Scholarly Communication Librarian Katie Pierce Farrier
ACRL describes scholarly
communication 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 (Association of College & Research
Libraries, “Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication
1,” 2003).
Scholarly Communication is
broad topic with many overlapping goals. Copyright impacts author rights, which
impact open access, which impact bibliometrics, and so on. Depending on the
needs of the faculty and the goals of the university, scholarly communication
can help faculty and researchers:
1. Be more
successful and impactful in their fields.
Scholarly
Communication can help researchers at any stage, from finding open resources to
begin initial research, to understanding your rights as an author and finding
journals to publish in, to long term storage and dissemination of your work.
2. Avoid
predatory publishers.
I
can offer publishing guidance if you’re being asked to peer edit for a journal
on topics you don’t specialize in, or you’re looking at publishing in a journal
that you are unsure about their peer review, editing, or publishing standards.
3. Protect
author rights.
I
can help authors understand the full extent of their rights, help find
addendums to protect author rights, and help find publishers that allow authors
to keep more rights. I can also offer guidance on different types of licensing
options for their works.
4. Track
a researcher’s impact and bibliometrics.
There
are several tools, databases, and ways to measure the impact of your work, such
as how many times an article has been cited and/or downloaded. I can also help
find a specific journal’s impact factor and other citation metrics.
5. Manage
the research data life cycle.
I
can help find open data sources for researchers, help find repositories to
house your data and share with other researchers, help manage the research data
life cycle, offer advice on navigating funder mandates for storage, access, and
retention of data.
6. Find
and promote Open Access (OA) and Open Educational Resources (OER).
I
function as an advocate for OA resources. I can advise researchers on the
benefits of publishing in OA journals, the different types of OA journals, and
I can help faculty find OERs for their classes.
7. Understand
copyright.
I
can offer people guidance on copyright, public domain, fair use and its
applications for the classroom.
