Librarians as midwives of change in scholarly communication.

Abstract

History testifies to two ICT revolutions. In my reckoning scholarly communication is now in the grip of a third. The point of this chapter, to paraphrase Marx, is to show that librarians are in a position not simply to interpret the world of scholarly communication, but to change it, or at least to act as the midwives of that change. The chapter discusses the information value chain, the economic background to scholarly communication, and trends in pricing and negotiation with publishers. It closes by suggesting that the electronic age offers the potential to turn academic library practice on its head. University libraries until now have promised to collect or gain access to the research outputs of all other universities and research institutions, a task that is both impossible to accomplish and costly to attempt. With the widespread introduction of institutional repositories, however, it is now feasible for each university or research institution to collect all the research outputs of its own scholars, and make them available to all other universities. This task, by contrast, is finite and achievable; the costs are commensurate with the research standing and income of the academic institution.