(via Gwen Gregory, University of Illinois at Chicago)
Rebecca Kennison and Nancy Maron, selected by ACRL to design, develop, and deliver a new research agenda for scholarly communications and the research environment, have been hard at work since March 2018 with guidance and input from ACRL’s Research and Scholarly Environment Committee (ReSEC). ACRL is now seeking public comment on a draft document by COB Friday, January 4, 2019.
Developed with a high degree of community involvement–particularly historically underrepresented groups–this powerful new ACRL action-oriented agenda is intended to encourage the community to make the scholarly communications system more open, inclusive, and equitable by addressing issues concerning people, content, and systems. It outlines trends, encourages practical actions, and clearly identifies the most strategic research questions to pursue.
By sharing this draft publicly for feedback, ACRL seeks to continue the robust community engagement, which has included input from over 1,000 individuals via expert interviews, online focus groups, a survey, and large group conversations at major conferences. ACRL wants the final document to be as helpful as possible both in guiding academic librarians on actions that can be taken now to promote a more open system of scholarship and identifying essential areas that merit further investigation.
Your comments will be most helpful by addressing these areas:
1. Suggestions regarding the major categories of people, content, and systems.
2. Examples of recent publications to cite, work currently underway, and notable projects just getting started.
3. Additional research questions–or variants of the questions–that you feel are important.
Add your comments publicly to the draft research agenda by COB Friday, January 4, 2019. Or share your comments privately with Nancy, Rebecca, and ReSEC member leaders via a feedback form.
ACRL expects to release the final document in spring 2019 as a free PDF download and for purchase in print. ReSEC is designing a program to competitively award modest research grants to enable librarians to carry out new research in areas suggested by the research agenda. A group of ALA Emerging Leaders recently selected ACRL’s proposed project to promote the adoption and use of this forthcoming research agenda. With guidance from ReSEC, this group will develop plans to complement ACRL marketing and promotion strategies through official outlets. This could include targeted use cases for how different constituencies could use the ACRL research grants to address the areas of focus.