Offered on an irregular basis
PREREQUISITES:
MAS students: Completion of the MAS Core courses, plus permission of the instructor.
MLIS and Dual students: Some electives can be taken in conjunction with the MLIS Core courses; consult with the MLIS Program Chair for recommendations.
GOAL: The goal of the course is to provide you with a broad understanding of the scholarly communication and publishing ecosystem. This ecosystem is complex with many constituents who conduct, fund, disseminate, and use scholarly research, and entrenched systems that influence scholarly information and publishing practices. Information professionals and libraries are significant components of the scholarly ecosystem.
OBJECTIVES:
Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Understand historical and current trends and concepts in scholarly communication and publishing, including the open access movement, copyright, and knowledge mobilization
- Appreciate the range of technical, social, and political factors that underpin scholarly communication and publishing, and the ways in which academic disciplines and practices shape and are shaped by these factors
- Evaluate ethical issues inherent in scholarly communication and publishing
- Articulate issues related to authorship, legitimacy, reliability, and impact raised by different and emerging products of scholarly communication
- Participate in the scholarly research and dissemination process through the creation of scholarly outputs and engagement in the peer review process
- Analyze future possibilities and challenges for knowledge production, use, and dissemination in library, publishing, education, and community settings
COURSE TOPICS:
- Historical and contemporary perspectives on scholarly communication
- Scholarly communication infrastructures, such as institutional strategic plans, policies, funding bodies
- Knowledge creation and dissemination practices in different disciplines
- Peer review, academic integrity, scholarly misconduct and scholarly reputation management
- Open access movements and practices
- Copyright, Creative Commons, academic freedom and intellectual property
- Evaluation of scholarly communication, e.g. bibliometrics, altmetrics
- Ethical issues, including inclusion/exclusion in knowledge production/sharing and Indigenous data sovereignty
- Knowledge mobilization, translation and exchange
- Public scholarship, including the role of non-traditional scholarly outputs
- The role of information professionals and libraries and other memory institutions in scholarly communication and knowledge mobilization