Scholarly communication

Scholarly communication is the process by which academics, scholars and researchers share and publish their research findings so that they are available to the wider academic community and beyond.

Scholarly communication can be defined as “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communication, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic listservs.” Among the many scholarly communications issues include author rights, the peer review process, the economics of scholarly resources, new models of publishing (including open access and institutional repositories), rights and access to federally funded research and preservation of intellectual assets.

Common methods of scholarly communication include writings in a scholarly journals, books, E-only journals, reviews, preprints and working papers, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and annotated content, data, blogs, discussion forums, professional and scholarly hubs and conference papers. Other forms, particularly in the arts and humanities include multimedia formats such as sound and video recordings. At the outset, the goal of most e-journal editors was the education of those who subscribed to their publication. Through this medium, users had an incentive to access the Internet and to become familiar with navigating the Web. The editors’ goals were similar to those of the library. Both wanted to provide access to journals, in order to help readers and patrons gain the knowledge to conduct further online research independently. Over time the role of the e-journal has transformed from an innovative education tool, to the primary means for delivery of scholarly content.

The term "scholarly communications" has been in common usage at least since the mid-1970s, in recent years there has been widespread belief that the traditional system for disseminating scholarship has reached a state of crisis (often referred to as the "publishing crisis" or "serials crisis")

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