“Scholarly communication is the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communication, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic mailing lists.” (ACRL, 2003)
The term scholarly communication may be understood (or misunderstood) differently by insiders and outsiders of library and scholarly communities, and might be heard as empty jargon to key stakeholders. This guide aims to create a common understanding of the term to enable effective communication about needs, as part of the PALNI Scholarly Communications Faculty Engagement Toolkit. It represents the viewpoints of faculty, students, and librarians (both scholarly communication-focused and other).
In scholarly communication, students...
Consume scholarly writings
Acquire information literacy skills
Produce scholarly writings
Publish/share scholarly writings
Deposit their scholarly writings for archiving
In scholarly communication, faculty members:
Consume scholarly writings in their discipline
Produce scholarly writings
Manage research data
Publish/share scholarly writings
Deposit their scholarly writings for archiving
Evaluate and provide peer-review to scholarly writings
Request and suggest scholarly resources for inclusion in the library collection
Assign readings and textbooks to their students
Assess and curate their scholarly writings for the purposes of promotion and tenure
In scholarly communications, librarians ...
Are aware of the research process and scholarly communication
Become aware of their role in scholarly communication; learn practices, competencies, and terminology
Liaise with faculty to determine their needs, connect them to resources, and advocate for open access
Build students’ information literacy skills, which are vital to a healthy scholarly communication environment (such as how to form a research question)
Collect, organize, and present scholarly resources for discovery and use
Produce scholarly writings
Publish/share scholarly writings
Deposit their scholarly writings for archiving
Specifically, scholarly communication librarians ...
Manage scholarly communication initiatives and provide services in the following areas:
Advocacy for open access to scholarship
Assessment (evaluating journals, analyzing metrics, etc.)
Data management
Institutional repositories
Open educational resources (OER)
Publishing
Copyright and Author’s Rights
Possess specific scholarly communication competencies
Are conversant in scholarly communication terminology
Understand the “serials crisis” that preceded the modern open access movement and prompted greater library participation in scholarly communication
Scholcomm Cycle by ACRL is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Scholarly Communication is often depicted as a cycle (see this Scholarly Kitchen blog post for more examples).
The definition of scholarly communication can be broken down into component parts: objects and actions.
Objects:
Scholarly writings (formal and informal): Peer-reviewed academic journal articles, books, conference papers, preprints and working papers, reports, encyclopedias, dictionaries, data and visualizations, blogs and discussion forums, multimedia presentations, etc.
Actions:
Creation: The research process (which may be considered a pre-creation step -- including literature review, designing a study/experiment and data collection/analysis); and authoring
Evaluation for Quality: Peer-review, research assessment
Dissemination: Publication and discovery.
Preservation: Archiving and data management
Scholarly Communication, or "Schol Comm" can have a language of its own. Here are some common terms to be aware of:
Check out the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI) Glossary for complete definitions and additional terms.
PALNI's Scholarly Communications LibGuide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. PALNI’s logos and branding template are not covered by this license, and all rights to such material are reserved. 
