The UK's Research Information Network (RIN), together with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and other institutions, has announced a new portfolio of research projects related to e-publishing. The portfolio is focused on transitions to electronic-only publication, gaps in access, the dynamics of improving access to research papers, and the future of scholarly communication.
The other participating institutions include the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), the Publishers Association (PA), the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM), the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC), the British Library (BL), Research Libraries UK (RLUK), the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL), SPARC Europe, Research Councils UK (RCUK), Universities UK (UUK) and the Wellcome Trust.
The scholarly communications landscape has been transformed over the past few years, in the UK and across the world, it has been observed. Technological change is bringing profound changes in the roles that researchers, funders, research institutions, publishers, aggregators, libraries and other intermediaries play in disseminating and providing access to quality-assured research outputs, in their goals and expectations, and in the services they provide and use. There are shared ambitions for significantly enhanced access, but no consensus on how best to achieve it, it has been noted.
Understanding the nature and implications of these changes, and the inter-relationships between them, is thus seen to be of critical importance to exploit the potential of new technologies and services to the full.
The joint portfolio will focus initially on four projects with more to follow. The
'E-only scholarly journals: overcoming the barriers' project will investigate the barriers - from the perspectives of libraries, publishers and users - to moving to e-only publishing of scholarly journals, and ways in which those barriers might be overcome. This report is available for download at http://www.rin.ac.uk/system/files/attachments/E-only_report_for_screen.pdf.
'Gaps in access' will investigate the extent to which journal articles and other research outputs are available, or not, to different parts of the research and other communities which could make use of them; and to identify priorities in seeking to fill gaps in access, barriers to filling them, and actions that might be taken to that end.
'Dynamics of improving access to research papers' will provide evidence for a better understanding of the dynamics of the transitions needed to reach a selection of plausible end-points, and the costs, benefits, opportunities and risks that this entails.
'Futures for scholarly communications' will seek to develop a series of challenging scenarios for scholarly communications in 10 years' time, bearing in mind current trends and underlying drivers in user cultures, needs and expectations; and likely - and more speculative - developments in technologies and services. Through the process of developing the scenarios the group shall promote constructive dialogue between stakeholders, and seek to establish priorities for action.
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