Open Scholarly Communication: both authors and readers enjoy the benefits

Common methods of scholarly communication are publishing research papers/articles, book reviews, primarily in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, and books. Besides papers/ articles, book reviews, the other textual formats of communicating information are: Preprints, working papers, reports, encyclopedias, dictionaries, sound, and video recordings, data visualization formats, blogs, and discussion forums, etc.

ACRL (2003) defines it as “Scholarly communication is the system through which research findings and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the research community, and preserved for future use.”1

Open Scholarly communications

The word “Open” in open scholarly communication denotes the open access of scholarly communication. The knowledge which is open to all for free without any restrictions. It is available to the wider scholarly community to use for the sustainable development of society. Generally Open access involves making scholarly information available free of charge, immediately and in an on-line format.

On the page of Roger Williams University, "Open Access in Scholarly Communications" is defined as "opening up the research process for quicker dissemination of research findings and rapid discovery by making scholarly information available online, free and unrestricted.”2

According to Bohyun Kim (2021) “Open scholarship aims at producing transparent and accessible knowledge by sharing research outputs in various types for access and reuse by others from that sharing.”3

It is the process of publishing and sharing the research findings of researchers to be available to the wider research community and beyond that. The aim is to contribute to the sustainable development of society by keeping close relationships between teaching and research and through the pursuit, dissemination, and application of knowledge. The benefits of Open Scholarly Communications are enjoyed by both authors and readers.

https://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/whitepapers/principlesstrategies
https://www.rwu.edu/library/help-and-services/information-faculty/scholarly-communication-open-access/open-access-scholarly-communication
https://www.infotoday.com/OnlineSearcher/Articles/Technology-and-Power/Open-Technologies- for-Open-Knowledge-146632.shtml

Principles of Scholarly Communication Services:

These principles aim to ensure that the Scholarly Communication Services should be open, transparent and support the core values of scholarship. As we know that future research needs the fundamental base of previous research, that needs to be communicated to all research communities beyond any geographical, financial or personal interests. Scholarly communication should always be in the very interest of Scholarship.

In September 2017, COAR (Confederation of Open Access Repositories) and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) pledged to collaborate with others on the same issue and published a joint statement and accordingly,

COAR and SPARC have developed seven Good Practice Principles for Scholarly Communication Services.1

These principles are based on the the "Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructure"2 developed by Bilder G, Lin J, Neylon C (2015)

https://www.coar-repositories.org/news-updates/good-practice-principles-for-scholarly-communication-services-2/

Initiatives to support Open Scholarly Communications:

Open Access Week: It is an annual scholarly communication event that occurs across the world in the month of October. It includes talks, seminars, symposia, or the announcement focusing on Open access and related topics. "http://www.openaccessweek.org/"

Open Access Initiative: The Budapest Open Access Initiative gave momentum to the Open Scholarly communication. It came in to existence after a meeting held in Budapest by Open Society Institute (now Open Society Foundations [OSF]) on December 1-2, 2001. The aim was to accelerate progress in the international effort to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the internet.

Open Access repositories: OAR lead to open scholarly communication as they collect, preserve, and provide free access to articles and research papers. Open Access repositories may be discipline-based or institution-based also there are preprints repositories like arXiv, medRxiv, openly accessible to all . Over 2500 repositories are listed in the OpenDoar (a global directory of Open Access Repositories).

Publishing Open Acess Journals: To make scholarly content openly available to the public, many institutions host peer reviewed journals, as well as teaching materials and book series through a software "Open Journal Systems" (OJS). It is a collaborative, open source software project maintained by the Public Knowledge Project. Publishing in Gold and Green Open access journals and PlanS (an initiative for Open Access Publishing) share one aim of making scholarly publication available freely to all.

Open educational resources (OER): Textbooks, course readings, and a wide range of other learning content that are created with the intention of being freely available to users anywhere. They are copyrightable works licensed in a manner that provides users with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R’s of Openness: Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute

DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals): DOAJ is a community-driven database of over 15 000 peer-reviewed open access journals from all the countries and in all languages covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities.

CrossRef: It is a community-driven, not-for-profit membership organization that aims to make scholarly communication better. Crossref is registered as Publishers International Linking Association, Inc. (PILA) in New York, USA.

MOU between DOAJ and Crossref:

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and CrossReference run by Publishers International Linking Association, Inc. (PILA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on June 22, 2021.

The agreement will enable:

Rapid and easy discovery of contents of the journals indexed in DOAJ through the use of CrossRef metadata.
Exchange of services and information on various issues of technical and strategic matters between both organizations.
Coordination in developing training materials, new services and features.
New research to find out practical and technical issues in Journals and metadata covered by each organization.
Sharing strategies, data and resources in order to lower barriers for emerging publishers across the world.
Encourage an open, fair and fully inclusive future for scholarly communication.

Role of Libraries in Open Scholarly Communication:

Academic and research libraries are also increasingly recognizing the importance of Open Scholarly Communication and supporting open access of scholarly communication by launching institutional repositories, creating open access publishing funds, formulating institute open access policies. Libraries are providing support to students, faculty, and administration in Scholarly Publishing (manuscript preparation, formatting, journal submission). They now play an important role in the dissemination of research outputs and have emerged as a Liaison Librarians, open access ambassadors and open access policy makers, metadata providers, etc.

Open availability of scholarly material can have a significant impact on education, health and innovation and can be of benefit to the society in their overall development.

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