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The Challenge: Issues in Scholarly Communication
Scholarly communication is in flux. The current model of
scholarly communication has become economically unsustainable, restrictive,
and increasingly limited in its ability to make information accessible. The
NCSU Libraries directs its scholarly communication efforts to engage faculty,
staff, and students in services and programs to maximize the dissemination
and impact of the university's scholarship and ensure cost-effective access
to the scholarship of others - thereby ensuring sustainable forms of scholarly
communication that maximize the impact and benefits of scholarship.
Gift versus market economies. Traditionally, scholarly communication
has relied on the "gift" economy
of editing and peer review to journals where scholars perform significant percentages
of the work without payment to the individual nor the organization in which
they work. Libraries at those same institutions then have to purchase the
results, generated in large part by faculty and researchers, at escalating
prices. Increasing
volumes of scholarly materials add to the problem created by increasing per
unit costs, while some publishers are earning extraordinary profits from the
international, multi-billion dollar business of scholarly communication. Learn
more about the economics of scholarly communication.
New opportunities for the lifeblood of the academy. Digital
technology enables much broader distribution and impact for written scholarship,
scientific and social science data, and digital media - but this potential
remains unrealized due to economic and legal barriers. Your research results,
are therefore not reaching their potential impact. Driven largely by digital
and network technologies, scholarship of all sorts can be made available to
more readers, more quickly, at economically sustainable costs while preserving
critical features of quality control, long-term preservation, and measures
of impact and use. The dissemination of knowledge is an imperative of universities.
Systems that restrict the free flow of disseminating and accessing research
and ideas restrict the health of the entire university.
The facts:
- Price increases over the past two decades have averaged 7-10% annually
while the consumer price index has increased at 2-4%.
- The Libraries' budget has increased by an annual average of 3% over the
past decade while inflation for scholarly journals has increased by 9% .
- Price increases have accompanied the vast majority of mergers among commercial
scholarly journal publishers over the last decade.
- From 1986 to 2002, the number of journal titles published increased 58
percent and library journal expenditures increased 227 percent, but the number
of titles typically acquired only increased 9 percent (source: Association
of Research Libraries).
Creating Sustainable Change
A wide range of stakeholders are working to reshape scholarly communication,
including libraries, University faculty and administration, and publishers. Scholars
have the most impact on the system of scholarly communication as its major
producers and consumers of research and are in a position to take steps towards
more sustainable and productive models of scholarly communication. Those include:
Resources for More Information
See our links and readings for information from other organizations that are
addressing challenges in scholarly communication.
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