Scholarly Communication knowledge and skills in Australasian research institutions

For this project we aim to investigate the work, and the scholarly communication knowledge and skills held by professional staff working in universities and other research institutions, with the aim of understanding whether additional education, training and professional development is required.

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About

Scholarly communication is a rapidly evolving field. The people who work in scholarly communication are constantly having to update their knowledge and skills.

Professional education and training have not always kept pace with this evolution. Therefore, for this project we aim to investigate the work, and the scholarly communication knowledge and skills held by professional staff working in universities and other research institutions, with the aim of understanding whether additional education, training and professional development is required.

For the purposes of this research, scholarly communication roles include tasks associated with:

Institutional repository management
Publishing services
Research practice
Copyright services
Open access policies and the scholarly communication landscape
Data management services
Assessment & impact metrics

This project has received ethical approval from the Australian National University Human Ethics Committee (ANU Ref. No. 2020/450).

How you can get involved

We invite professional staff involved in supporting scholarly communication in Australia and New Zealand to participate in an online survey. It shouldn’t take more than about 15 minutes of your time. Participation will involve answering questions about your current role, your educational background, your views and experiences on education and training for such roles, and your confidence in your knowledge and skills specifically related to scholarly communication.

Participation is entirely voluntary, and results will preserve the anonymity of participating individuals and their institutions. You can withdraw at any time by closing your browser. FOR YOUR SURVEY TO BE SUBMITTED YOU MUST CLICK PAST THE LAST QUESTION. A donation will be made to the Kambri Scholars for every completed survey.

If you would like to see the types of questions included in the survey, please click here.

For a full participant information sheet, please click here.

To take the survey, please click here.

What will we do with the results?

We will write up the results of this survey into a journal article and a conference presentation to share with the research support community. We also hope that the results will inform future decision making about staffing, education, training and support needs for those working in scholarly communication.

The research team

The three of us have been in involved in scholarly communications work and research for many years. We have seen how scholarly communications and the work involved in conducting and managing it has changed, and at times have struggled ourselves to keep up to date.