PDF - CARL - ABRC

Document 14
PROPOSED MANDATE – STAKEHOLDER MEETING
March 24, 2010
The ecology of research communication is a complex system that encompasses: scholarly journals,
with researchers as “voluntary” authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers; professional publishers
including editors, proof readers, and layout artists; sponsors and funders inclusive of scholars’
groups, disciplinary associations, university presses, ducational/research institutions, and Canada’s
research funding agencies; and libraries and researchers as consumers and archivists.
Information and communication technology (ICT) has disrupted print-derived ecology and created
new opportunities for the reconfiguration of the production of and access to scholarship. A certain
momentum is building toward Open Access, which, if implemented would deprive existing
subscription-based journals of the majority of their income. In the name of a good fight to curtail
excess profit-taking by large, international, commercial journal publishers, insistence on Open Access
could undermine a tremendously valuable legacy of established and prestigious, efficiently produced
research publications that are the output of Canada’s research community through scholarly journal
and monograph publishers.
The central challenge and the reason for this meeting is the preservation of the value of research as it
is communicated in the form of peer-reviewed journal and monograph publishing while taking
maximum advantage of emerging opportunities based largely on ICT. CALJ/ACRS believes that this
challenge can best be met by bringing together all stakeholders/participants, hence this meeting, with
a view to each understanding the goals, needs, preferences, and positions of all others. With that
understanding in place, it is our view that needed resources can be identified and allocated to
maximize the efficacy of an emerging research communication system that will best serve the
research community and society.