Scholarly communication is the system through which research is created, evaluated, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes formal (publication in peer-reviewed journals) and informal means of communication (electronic mailing lists, social networking sites for researchers – ResearchGate, Academia; using social media to promote research – Twitter, Facebook).
Scholarly research is created as a public good, a substantial portion of which is publicly supported through state support of researchers at state higher-education institutions. The formal system of scholarly communication is showing signs of crisis -access to scholarship is threatened by various issues and trends. These problems should be addressed by the higher education community, including academic libraries.
Scholarly Communication and Libraries
Libraries play a significant role in the aggregation, evaluation and dissemination of scholarly communication. Research libraries have been and will be participating in the areas of creating, sharing, disseminating, and curating knowledge bearing in mind that fundamental policy choices will have to be made in all of the areas that have been influenced by developments in information technology.
Copyright, open access, open science and open data
Many research libraries have been acting to increase awareness relative to copyright, open access, open science and open data in recent years. They also initiated the discussion of these issues in research and e-learning activities. Academic librarians try to contribute in teaching copyright literacy in the within and outside the scholarly community by being active in all stages of the research process. University libraries engage with scholarly communities and act collectively to reduce friction between users and the information which they seek and create. They also contribute to the transformation of the way knowledge is created, shared, and sustained.
Empowering research
Scholarly Communication services provided by librarians are supposed to empower researchers to utilize, create, and develop new modes of scholarship. Scholarly Communication in the library provides a number of opportunities – workshops and general consulting – in the area of scholarly communication. Librarians give guidelines on creating, reviewing, and disseminate researchers’ outputs.
In 2018 the new law on Higher Education and Science (called Constitution for Science) was adopted in Poland. The Constitution for Science emphasizes that scientists should publish in scientific journals included in international databases such as Web of Science and Scopus, which will help scientists from around the world find this content. Such publications will be scored higher.
According to the law the new evaluation process of academic institutions will start in 2021. In July 2019 Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education published the list of ranked research journals which should be considered during choosing the right journal for research publication.