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. One of the fundamental characteristics of scholarly research is that it is created to facilitate inquiry and knowledge. The majority of scholars develop and disseminate their research with little or no expectation of direct financial reward.
The original intents of publishing in peer-reviewed scholarly journals include sharing scholarship, establishing priority in making discoveries, and initiating conversations among scholars. Such publication has now become a tenure requirement for faculty in many disciplines. It is also a strong path toward receiving recognition and gaining prestige. These pressures have created a system where faculty typically sign away rights to their scholarship in exchange for publication. Scholars who sign away rights can find themselves requesting permission from publishers to place their own articles on a personal web site, in a course pack or an institutional repository, or to distribute copies to colleagues.
Rewards in academe are often based on recognition for scholarly publication. Younger faculty members working toward tenure and promotion need to publish in recognized journals. Prestigious journals, however, are often owned by large high-profit corporations, which tend to charge higher prices than scholarly societies. Publishing in journals owned by high-profit corporations helps perpetuate a system of high prices, restrictive access and undesirable licensing terms. At the same time, some scholars may be hesitant to submit their work to new-model, electronic-only publishers owing to concerns over the reputation of new journals. Will publication in an open access journal be valued less by tenure review boards than publication in a traditional print journal? ISI, publisher of Journal Citation Reports and Web of Knowledge, is just starting to include open access titles in their indexes, but early results indicate that open access titles are being well cited and can increase the reach of scholars' work.
New alternatives for the dissemination of scholarly information are emerging. Internet technologies and new business models could increase the reach of scholarly communication. Open Access (OA) refers to scholarly literature that is freely and unrestrictedly accessible on the Internet. This includes peer-reviewed literature as well as author pre- and post-prints and other materials made available in open access journals or digital repositories. An example of open access publishing is the NIH Public Access Policy, which ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. Several universities (Harvard, MIT, and Kansas among others) have passed open access mandates that require all faculty publications to be deposited in their institutional repository. The University of Iowa's institutional repository is Iowa Research Online.
Journal prices have increased significantly for almost two decades. Library budgets have not enjoyed similar increases. Academic libraries are purchasing fewer journal titles and monographs. Some primary publishers are aggregating or "bundling" electronic content, offering libraries only pre-determined "all or nothing" packages of journal titles. Libraries lose the ability to select titles of most value to the local community and could commit larger portions of their budgets to fewer publishers. Mergers and acquisitions between commercial publishers are increasing. Mergers and acquisitions typically result in higher journal prices. Read more about journal costs and pricing on the Resources web page.