Authors Alliance Receives Grant from Arcadia Fund to Support Scholarly Communications Services | Authors Alliance

"Authors Alliance is pleased to announce that we have received a $500,000 grant from Arcadia—a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin—to enhance the ability of institutions to serve the scholarly communications needs of their author communities. The two-year grant will enable us to develop institution-facing materials to complement our existing author-facing resources and to launch a new membership offering for organizations. In recent years, a growing number of universities have hired scholarly communications staff to train faculty members, graduate students, and other researchers on issues ranging from copyright management advice and education, to publishing contracts, to compliance with institutional or funder open access policies. Individual scholarly authors are rarely copyright law experts, but nonetheless want to understand the professional and institutional consequences of their publication decisions. Their intellectual legacies—and the public’s access to their insights—are endangered without help from experts in law and knowledge preservation. Campus resources can help authors understand the opportunities and challenges of scholarly communications in the digital age, but these staff are often overwhelmed with demand for their services. With the support of this grant, Authors Alliance will develop training and curricular materials for scholarly communications officers, librarians, and other staff at member institutions. ..."