Guest Post - How Will the Needs of Emerging Professionals/Academics Change Scholarly Communications in the Future? - The Scholarly Kitchen

"Scholarly communications must also play an active role in supporting researchers in trying to meet academic requirements. As the number of tenured positions decreases, along with drops in institutional funding, researchers will increasingly become hard-pressed to find funding to support their research goals. Libraries are expected to supply more access to materials for their universities despite smaller budgets. The APC model may cause OA initiatives to continue to struggle as a viable publishing option. I believe the question of funding, and the administration of funding, will take an increasingly important role. Federal and private funders have already stepped into the research ecosystem of scholarly communication, yet the increasing competitiveness of grant-funding suggests this cannot be an entirely dependable source for research communication.

The needs of emerging professionals and academics are likely to influence more open scholarly communication, yet to do this successfully suggests the changing of systems, workflows, partnerships, and economic models. Editorials in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication’s 2019 General Issue observe so eloquently a change of perspective: we must come together as a community. A community that interacts in ways “defined by those [communities of research professionals] so that it may become sustainable, culturally responsive, relevant, and accessible” (as cited in Gilliland, et al, 2019)."