Allegra Swift
Scholarly Communications Librarian
University of California San Diego
David Minor
Director, Research Data Curation Program
University of California San Diego
Academics and academic institutions are navigating internal and external pressures for reporting, research intelligence, research production, sharing, and access while a proliferation of “time-saving,” “problem-solving” services and products are being marketed to them by a variety of publishers and vendors. The continued success of all who are involved in the scholarly communication ecosystem hinges on the ability to anticipate external and internal opportunities and challenges while making informed economic decisions. University of California San Diego Library Scholarly Communications and Research Data Management Programs teamed up to design and facilitate a 2018 Force11 Scholarly Communications Institute (FSCI) week-long course that was based on the observation that systems of scholarly communication are multiplying rapidly. These systems are being marketed to our campuses as either single solutions to address single specific stakeholder needs or as entire interoperable systems in support of the entire scholarly communication ecosystem. To help navigate this evolving issue, members of the FSCI course undertook a new project, aimed at raising awareness of the models, systems, drivers in play, and to communicate the issue among all the stakeholders. The project was carried out in subsequent months by the participants in a multi-institution collaboration that resulted in a visualization model intended to frame the issue and a set of checklists to help determine institutional priorities in selecting products to support the scholarly communication infrastructure. The goal of the project is to shape and guide infrastructure adoption so that our academic institutions will influence and contribute to a healthy, sustainable, fair and equitable research information and scholarly communication ecosystem.
