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CREATIVE COMMONS FOR LIBRARIANS AND EDUCATORS - 93 -

How does your institution support (or not support) the open publication of research? How do you interact with learners and faculty who are searching for academic research? Have you ever encountered a paywall while trying to access research articles?

Acquiring Essential Knowledge To get an overview of the topic, you should first read the Wikipedia article on “Scholarly Communication” (licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 and available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_communication). This article defines scholarly communication as “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communication, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic listservs.”

The challenges with the existing approach to scholarly communications are laid out in the graphic in figure 5.1. This image explains—in generalized terms—the current process involved with developing and communicating scientific results. In the first step of the life cycle, scientists, academics, and research