Changing Face of Scholarly Communication and Its Impact on Library and Information Centres

Introduction

Scholarly communication involves publishing the research findings by academics and researchers in order to share and make available the academic or research output to the global community of researchers. According to Kauffer and Carley (1993), researchers publish their works with the purpose of gaining ownership of an idea, to get societal recognition, to claim priority for a discovery and to establish a community of authors and readers. Irrespective of the intention of the author, Scholarly communication results in diffusion of ideas and findings. Traditionally, for over hundred years, print has been the dominant medium for scholarly communication. The structure of the published literature gradually became more organized and the journal articles and conference proceedings emerged as primary channels for scholarly communication.

Emergence of Internet and World Wide Web has brought revolutionary changes in the process of scholarly communication. Increasing price of serial publications, time lag in the publication and readership and other associated problems were addressed by the electronic journals and open access initiatives. Other models like – Consortia and Institutional Repositories have evolved as a cost saving models and improving communication. The social networking sites on the Internet are also promoting scholarly communication to a great extent.

In the light of the changing technological environment this chapter depicts the history of scholarly publishing and reviews the changes that took place in the process of scholarly communication. The specific objectives of this paper are to –

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  Study the History of Scholarly publishing.

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  Examine the changes taking place in Scholarly Publishing with particular reference to the various stakeholders of the Scholarly publication process including scholars, record of scholarship, publishers, users and libraries.

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  Discuss the emerging trends in Scholarly Communication.

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  Examine the changing role of Library and Information Centres (LICs) in the emerging scholarly communication environment.