Scholarly Communication: Other Resources

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Check out ACRL's variety of additional resources to help you stay informed and up to date on issues in scholarly communication.

Current Resources

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ACRL’s Primer for Protecting Sensitive Data in Academic Research is a communication resource about providing protections for sensitive data that may be used or produced in the course of conducting academic research.

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The SCHOLCOMM listserv is an ACRL email discussion list for scholarly communications issues.

Legacy Projects

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ACRL has a longstanding commitment to accelerating the transition to a more open system of scholarship through education, political advocacy, coalition building, and research. In January 2000, an ACRL task force on scholarly communications began discussing how ACRL might contribute to shaping and envisioning the future of scholarly communications. In the task force’s January 2002 report, they recommended that ACRL, as one of its highest strategic priorities, be actively engaged in working to reshape the current system of scholarly communications. Based on the recommendations in the report, ACRL launched its scholarly communication initiative in spring 2002, establishing a new standing committee of the ACRL Board of Directors. Past projects include:


On June 12, 2019, ACRL released “Open and Equitable Scholarly Communications: Creating a More Inclusive Future.” Developed over the course of a year with leadership from the Research and Scholarly Environment Committee (ReSEC) and with a high degree of community involvement, this powerful new action-oriented research agenda encourages the community to make the scholarly communications system more open, inclusive, and equitable by outlining trends, encouraging practical actions, and clearly identifying the most strategic research questions to pursue. This report is an important contribution to ACRL’s core commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion which includes valuing different ways of knowing and identifying and working to eliminate barriers to equitable services, spaces, resources, and scholarship. The full research agenda is on the ACRL website as a PDF and for purchase in print in the . Learn more in an feature, Choice podcast, or blog post. of a free ACRLPresents Webcast from Monday, July 15, 2019. Also, a team of Emerging Leaders (Cari Didion, Sheila García, Kim Henze, and Teresa Schultz) created targeted use cases (see their and ) for how different groups might address the focus areas in the ACRL research agenda. Learn more about their work and about applying for a research grant by watching a of a free webcast offered Monday, September 9, 2019.


ACRL and The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) sponsor the Institute on Scholarly Communications to promote library-led outreach on scholarly communication issues.


SPARC and ARL, with support from ACRL, re-launched the website in June 2006 to provide faculty with current information, perspectives, and tools that will enable them to play an active role in advancing scholarly information exchange in the networked environment. The ways faculty share and use academic research results are changing rapidly and irreversibly. By posing the question, "Shouldn’t the way we share research be as advanced as the Internet?", the site outlines how faster and wider sharing of journal articles, research data, simulations, syntheses, analyses, and other findings fuels the advance of knowledge. It also offers practical ways faculty can look out for their own interests as researchers.


In 2007, a research agenda was developed to explore the current themes and research opportunities. This agenda laid the groundwork for ReSEC’s activities and collaborations.


This document from June 2003 is intended to be a foundational statement that provides overall guidance the ACRL scholarly communications initiative.