Scholarly Communication

Our mission is to help Arcadia scholars disseminate their work widely for greater impact while helping to retain the rights to their research. We aim to achieve this mission by providing information through this guide, and also by promoting the use of our digital repository, ScholarWorks@Arcadia.

Scholarly Communication refers to the research and publishing processes in which students, faculty, researchers and other scholars create, evaluate, disseminate, archive, and transform research. The system relies on a publisher to provide administrative and editorial oversight, peer review, and greater distribution; while libraries and other research centers purchase and acquire, catalog and preserve, and provide access to this scholarship in multiple formats.

Today, the current system of scholarly publishing is evolving. Libraries and other research institutions can no longer keep up with the volume or the costs of scholarly resources. As more research is disseminated in electronic formats the costs of access have only increased, while the amount of new research continues to grow exponentially. 

These impediments to new scholarship are now having a direct effect on research exposure and impact, forcing authors of this research to seek new scholarly publishing opportunities and advocates. As digital publishing alternatives have grown in reputation and acceptance, the interests of scholarly communication have expanded to include open access, copyright, and author’s rights. 

Open Access, Copyright, Author’s Rights, Peer-Review, Self-Archiving, Digital Publishing, Open Archives, Open Repositories, and Open Education are all areas of focus within Scholarly Communication. 

Find more information about the Scholarly Communication Crisis.

General information about scholarly communication; professional organizations; select research institution guides.

The Scholarly Communication Initiative at Arcadia, includes local projects, resources, and other items. Although the initiative is only in its beginnings, there are several things already happening. As current projects continue, and new ones are begun, this space will be updated to keep the Arcadia University community informed.

Arcadia’s institutional digital repository of scholarship from faculty, students and staff. We are currently working on growing this repository with faculty works, as well as faculty-reviewed student works and home-grown scholarly journals. 

This committee is comprised of faculty from various disciplines, with the goal of highlighting and making accessible the collective scholarly output of the Arcadia community. The committee has been charged by Dr. Jeanne Buckley, Associate Dean of Library Services and Instructional Technology, to proactively address the evolving scholarly publishing landscape, and develop recommendations for the Arcadia community, which may include a University Center to deliver a core set of scholarly communication services.

The following articles and literature are a great source of further information and research in the areas of Scholarly Communication and Open Access. New items are always being added.