The Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing has released Digital Technology Innovation in Scholarly Communication and University Engagement.
Here's an excerpt:
Beginning in the 1990s, a substantial number of innovation projects in scholarly communication began to emerge worldwide. Researchers began to adopt digital technologies for purposes of communication with colleagues and a variety of scholarly journals began making content available online. Digital humanists and scholars across the social science disciplines also began to expand their involvement with emerging technologies in their research and teaching activities. Building on these developments, researchers interested in knowledge mobilization and university engagement also began to augment their efforts with digital technologies. Finally, a certain level of experimentation with the electronic publication of monographs began to appear. The key players in these developments were private sector foundations (for example, the Wellcome Trust and the Andrew Mellon Foundation); innovation-oriented scholars; systems and head librarians; journal editors and publishers; university presses; and SSHRC with its support for scholarly communication and later, knowledge mobilization. Canada has earned worldwide attention for its general level of digital innovation in scholarly and research communication and particularly for innovation in journal publishing, where Open Journal Systems, Érudit and Synergies stand out as significant projects, combined with consortium buying of online content through the Canadian Research Knowledge Network. These and other leading achievements call for purpose-built policy and programs, which have lagged behind innovation. Such policy and programs need to be designed to provide stable funding for innovation-oriented constructivist social scientific and humanist inquiry and university engagement initiatives that have national and international long-term promise. Tied into the post-secondary education system, such investments would enormously increase the visibility and public value of Canadian social science and humanities research, multiplying the social benefit of this work through the development of digital technologies.
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