Issues in Scholarly Communication
Principles & Objectives | Organizations & Directories
Selected Publishers & Open Access Providers | Recent Articles |
Other Resources
The current system of scholarly communication is showing many signs of crisis, including increasing control by commercial interests, rapidly rising prices for scholarly journals, declines in the publication of specialized monographs by university presses, and limits on fair use and public domain information. These trends are producing significant declines in access to scholarship. At the same time, many individuals and organizations are working for positive change in the system, creating new models of publication, such as open access journals, and advocating public policies that are more responsive to the needs of scholarship. Change is also being fostered by technological developments and economic necessity.
The Library actively supports reform of existing systems of formal scholarly communication, and invites all scholars to join the discussion and become active on these issues. This page is offered as guide to the many excellent resources, organizations, and recent initiatives that address the critical questions of how to best disseminate, organize, make accessible and archive scholarly works in all formats, so they are available to the broadest possible audience at a reasonable cost. Of utmost concern is the need to maintain rigorous peer review and scholarly evaluation, while increasing access and assuring preservation of the scholarly record.
We welcome your response, and encourage your active participation in alternative publishing ventures appropriate for your discipline. Please contact Ray English, Director of Libraries or Alison Ricker, Science Librarian, if you are interested in learning more. We welcome the opportunity to talk with you individually or in the context of a departmental meeting. Ray serves as Chair of the Association of College and Research Libraries Scholarly Communication Committee, and is also a member of the SPARC Steering Committee.
The Library supports the principles delineated by the Association of College and Research Libraries:- the broadest possible access to published research and other scholarly writings
- increased control by scholars and the academy over the system of scholarly publishing
- fair and reasonable prices for scholarly information
- competitive markets for scholarly information
- a diversified publishing industry
- open access to scholarship
- innovations in publishing that reduce distribution costs, speed delivery, and extend access to scholarly research
- quality assurance in publishing through peer review
- fair use of copyrighted information for educational and research purposes
- extension of public domain information
- preservation of scholarly information for long-term future use
- the right to privacy in the use of scholarly information.
Other principles:
Principles for Emerging Systems of Scholarly Publishing (Tempe principles)
Budapest Open Access Initiative
Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing
Association of College & Research Libraries. Scholarly Communication Committee (Ray English, Chair).
Association of Research Libraries, Office of Scholarly Communication. Issues in Scholarly Communication.
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).
Create Change: a resource for faculty and librarian action to reclaim scholarly communication.
SPARC. Declaring Independence: a guide to creating community-controlled science journals.
SPARC. Gaining Independence: a manual for planning the launch of a nonprofit electronic publishing venture.
SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Mailing list: SPARC-OANews@arl.org.
Directory of Open Access Journals
SELECTED PUBLISHERS & OPEN ACCESS
PROVIDERS
BioMed Central - the Open Access Publisher.
OAIster is a project of the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Services. Their goal is to create a collection of freely available, difficult-to-access, academically-oriented digital resources.
Public Library of Science Biology.
PubMed Central: an archive of life science journals.
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography
Perspectives in Electronic Publishing : a journal article database, with enhancements for exploring full-text papers, on scholarly electronic publishing. This database will lead to many of the articles listed below, as well as a host of others.
Butler, Declan, "Who will pay for open access?" Nature. October 9, 2003. (access for subscribers only)
Eisen, Michael, "Publish and be praised," The Guardian, October 9, 2003.
Houghton, John W., Colin Steele and Margaret Henty, "Changing Research Practices in the Digital Information and Communication Environment," Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training web site, August 2003.
Malakoff, David, "Opening the Books on Open Access," Science, October 24, 2003. (print issue available in the Science Library)
"Publishing Progress," The Guardian, October 13, 2003.
Suber, Peter. Open Access to Science and Scholarship.
Tamber, Pritpal S., "Open access to peer-reviewed research: making it happen," The Lancet, November 8, 2003. (OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center)
American
Geophysical Union DOI resolver
A search service specifically for AGU journals (Journal of Geophysical
Research, Geophysical Research Letters, etc.)
Budapest Open Access Initiative - Guide to Institutional Repository Software
CrossRef promotes the development and cooperative use of new and innovative technologies to speed and facilitate scholarly research.
Digital
Object Identifier (DOI) Resolver
This service translates a DOI and provides a link where you can find the
full-text of an article for which you only know the Digital Object Identifier.
DSpace (Durable Digital Depository)