Introduction to Scholarly Communication

In this Unit, Introduction to scholarly communications, author discusses different aspects of scholarly communication – particularly its genesis, importance and ethics of academic publishing, and different communication channels available in academic publishing. Some of these channels are commonly described as primary sources as they provide first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation. Historically, scientific journals were initiated by learned societies and other scholarly communities for reporting results of concluded research works or scientific discoveries. Now many for-profit publishers have started publishing research journals. This Unit discusses in details aspects such as objectives of scholarly communications; historical perspectives of scholarly communications; foundations of science and scholarship; the process of scholarly communication; different channels of scholarly communications; and principles and paradigms of scientific culture / scholarship. Published in the UNESCO Curriculum for Researchers > Module 1: Scholarly Communications > Unit 1: Introduction to Scholarly Communication