Why Books are Important in the Scholarly Communication System in Social Sciences and Humanities

This paper is based upon the 2021 Miles Conrad Award Lecture that was given by Heather Joseph at the second annual NISO Plus conference held virtually from February 22–25, 2021. The lecture provided a brief look back at the emergence of the Open Access (OA) movement in scholarly communication beginning with the E-biomed proposal in 1999 that was shortly followed by the Budapest Declaration released on February 14, 2002, through how far it has come in almost two decades. The author notes that the initial reaction to OA was often just a quick dismissal of it as an idealistic pipe dream and as the idea began to grow in popularity, skepticism changed into hostility. OA was criticized as being too disruptive to the then-existent publishing paradigm. Yet, far from disappearing, the movement towards the open sharing of knowledge steadily advanced. Today conversations about “why” or “whether” to open up the scholarly communication system have evolved into conversations about how best to do it. The author notes that the Budapest Declaration underscored that the end goal of OA is to empower individuals and communities around the world with the ability to share their knowledge as well as to share in accessing the knowledge of others. She warns that members of the global scholarly communication community must look critically at who currently can participate in the production of knowledge, and whose voices are represented in the “global intellectual conversation” that need to be facilitated. Whose voices are still are left out because structural barriers – be they technical, financial, legal, cultural, or linguistic – prevent them from joining?

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How to fill the information gap: Open Access for the social sciences and humanities

Septentrio Conference Series ◽

10.7557/5.5624 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Elisabeth Ernst ◽

Judith Schulte

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Open Access ◽

Interest Group ◽

Scholarly Communication ◽

European Research ◽

Social Sciences And Humanities ◽

Lack Of Information ◽

Information Gap ◽

Research Organizations ◽

The Social

Researchers not actively seeking information about Open Access and scholars who are not actively informed by their institutions might be concerned about publishing Open Access due to lack of information. Questions such as “Why is Open Access necessary and what do I gain?”, “What happens to my rights as an author?”, and “Why was I not told about this discount before I paid the full APC from my project fund?” might come up. This workshop is directed at representatives of research organizations and universities (e.g. Open Access offices, project coordinators, and interested researchers) on the topic of helping researchers finding answers to these questions and advocating for Open Access in the humanities and social sciences. The workshop seeks to discuss aspects that have been identified by participants priorly as most pressing to discuss. We therefore invite all registered participants to fill in a short survey by 12 October 2020. For any questions, please don’t hesitate contacting Elisabeth Ernst and Judith Schulte ([email protected]) OPERAS is the European Research Infrastructure for open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities. Its Special Interest Group on “Advocacy” works on topics related to the communication and advocating of Open Access in the social sciences and humanities and of those disciplines.

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Toward rebuilding scholarly communication system : The role of university press

Journal of Information Processing and Management ◽

10.1241/johokanri.51.69 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 51 (1) ◽

pp. 69-73

Author(s):

Yashio UMEMURA

Keyword(s):

Communication System ◽

Scholarly Communication ◽

Scholarly Communication System

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The future of open access and library publishing

New Library World ◽

10.1108/nlw-05-2014-0049 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 115 (5/6) ◽

pp. 225-236 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Faye Chadwell ◽

Shan C. Sutton

Keyword(s):

Open Access ◽

Academic Libraries ◽

Communication System ◽

Design Methodology ◽

Scholarly Communication ◽

Academic Librarians ◽

Research Articles ◽

Content Type ◽

Dramatic Shift ◽

Scholarly Communication System

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to provide a vision for how academic libraries can assume a more central role in a future where open access (OA) publishing has become the predominant model for disseminating scholarly research articles. Design/methodology/approach – The authors analyze existing trends related to OA policies and publishing, with an emphasis on the development of repositories managed by libraries to publish and disseminate articles. They speculate that these trends, coupled with emerging economic realities, will create an environment where libraries will assume a major role in the OA publishing environment. The authors provide some suggestions for how this major role might be funded. Findings – The trends and economic realities discussed will lead to new roles for academic librarians and will change the existing roles. Originality/value – This article provides insights for academic libraries and their institutions to consider a dramatic shift in the deployment of subscription dollars from a dysfunctional and largely closed scholarly communication system to one that provides open, unfettered access to research results.

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In the News

College & Research Libraries News ◽

10.5860/crln.80.7.369 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 80 (7) ◽

pp. 369

Author(s):

David Free

Keyword(s):

Communication System ◽

Scholarly Communication ◽

Scholarly Communication System

Welcome to the July/August 2019 issue of C&RL News. Following the ACRL 2019 conference this April, Recasting the Narrative is still on the minds of many ACRLers. In this month’s Scholarly Communication column “Renewing the system,” 2019–20 ACRL President Karen Munro discusses why it is important to examine the scholarly communication system in order to make it more equitable.

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E-publishing development and changes in the scholarly communication system

Ciência da Informação ◽

10.1590/s0100-19652007000100012 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 36 (1) ◽

pp. 158-166 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Patricia Nascimento Souto

Keyword(s):

Open Access ◽

Information And Communication Technologies ◽

Communication System ◽

Business Models ◽

Scholarly Communication ◽

Academic Community ◽

Scientific Publishing ◽

Trade Offs ◽

Scholarly Communication System ◽

Publishing Business

New and alternative scientific publishing business models is a reality driven mostly by the information and communication technologies, by the movements towards the recovery of control of the scientific communication activities by the academic community, and by the open access approaches. The hybrid business model, mixing open and toll-access is a reality and they will probably co-exist with respective trade-offs. This essay discusses the changes driven by the epublishing and the impacts on the scholarly communication system stakeholders' interrelationships (publishers-researchers, publishers-libraries and publishers-users interrelationships), and the changes on the scientific publishing business models, followed by a discussion of possible evolving business models. Whatever the model which evolves and dominates, a huge cultural change in authors' and institutions publishing practices will be necessary in order to make the open access happen and to consolidate the right business models for the traditional publishers. External changes such as policies, rewarding systems and institutions mandates should also happen in order to sustain the whole changing scenario.

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The Rise and Fall of Uncitedness

College & Research Libraries ◽

10.5860/crl.58.1.19 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 58 (1) ◽

pp. 19-29 ◽

Cited By ~ 32

Author(s):

Charles A. Schwartz

Keyword(s):

Communication System ◽

Large Scale ◽

Information Science ◽

Scholarly Communication ◽

Library And Information Science ◽

General Phenomenon ◽

History Of ◽

Scholarly Communication System

Large-scale uncitedness refers to the remarkable proportion of articles that do not receive a single citation within five years of publication. Equally remarkable is the brief and troubled history of this area of inquiry, which was prone to miscalculation, misinterpretation, and politicization. This article reassesses large-scale uncitedness as both a general phenomenon in the scholarly communication system and a case study of library and information science, where its rate is 72 percent.

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Open+: Versioning Open Social Scholarship

KULA knowledge creation dissemination and preservation studies ◽

10.5334/kula.39 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

pp. 18

Author(s):

Alyssa Arbuckle

Keyword(s):

Open Access ◽

Communication System ◽

Research Output ◽

Scholarly Communication ◽

Publicly Funded ◽

Crucial Element ◽

Funded Research ◽

Access System ◽

Scholarly Communication System

Advocates of the Open Access (OA) movement have been fighting for free and unfettered access to research output since the early 1990s. Open access is a crucial element of a fair, efficient scholarly communication system where all are able to find, interpret, and use the results of publicly-funded research. Universal open access is more possible now than ever before, thanks to networked technologies and the development of open scholarship policies. But what happens after access to research is provided? In this paper I argue that versioning scholarship across varying modes and formats would move scholarly communication from a straightforward open access system to a more engaging environment for multiple communities.

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