According to the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), scholarly communication can be defined as “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communication, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic listservs.” [http://www.arl.org/focus-areas/scholarly-communication#.Vh2FCkaAuH8]
There are four key concepts that can be extracted from the above, namely: creation, evaluation, dissemination, and preservation. Taking these four concepts and placing them within the general order of the research or creative process itself, we can delineate the following progression of categories which constitute the scope of scholarly communications:
The LSU Libraries established the Scholarly Communications Team to serve as a focal point and information resource regarding scholarly communication matters for LSU’s faculty and students engaged in research. The Team is comprised of faculty from the LSU Libraries and other academic departments on the LSU campus. The Team's purpose and focus is to:
Changes in the scholarly communications arena are extremely rapid; it is our hope that we can assist our researchers in understanding new tools as they emerge and how best to use them to maximize dissemination and discovery of their works, thereby furthering the advancement of new knowledge and understanding.