Access to Scientific Research: Challenges Facing Communication in STM
| Pages | 387-390 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-01-2018-0004 |
| Published date | 03 April 2018 |
| Date | 03 April 2018 |
| Author | Iman Tahamtan |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Book review
Access to Scientific Research: Challenges Facing Communication
in STM
by David J. Brown
Walter de Gruyter
Berlin
2016
423 p.
(Hardcover $140.00)
hardcover
ISBN: 9783110376169
Review DOI 10.1108/EL-01-2018-0004
This valuable book, written by David J. Brown, describes the current state of scholarly
communication and points out the transformative process from the traditional print-
based communication system to the digital world, as well as the need for new models of
knowledge dissemination that are capable of meeting the information needs of all end
users. In addition, the author reports the challenges that publishers, librarians,
researchers, etc. are facing in the changing business environment, and possible
solutions are discussed as well.
The book encompasses 28 chapters each of which is devoted to one important topic
such as the main stakeholders in scholarly communication, unaffiliated knowledge
workers (UKWs), business models, forms of article delivery and future communication
trends. Chapter 1 contains a background of the issues discussed in the book, followed
by a short chapter containing definitionsofkeytermssuchascitizenandamateur
scientists, knowledge workers and learned societies. The book has taken a range of
quantitative and qualitative methods, such as interviewing experts, academics,
publishers and librarians who could contribute to the better understanding of the
currentstateofartofallaspectsofscholarly publishing (Chapter 3, pages 17-21). The
last chapter remarks the research questions addressed in the book. The author has
added many informative figures (for instance see, pages 14 and 26) and tables (for
instance see pages 269, and 322) and has smartly chosen attractive subheadings for
each chapter. For instance, subheadings in Chapter 14 include “tragedy of the
commons”,“the tipping point”,“the long tail”,“freemium”,“wisdom of the crowd”,“cult
of the amateur”,“collective intelligence”,“designed serendipity”,“cognitive surplus”,
“the fast food generation”,etc.
The book focuses on different aspects of scholarly communication from a commercial
point of view. It assesses the dominantbusiness models and suggests practical changes that
should occur in the dissemination of scientific researchoutput. Brown discusses a variety of
practical solutions and implications for the challenges that main scholarly communication
stakeholders encounter and emphasizes the importance of evaluating the viability of new
ways of communications in a digital world. Assuch, the book covers the different views of
Book review
387
TheElectronic Library
Vol.36 No. 2, 2018
pp. 387-390
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
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