ACRL Scholarly Communications Agenda for 2004-2005

The ACRL Scholarly Communications Committee has approved the following agenda to guide the ACRL scholarly communications initiative for the 2004/2005 year. Since ACRL will be hiring a continuing staff person with primary responsibilities for scholarly communication and legislative advocacy, it will be necessary to be flexible about the agenda, depending on the new staff member’s qualifications and experience. It may be desirable for the committee to submit a revised scholarly communications agenda to the Board after the new staff member has been hired.

Staffing:
The Executive Director has asked that a representative of the Scholarly Communications Committee be involved in the search for the new staff person who will be assigned scholarly communications responsibilities. The Executive Director has indicated she plans to work closely with the committee to develop a work plan for the new staff member’s scholarly communication activities.

Educational Work:
The ongoing goals of the educational aspect of the scholarly communications initiative is to increase knowledge, raise awareness, and encourage action on the part of academic librarians, faculty, and higher education administrators in reforming the system of scholarly communication. Specific activities during the year will include the following:

• Refine the ACRL Scholarly Communications Tool Kit, which is substantially complete; make it available through the ACRL web site; and widely publicize its existence.
• Plan and carry out programs at the ACRL national conference in Minneapolis, including a panel on federal policy for open access to tax payer funded research and a workshop on institutional repositories.
• Cosponsor with STS a panel at the ACRL national conference on differences in scholarly communication among scientific disciplines.
• Coordinate ongoing scholarly communications column for C&RL News.
• Coordinate ongoing topics and presentations for the ACRL scholarly communications discussion group.
• Cooperate with SPARC with programming for the SPARC/ACRL forum at both the midwinter and annual conferences.
• Maintain the SCHOLCOMM listserv and keep discussions active.
• Speak and make presentations on scholarly communications issues in various venues.
• Cooperate with SPARC and ARL in publicizing the Create Change and Open Access brochures, making them broadly available to ACRL members.

Advocacy:
The purpose of ACRL’s advocacy work is to help shape national policy in accordance with the principals of the scholarly communications initiative. Specific activities will include:

• Participate actively in the Open Access Working Group, an alliance composed of the American Association of Law Libraries, ALA, Association of Academic Health Science Libraries, ACRL, ARL, Creative Commons, Medical Library Association, Open Society Institute, Public Knowledge, Public Library of Science, SLA, and SPARC. Work to build recognition of the benefits of open access, particularly at the federal level; influence funding agencies to develop policies that advance open access; work to develop a Congressional strategy related to open access; and gain active support for open access from academic institutions,
• Continue to participate in the Information Access Alliance, the cooperative anti-merger coalition involving the American Association of Law Libraries, ACRL, ALA, ARL, and MLA. Participate in hosting an invitational conference on anti-trust issues in the publishing industry targeted to selected federal policy makers.
• Continue to participate in efforts to increase the effectiveness of ACRL advocacy at the national level.
• Respond to particular advocacy needs and issues as they arise.

Coalition Building:
Goals are to build on ACRL’s existing partnerships and liaison relationships in order to advance change in the system of scholarly communications.

• Work with the Council of Liaisons to incorporate action on scholarly communications issues and to existing and developing liaison relationships.
• Continue to develop contacts and working relationships with librarian and higher educational organizations concerned about scholarly communications issues.

Research:
The primary objective of research work is to document the effects of scholarly communication crisis on all types of academic libraries and incorporate that information into the scholarly communications tool kit and other educational materials and programs.

• Finalize and publicize an ACRL research agenda on scholarly communications issues.
• Develop a process to solicit scholarly communications research topics from the ACRL membership on a regular basis.

Activities within ACRL:
The ACRL Scholarly Communications Committee and the ACRL staff person assigned scholarly communications responsibilities will continue to develop working relationships with various units within ACRL.

• Maintain ongoing relationships with ACRL committees concerned with issues related to scholarly communication.
• Develop new relationships with ACRL sections in order to further scholarly outreach to disciplinary organizations.
• Work with ACRL units on particular advocacy issues as they emerge.