Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) has revolutionized the way we collect,
store, share and communicate information today. This has impacted the scholarly
communication process as well, especially from the publishing and dissemination
standpoint.
The scholarly publishing system at present is an aggregated one which combines four functions of journal publication i.e. registration, certification (peer review); awareness (communications); and archiving in one package. Internet and other ICT applications provide an opportunity for unlocking the traditional scholarly publishing system and providing new ways to fulfil these four functions.
Technology
also provides new models of dissemination with more control on the part of the
researchers, academics and the libraries. Due to issues of affordability and
with the intension for providing wider access to all readers, there has been a
shift in peer reviewed journals towards open access (OA) in recent years.
New
web technologies especially Web 2.0 has brought social media in the forefront
with its intrinsic features like openness, interactivity, participatory and
user-centric activities. This has brought in a radical change in the
information behaviour of the researchers and academics. They can now join all
kinds of virtual scientific communities and publish their findings in blogs,
wikis, and plethora of other platforms.
Open
access is in for the scholarly community as it gives them greater freedom to
share their ideas as well as their research work. They can now present their
work or ideas not only in writing but also through other multimedia channels
like audio, broadcast, video, etc. Web 2.0 tools have made knowledge sharing
multi-dimensional and participatory providing wider channels for communication.
Social
media with tools like blogs, microblogs (Twitter), wikis, cloud computing,
podcasts/video-sharing (YouTube), image sharing (Flicker) and community
forum/social networks (e.g. MySpace, Facebook) provides a platform for
individual users not only to fulfil their basic data storage requirements, but
even more towards their psychological experience requirements of being
discovered, appreciated and recognized. With the development of online
publication scenario, online writing is becoming a popular style of scholarly
communication. Blogs and wikis provide suitable platform to cultivate the habit
of online and collective scholarly writing, especially where there is intense
collaboration in the research work.
Availability
of more online references and multimedia resources through social media is also
forcing the scholarly community towards online writing.
References
and Further Reading
Abel,
R., Newlin, L. W., Strauch, K. P., & Strauch, B. (2002). Scholarly
publishing: Books, journals, publishers, and libraries in the twentieth
century. New York: Wiley.
Andersen,
D. L. (2004). Digital scholarship in the tenure, promotion, and review process.
Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe.
Borgman,
C. L. (1990). Scholarly communication and bibliometrics. Newbury Park: Sage
Publications.
Braxton,
J. M. (1999). Perspectives on scholarly misconduct in the sciences. Columbus:
Ohio State University Press.
Chan,
Leslie. (n.d.). Exciting Potential of Scholarly Electronic Journals. CAUT.
Davis-Kahl,
S., & In Hensley, M. K. (2013). Common ground at the nexus of information
literacy and scholarly communication.
Joshi,
Meenakshi. (2000). Scholarly Communication and the Internet.
(Http://hdl.handle.net/1849/38.) drtc.
Shorley,
D., & In Jubb, M. (2013). The future of scholarly communication.
Sompel,
Herbert van de, Payette, Sandy, Erickson, John, Lagoze, Carl, & Warner,
Simeon. (n.d.). Rethinking scholarly communication: building the system that
scholars deserve.
The Tutorial is customized from UNESCO’s Open Access
(OA) Curriculum modules prepared for academicians and library professionals for
promotion and propagation of open access movement