact factors and publishing in prestigious journals are constant concerns for tenure track faculty. Learn more about the impact on the scholarly communication crisis from this University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign site.

What can you do?

As scholars, you add most of the value to scholarly communication by creating, filtering, and consuming scholarship. You can help create and support alternatives to the present system, and increase the reach and impact of your scholarship.

• Negotiate with publishers to retain certain copyrights, e.g., the right to post your work in an institutional repository or distribute copies to your classes.
• Use alternative publishing options.
• Support sustainable scholarly communication by wielding your influence with publishers.**

*Bernard Becker Medical Library, Washington University, St. Louis
**University of California Office of Scholarly Communication