Scholarly communication is in the midst of a fundamental revolution. Everything about the process—from the methods of dissemination, to the nature and processes of peer review and quality assurance, to the question of what is meant by “scholarly communication” itself—is under discussion.
The Centre for the Study of Scholarly Communication (CSSC) is a:
Research Project - provides a home for clinical and pure research in Library and Information Science, Research Communication, Publishing, and Knowledge Mobilization, focusing particularly on work on new forms of research communication in the Digital Age
Training Institute - provides students (Graduate and, potentially, Undergraduate) and
faculty with instruction and experience in developing best practice in research communication.
The most obvious area of training will be in the Journal Incubator, which is a foundational project for this centre
Infrastructure – contribute to the University's infrastructure in two ways: by developing a home for cross-disciplinary collaboration and research in questions of research communication and through the Journal Incubator
The Centre for the Study of Scholarly Communication will focus on the following objectives:
1. Support research into the sustainability of new forms of scholarly communication, focusing particularly on Open Access, (http://libguides.uleth.ca/open) online publications and new areas such as data (http://libguides.uleth.ca/rdm) , and crowdsourcing
2. Support the dissemination of new research through the support and development of Open Access journals
3. Increase the research capacity of the University by supporting scholar/scientist editors in their work with refereed publications and authors in developing a research-based understanding of developing best practice (http://libguides.uleth.ca/web_tools_supporting_research)
4. Improve the student experience by offering valuable and extensible training in digital and project management techniques to graduate and undergraduate students as well as career development advice with regard to novel forms of publication
5. Provide librarians and other researchers with a laboratory to study various forms of scholarly communication in practice.