When investigating how scholarly communication has changed over time for a particular discipline, I selected the field of digital curation for examination. Due to the relative novelty of the field itself (Dallas, 424), the temporal scope of consideration is relatively narrow. With this in mind, I will work to elaborate more on what methods of scholarly communication are being presently engaged with and how they relate to communication across the discipline in a general sense.
The International Journal of Digital Curation (IJDC) is a “peer reviewed electronic journal… [where it’s scope is comprised of] policy, strategic, operation, experimental, infrastructural, and tool-based aspects of digital data and other objects of value to research” regarding the discipline of digital curation (Trivedi, 1). It was integrated into the Directory of Open Access Journal in the same year of its inception, 2006 (ibid). This being a mere 20 years ago, this formal form of scholarly communication was implemented well into the time of ubiquitous internet use as a widely utilized form of communication. This directory of journals being part of the open access movement demonstrates a commitment to these scholarly works being as accessible as possible, minimizing potential financial barriers that would be present for journals operating under the non-open standards where limits on institutional funding can play a role in their less accessible nature. The IJDC being part of this illustrates this intent to evolve with how scholarly communication can occur with use access being of paramount concern.
A study on scholarly communication regarding IJDC from 2006-2017 was able to illustrate a trend regarding how collaboration is highly implemented in the creation and dissemination of scholarly communication and research. With the timeframe used starting in 2006, this study comprehensively details data from the time of inception of the journal itself, leading it to be highly representative scope. One of the key findings illustrates the emphasis on collaboration in the research and publication of articles and studies, with roughly one third of publications having been written by single authors, with the other two thirds composed by 2 to 4 authors (Trivedi, 3). Collaboration is clearly key, with trends of multiple authors being increasingly involved in the more recent years of consideration in this study (ibid).
Of additional consideration is the focus within the digital curation community in putting on annual conferences where practitioners are able to congregate to share ideas, developments and challenges that their field faces (Dallas, 431). The International Digital Curation Conference, among many others, provides this forum for these exchanges of ideas to occur, demonstrating the importance and prevalence of informal scholarly communication in the form of in-person collaboration, seminars, presentation and symposiums (Oliver and Garvey, 97).
Given the relative novelty of the digital curation field, it is found that both formal and informal modes of scholarly communication are utilized. This elaborates on the notion of there not being a “one-size-fits-all” methodology of scholarly communication to occur, with this diversity being illustrative of that. Beyond just publishing findings, a general sense of collaboration being intrinsic to digital curation within the various forms of scholarly communication demonstrate an awareness of it’s importance as the field continues to evolve over time.
References:
Dallas, C. (2015). Digital curation beyond the ‘‘wild frontier’’: a pragmatic approach. International Journal on Recorded Information, 16, 421–457.
Oliver, G. and Harvey, R. (2016). Digital Curation, Second Edition. American Library Association.
Trivedi, G. (2019). Scholarly Communication in International Journal of Digital Curation from 2006-2017: a DOAJ based study. Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal), 1-7.