Academic librarians accelerating change in systems of scholarly communications and the research environment

For many years, the academic and research library workforce has worked to accelerate the transition to more open, inclusive, and equitable systems of scholarship. A new report from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL, a division of the American Library Association), entitled Open and Equitable Scholarly Communications: Creating a More Inclusive Future, 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. At the heart of the new research agenda, Open and Equitable Scholarly Communications: Creating a More Inclusive Future, are three main organizing notions: People, Content, and Systems. Each offers a different direction for interested researchers to engage with the scholarly communications issues they care most about, highlighting areas of progress and practical actions that libraries can take now, then delineating topics for new research with specific research questions and sample projects. Free PDF download at www.ala.org/acrl/issues/scholcomm or purchase in print through the ALA store at www.alastore.ala.org