LibGuides: Scholarly Communication: Home

What is Scholarly Communication?

diagram of scholarly publishing process According to the Association of College and Research Libraries:

Scholarly communication can be defined 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.

Traditional means of scholarly publication and dissemination have led to commercial publishers controlling the market and restricting access to scholarship. The current scholarly communication movement looks to open up access to research and scholarship, provide more economical means of publishing, ensure the long-term preservation of research and scholarly works, and enable scholars to retain their copyrights.

The ODU Libraries can help you with many of the issues surrounding scholarly communication.

OPEN ACCESS: Understand open access, find open access journals and books, and look for APC funding
WHERE (AND WHERE NOT) TO PUBLISH YOUR WORK: Find journals in which to publish your articles, and avoid predatory publishers
INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES: Make your works available in ODU Digital Commons for greater access and use
OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES: Develop open educational resources and use affordable course content
COPYRIGHT/AUTHOR RIGHTS: Learn how to be copyright-compliant, assign creative commons licensing, and retain your author rights
DATA MANAGEMENT: Manage and curate your data, and get assistance with data management plans
RESEARCH IMPACT & METRICS: Increase and measure your research impact

Memberships

The Old Dominion University Libraries are members of the following organizations.

ASERL: Association of Southeastern Research Libraries
ASERL brings together leaders from research libraries in the region to foster a high standard of library excellence through professional development, inter-institutional resource sharing, and other important collaborations. For more than 65 years, ASERL has been a trusted home for numerous innovative programs and events that provide tremendous benefit to our membership. ODU became a member in 2024.
DataCite
DataCite is "a global community that shares a common interest: to ensure that research outputs and resources are openly available and connected so that their reuse can advance knowledge across and between disciplines, now and in the future." They make research more effective with metadata that connects research outputs and resources through creation and management of DOIs (Digital Object Identifier), persistent identifiers (PID), required to improve research facilitate the discovery and reuse of research outputs and resources.
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
Through VIVA, ODU is a supporter of the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), an organization who relies on support from stakeholders in scholarly communication to sustain its services. DOAB has been deemed an essential open science infrastructure by the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS).
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) Membership
ODU's membership in DOAJ is through the VIVA consortium. It enables the DOAJ to continue in their work processing and reviewing journals to be listed, promoting best practices in open access publishing, strengthens our efforts in promoting good open access publishing practice, and reflects our commitment to supporting quality, peer-reviewed Open Access materials.
ICPSR: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research
ODU is a member of ICPSR, the world’s largest social science data archive. Membership includes unlimited institution-wide access to the archive, discounted access to methods training and teaching resources, discounted tuition for the ICPSR Summer Program, and access to an extensive community of research data producers and users.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) is "an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination, and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). We support electronic publishing and open access to scholarship in order to enhance the sharing of knowledge worldwide."
Open Education Network (OEN) System Membership
Through VIVA, ODU participates in the OEN System, enabling us to receive training and then train our own faculty in making greater use of openly available educational materials, including textbooks, which are free of cost to students. The OEN also supports stipends for faculty who wish to review open textbooks, with the idea of adopting them for their courses.
ORCID Membership
ODU is a member of ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier), an open, non-profit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of persistent and unique [16-digit] researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. ORCiD is integrated with ODU’s Faculty Activity System (Digital Measures) where faculty can seamlessly import publications and other items from their ORCID profile.
The Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA)
The Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA) is the consortium of nonprofit academic libraries within the Commonwealth of Virginia. Members include all of the 39 state-assisted colleges and universities (the 6 doctoral universities, 9 4-year institutions, and 24 community and two-year branch colleges), as well as 31 of the independent (private, nonprofit) institutions and the Library of Virginia.
Mission: As Virginia’s academic library consortium, VIVA builds an equitable, accessible, and robust infrastructure of library resources and services for Virginia higher education students and faculty.
Vision: VIVA seeks to create permanent, lasting benefit for the Commonwealth by building sustainable infrastructure for library cooperation; amplifying the Virginia academic library voice; and serving as a catalyst for improved and innovative library services and technologies.