What is Functions of the Scholarly Communication

Information and communication technologies seem to bring new dynamics to the established, but partly deadlocked, system of scholarly communication. Technologies are the basis for new publication forms and services which seem to enable a faster and more cost-efficient distribution of research results. Up to now new forms of scholarly communication have been described in the literature only in the form of single and often anecdotic reports. Despite the large number of papers in that area, no classification scheme for new forms of scholarly communication can be found. Therefore, this chapter aims at presenting such a classification scheme. It allows the description of new forms of scholarly communication in a standardized way. A structured comparison of new activities is possible. For this purpose, original publication media on the one hand and complementary services on the other are differentiated. With the help of morphological boxes, characteristics of both kinds of new means of scholarly communication are presented.