Scholarly Communication

Promoting scholarly communication on campus is a collaborative effort amongst students, faculty, librarians, researchers, and administrators. Building positive relationships on campus fosters a mutually beneficial exchange of resources and ideas.

ASU Library engages with scholars to evoke positive change and provide assistance throughout the research lifecycle. We help to create opportunities to improve scholarship on campus by advancing scholarly communication through new research methods and innovative dissemination models. Multiple efforts by the library and other departments to support campus engagement provide a conducive environment for scholarly communication at ASU. Some specific examples of ASU Library engagement include:

• Traditional and innovative collection development policies, providing access to print and electronic resources as well as offsetting some of the costs of open access publishing through institutional memberships.
• Advocating for and implementing a university open access policy to advance the reach and impact of ASU scholarship.
• Providing support services for researchers throughout the research life cycle.
• Creating and managing the ASU Digital Repository, which allows for the open sharing and improved discovery of research by ASU scholars.

Many universities, organizations, and departments have implemented open access policies which require or encourage their researchers to permit their research to be openly available, usually in a specified open access repository.  ASU passed an Open Access Policy in March of 2017, and the ASU Library Librarians Assembly passed an Open Access Resolution in 2010.

While the majority of open access journals publish articles for free, many of the most well-known open access publishers do require that authors pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) to offset the cost of publication. The ASU Library is able to provide discounts on APCs with certain publishers as a result of the following partnerships and subscriptions:

ECS has provided these directions: How to publish open access with ECS

Some funding agencies will allow these charges to be paid from grant funds, but of course, not all authors are funded. Many publishers will grant a waiver of the APC upon request if the author is not able to pay, so it is always worth checking to see if that’s a possibility. In addition, there are other ways you can make your work openly available for free.

Located in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, the Office of Scholarship and Innovation brings collaborative design-based problem-solving to educational systems; supports faculty research and scholarly inquiry in education; leverages new technologies for learning; and creates digital solutions for the dissemination of knowledge. For example, they sponsor three open-access education journals to foster accessibility to scholarly publications and promote dialogue about educational policy research among diverse audiences.