Earlier this year we wrote about the “Seven Things Every Researcher Should Know about Scholarly Publishing”, one of several recent posts seeking to improve understanding of scholarly communications among all stakeholders. These included Charlie Rapple’s post on “Three Things Scholarly Publishers Should Know about Researchers” and an Ask the Chefs forum focused on misconceptions about scholarly publishing.
The start of a new academic year in the northern hemisphere seemed like a good time for us to return to this theme, but from the opposite perspective as our original post, asking this time what scholarly publishers should know about the researchers they serve. We’ve highlighted the same seven themes: ecosystem, scholarly hygiene, business models, peer review, metrics, tools, and licenses and copyright. It was interesting to note which of them smoothly translate from the perspective of researchers versus publishers and vice versa. Mostly we found that sticking with the same themes helped to highlight connections and commonalities.
Many who work in scholarly publishing have little or no research experience themselves; even fewer do so in the field in which they publish. In an Ask the Chefs forum debating the value of research experience for publishers by asking whether publishers benefit from an advanced degree, views on the topic were mixed. Publishing is its own business, requiring a specific set of skills and knowledge, as are other fields in scholarly communication, most significantly libraries. So, while an advanced degree in the discipline you’re publishing in can be helpful in some ways, it may not be necessary, and is often not as important as other types of experience. However, just as researchers need an understanding of how scholarly publishing works, it is also essential that scholarly publishers understand researchers and their research – what they do, and when, why and how they do it…
