Centre for the Study of Scholarly Communication

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

Objectives

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, online publications and new areas such as data, 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

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.



Projects
The CSSC supports or is engaged in a number of ongoing projects pertinent to scholarly communications:

Open Access
•   promotion, education, and other initiatives around scholarly Open Access publishing, including participating in annual Open Access Week events every October

University of Lethbridge Institutional Repository
•   developing the Institutional Repository (IR). The IR supports and promotes Centre activities related to disseminating and archiving research materials produced by University of Lethbridge faculty and students

Zygote to Zombie Initiative
•   developing initiatives to inform and support faculty and student best practices relating to all phases of the scholarly research workflow – from initial grant application to final research impact assessment

Digitization
•   supporting the Library’s work in identification and creation of locally-digitized collections

Journal Incubator
•   The Lethbridge Journal Incubator is an experiment in the sustainability of Open Access Publication through collaboration with the School of Graduate Studies, the Library, and the Faculty of Arts & Science.  The Incubator served as a prototype for the kind of research and research-mobilization the CSSC will engage in

Research Data Management
•   working with the Library, the Office of Research & Innovation Services and colleagues, both nationally and internationally, to coordinate requirements for the management of research data resulting from publicly-funded research