Possible models of scholarly publishing and library role

Melinščak Zlodi, Iva and Pažur, Ivana Possible models of scholarly publishing and library role., 2003 . In Libraries in the Digital Age (LIDA), Dubrovnik and Mljet (Croatia), 26-30 May 2003. [Conference poster]

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English abstract

Emergence of Internet (and especially World Wide Web) has brought new possibilities for profound transformation of scientific communication process. Scientific journals have been major means of scholarly communication throughout last three centuries. Although traditional scholarly journals are using many facilities of electronic publishing, they have inherited numerous disadvantages of their printed counterparts: expensiveness, time-consuming editing and publishing process resulting in delays of content delivery, inflexibility, complicated mechanisms of acquisition, access and archiving. Dissatisfaction with current model is clearly stressed out with syntagm "serial crisis"; which has become a common point in professional literature since the beginning of the last decade. New models are far more heterogeneous and flexible, and are taking full advantage of new online media. There are two main categories: eprint archives of scientific documents and alternative scientific journals. ArXiv (www.arxiv.org) has appeared in 1991 as first preprint archive, and since has become a major forum for dissemination of information in the field of theoretical physics. Electronic archives can be differentiated according to several criteria: 1. are they archiving peer reviewed literature or preprints (or both), 2. are they discipline based or institutional, 3. are they centralised or distributed systems. Although popularity of ArXiv has inspired development of numerous discipline based archives (CogPrints, CoRR, CPS, DList etc.), institutional archives appear to be much more vital today. DSpace (www.dspace.org), digital repository of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is the latest and most significant example. More and more journals unlike traditional scientific journals are evolving; journals whose content is freely available through WWW (they are financially independent from subscriptions), journals that incorporate multimedia and enable author-reader interaction, and journals that use the possibility of online editing and reviewing. Good example of such alternative approach is BioMed Central (www.biomedcentral.com), publisher of freely accessible biomedical journals. "Scholarly communication has been described as comprising four essential components: • Registration – establishing the intellectual priority of an idea, concept, or research; • Certification – certifying the quality of the research and/or the validity of the claimed finding; • Awareness – ensuring the dissemination and accessibility of research, providing a means by which researchers can become aware of new research; and • Archiving – preserving the intellectual heritage for future use." In traditional scientific publishing model, all four functions were fulfilled by scientific journal. Each future model will also have to ensure fulfilment of these functions, but it is already predictable that an "deconstructed scholarly publishing model" will take place, and particular functions will be carried out by different instances. Parallel with alternative publishing models, numerous initiatives and projects have appeared that aim to: accent dissatisfaction with existing publishing models, anticipate future development and accelerate it (SPARC, Open Archive Initiative, Public Library of Science, Budapest Open Access Initiative, RoMEO, FIGARO). Common motive of all these initiatives can be expressed by the phrase: "Returning scientific publishing to scientist". In most of the mentioned projects, members of librarian community are taking leading role. Also, by most of those initiatives, libraries are recognised as key actors in the process of "returning science to scientists". How can libraries contribute? What are librarians' responsibilities? First of all, librarians in scientific libraries should get acquainted with scientists' information seeking and publishing behaviour, their needs as well as their prejudices and inhibitions. Only then they can become their advisors and advocates of open access to information. Finally, they should activate their skills and knowledge in development of new models of scientific communication and publishing.

Item type:	Conference poster
Keywords:	electronic publishing, open access journals, eprint archives
Subjects:	H. Information sources, supports, channels. E. Publishing and legal issues.
Depositing user:	Iva Melinscak Zlodi
Date deposited:	10 Dec 2003
Last modified:	02 Oct 2014 11:57
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/10760/4348

References

Crow, R. (2002) The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper [Internet]. Washington, The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition. Available from: <http://www.arl.org/sparc/IR/IR_Final_Release_102.pdf> [Accessed 5 May, 2003]

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