The view from Salford: perspectives on scholarly communications from a research-informed university

Abstract

This article presents a range of perspectives on the current state of the scholarly communications sector through the lens of a research-informed university, beginning with a short overview of research at the University of Salford and followed by our assessment of what we feel is working, and indeed not working, with the current system. Based on this, we assess what we feel are the current barriers to change and both how these can be overcome and what we are doing to overcome them. Finally, we provide some commentary on what we feel is the changing open access paradigm and where all this should take us next.

Scholarly communication: a concept analysis

“…Yet, they have a story to tell, once the seeming minutiae recorded therein are harvested, parsed, coded and statistically analyzed in bulk. (Cronin, 2008, p. 43)Citation counts can be used as a proxy to study the scholarly communication of knowledge and the impact of research in academia (Sun and Xia, 2016, p. 1965). …”

“…Yet, they have a story to tell, once the seeming minutiae recorded therein are harvested, parsed, coded and statistically analyzed in bulk. (Cronin, 2008, p. 43)…”

Assessing and managing transitional read and publish deals: a University of Salford case study

“…This is based on the belief that TAs should not be simply a change to current business models, with rising, unsustainable costs, especially as we move to making other open research outputs, such as monographs, open access. 6 When assessing TAs, it is important to ensure they serve the current and future needs of the University and support our teaching curriculum and research specialisms. Like all higher education institutions (HEIs), our budgets are under pressure and deals must represent value for money and facilitate sustainable costs.…”