Open and Equitable Scholarly Communications : Creating a More Inclusive Future

Prepared by Nancy Maron and Rebecca Kennison with Paul Bracke, Nathan Hall, Isaac Gilman, Kara Malenfant, Charlotte Roh, and Yasmeen ShorishFor many years, the academic and research library workforce has worked to accelerate the transition to more open, inclusive, and equitable systems of scholarship.

Enacting change in the scholarly communications environment is complicated by a broad range of issues that need to be addressed: the challenges of the global digital divide and information inequality, decolonization, democratization, the politics of technology, privilege (or lack thereof), the public or common good, unbiased policymaking, etc. Open and Equitable Scholarly Communications is an action-oriented research agenda designed to provide practical, actionable information for academic librarians; include the perspectives of historically underrepresented communities in order to expand the profession’s understanding of research environments and scholarly communication systems; and point librarians and other scholars toward important research questions to investigate. Organized into three major priority areas—People, Content, and Systems—each area includes actions that can be taken now and ideas for further research:Embracing Diversity and InclusionImproving the Working Lives of People Engaged in Scholarly CommunicationsIncreasing Awareness Concerning Creators’ RightsConsidering How Value is Assigned to Scholarly MaterialsCreating More Representative and Open CollectionsSupporting Sustainable Technological InfrastructureCreating Systems That Permit More Access to More PeopleBuilding Mission-Aligned Organizational and Financial SystemsAdvancing Innovation in Academic LibrariesAccompanying the agenda are extensive appendices, including an essay on issues of social justice in scholarly communications that have informed this agenda, findings from an online survey, and an annotated list of recommended readings.

With your engagement, the effective practices and important research questions in Open and Equitable Scholarly Communications can help accelerate the transformation of the scholarly communications system.