CHAPTER ONE

Introduction to Scholarly
Communication
 Historical Perspectives
Introduction to Scholarly Communication
• 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 list serves." This
document addresses issues related primarily to the formal
system of scholarly communication.
 Cont..
• One of the fundamental characteristics of scholarly
research is that it is created as a public good to facilitate
inquiry and knowledge.

• Scholarly communication is the process of academics,

scholars and researchers sharing and publishing their
research findings so that they are available to the wider
academic community and beyond.

• In addition, the vast majority of scholars develops and

disseminates their research with no expectation of
direct financial reward.
 Cont.
• The term “scholarly communication” is often used
as shorthand for peer-reviewed publishing,
traditionally the primary way a discipline advances.
• But at scholarly communication institution, the
focus of attention was on the process of
communication itself,
• in the broadest sense: how scholars find
information, create knowledge, and communicate
among themselves, with students, and beyond the
academy with other audiences.
 Cont.. 
• Another definition of scholarly communications is
the creation, transformation, dissemination and
preservation of knowledge related to teaching,
research and scholarly endeavors /activities/.
• Among the many scholarly communications issue:
– Author rights,
– Peer review process,
– Economics of scholarly resources,
– New models of publishing;
– Rights and access to federally funded research,
– Preservation of intellectual assets.
 Cont..

• "Scholarly Communication" describes a vital

component of the development of new knowledge
the system by which researchers share the results of
their research with their colleagues.
• Scholarly communication is a cyclical process, in
which content is generated, reviewed, disseminated,
acquired, preserved, discovered, accessed, and
assimilated for the advancement of scholarship. 
• The assimilation can potentially lead to generation
of new content and thus start a new iteration of the
process (or lifecycle).
Cont..
 Cont..
• There are different stakeholders involved in the process including
authors, publishers, libraries, researchers, higher education
institutions, and funding agencies.
• The following present selected resources for some of the topics
covered by scholarly communication:
– Publication support (Article writing):-
– Publication support (Book writing):-
– Citation analysis and bibliometrics:- A citation analysis is a
bibliometric study that measures how often a published work is cited. 
– Open access:-
• General Discussions
• Research Funders' Access Policies
• Open Access Journal Publishing
• Updates and Further Readings
 Cont..
• Digital repositories:- Digital repositories expedite or speed up
communication among researchers by archiving and providing
online access to publications and research materials. 
– Two major types of digital repository are institutional repository and
disciplinary repository.
– An online, searchable, web-accessible database containing works of
research deposited by scholars.
– Purpose is both increased access to scholarship and long-term
preservation.

• Digital preservation: - Digital preservation ensures the ongoing

management of digital resources over time with a view to
retaining their intellectual content, authenticity, and accessibility
for a variety of uses.
 What's a Scholarly Journal?
Characteristics of a scholarly journal
• Scholarly journals--sometimes called "academic journals" or
"peer-reviewed journals"--are the best sources for in-depth,
carefully-researched, expert information on academic topics.
• Written by Experts 
• Scholarly journals contain articles on a narrowly-defined topic
written by people who are experts
• Unlike in a newspaper or magazine--where a science writer is
likely to be a professional journalist, but not necessarily an expert
in science--the authors of scholarly journals always have deep-
running knowledge of a specific topic or academic discipline.
• And because the articles in a scholarly journal are written by
experts on a given subject, you can be highly confident in the
reliability, accuracy, and quality of the information you find in a
scholarly journal.
 Peer-Reviewed 
• scholarly journals also ensure high quality by using
peer review.
• Unlike in a newspaper or magazine, where an editor
or editors choose what stories are published, a
scholarly journal relies on panels of experts--peer
reviewers--who know the subjects covered in the
journal just as well as the authors who have submitted
articles in hope of publication.
• Peer reviewers are typically professors, scientists,
and expert researchers who are well-respected
within their fields.
 Cont..

• Before an article is published in a scholarly

journal, all of the information in it is rigorously
checked over, analyzed, and evaluated by the
peer reviewers.

• Peer review is a well-accepted indicator of quality

scholarship. Peer review is the process by which
an author's peers, recognized researchers in the
field, read and evaluate a paper (article) submitted
for publication and recommend whether the paper
should be published, revised, or rejected.
 Cont..
• The peer reviewers judge the article not only in terms of its
accuracy and reliability, but also in terms of its relevance
and importance.
• Peer reviewers are looking for articles that meet a very high
standard of quality, and which also contribute something
new and significant to their field or discipline.
• An article will be published if and only if an article meets
the high standards of a peer review board.

• Articles accepted for publication through a peer review

process implicitly meet the discipline's expected standards
of expertise.
 Cont..
• Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more
people of similar competence to the producers of
the work.
• It is a widely accepted indicator of quality scholarship
in a discipline or field. Articles accepted for
publication through a peer review process meet the
discipline's expected standards of expertise.
• Peer-reviewed (or refereed) journals are scholarly
journals that only publish articles that have passed
through this review process.
 How to recognize an article from a
scholarly journal?

• Is the author of the article listed?

• Does the author of the article have strong credentials in
the subject area of the journal? Is he or she an expert?
• Does the title of the publication include a narrowly-
defined subject?
• Does the article include a works cited page, footnotes, or
endnotes?
• Does the article use academic or scientific jargon?
 Cont..
• Would a general reader without detailed
knowledge of the article's subject area be able to
easily understand the contents of the article?
• Are there few or no advertisements in the
journal? And if there are advertisements, are they
for products directly related to the topic of the
journal?
• Are there few or no pictures in the journal?
• Does the journal list its peer reviewers?
 Methods of scholar communication
• The most common method of scholarly
communication is by writing up the findings of
research into an article to be published in a
scholarly journal;
• however, there are many other methods, such as
publishing a book, book chapter, conference
paper, and - particularly in
the arts and humanities - multimedia formats
such as sound and video recordings.
• Scholarly communication is the life-blood of the
university’s teaching and research mission.
 Cont..

• With the advent or introduction of new technologies, the nature

of scholarship and scholarly communication has expanded
beyond traditional print formats to include other means of
dissemination:
– Email,
– Pre-print servers,
– E-journals,
– E-books,
– E-reserves,
– Distance learning, etc.
• In an online environment, issues of copyright, intellectual
property rights, and the long-term preservation of digital assets
are posing new challenges to faculty, administrators, and
librarians.
 Scholarly communication crisis
• Journal costs have consistently risen above inflation in recent
years.
• High costs of journals have led to universities not being able to
subscribe to the journals they require.
• Funders and tax payers not having access to the research they
pay for.
• Non associated universities have no access to current research,
• As journals move to 'online' only, preservation is a major issue
• Research paper may require years of work and require a lot
of money,
 Cont..

Some of the present-day challenge that beset scholarly

communication include:
• The high cost of scholarly journals
• The explosion or large number of scholarly output
• Inadequacy or shortage of peer /examine or
review
• Restrictive access to published content
• Authors cede to publishers control over their
intellectual property
• Unduly or overly restrictive copyright laws
 Cont..
• A lack of secure digital archiving strategies for the
scholarly record
• A proliferation of ephemeral or temporary channels of
scholarly discourse including email, blogs, WebPages,
etc.
• Limited public access to scholarly information,
including taxpayer funded research
• A lack of adequate or respected output channels for
scholarship in certain disciplines,
• Myriad or countless challenges faced by university
presses.
 National and International Trends
 Open Access Journals:Because open access
journals are funded by author submission fees
rather than reader subscriptions.
 Archiving Mandates
 Author Rights
 Peer Review: Peer review is valuable research
practice in that it protects the public from
dubious/ uncertain ideas and findings,
 Hands-on Index
• In database design, a list of keys (or keywords),
each of which identifies a unique record. Indices
make it faster to find specific records and to sort
records by the index field that is, the field used to
identify each record.

• To create an index for a database, or to find

records using an index.
 Cont..
1. Alphabetically arranged list of items (such as
names or terms) given at the end of a printed
text with page numbers on which the item can
be found.
2. Statistical device which summarizes a collection
of data (usually related to the price or quantity
of a 'basket' of goods and services) in a single
base figure.
 Cont..
• A citation index is a kind of bibliographic
database, an index of citations between
publications, allowing the user to easily establish
which later documents cite which earlier
documents.
 Hands on database

• As more articles are published electronically as full text

(complete article), clues from the publication itself are not
available for the user

• To identify whether the article is from a scholarly journal

or not.
• Most genuinely scholarly sources will have a bibliography
with thirty or more sources.
• The length of the article can be an indicator of type--longer
articles (more than ten pages) will tend to be scholarly.
• The journal publisher's own Web site often will indicate
whether or not the journal is peer reviewed (scholarly). 
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