About Scholarly Communications

The Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) serves the research and scholarly support needs of Texas A&M faculty, graduate students, and other campus scholars through the provision of modern, web-based publishing and repository services.

Moving Scholarly Communication Practices Forward

Digital and networking technologies are prompting significant change and opportunity in the publication and scholarly communications process. These disruptive technologies are causing the academy to assess the traditional role of commercial publishers, copyright, fair use, rankings of journals and the process of peer review; while challenging, the changes also present exciting opportunities for fundamental improvement to the scholarly communications process. Academic/research libraries are seeking to work with faculty to influence and promote positive change so that access to scholarly information continues its vital role in research and scholarship with changes that improve access, strengthen author/faculty rights, decrease costs and enhance the use of the scholarly corpus through data/textual manipulation and analysis. The University Libraries’ Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) is charged to advance and pursue these issues on the A&M campus and nationally.

OSC Core Goals

• Strengthen the Library’s efforts in scholarly communications and open access through engagement and collaboration with the faculty across campus at Texas A&M
• Provide leadership in building and transforming the University Libraries’ partner role with faculty in the creation and dissemination of knowledge
• Develop and maintain a broad network of partners among faculty, scholars, graduate students, and administrators on campus to support and advance scholarly communication initiatives and programs
• Work collaboratively with campus faculty to increase awareness of issues relating to scholarly communication and development of action agendas for change
• Advance the use and awareness of the OAKTrust, Texas A&M University’s digital repository through effective marketing and deposit of journal articles, conference proceedings, technical reports, research data, educational resources and digitized special collections
• Gather and analyze data to identify trends, problem areas, and opportunities for growth related to scholarly communication and open access

The OSC seeks to meet these goals through coordinated and innovative programs that (i) bring about systemic change on campus; (ii) relies on an effective partnership with the campus and libraries communities; and (iii) designs and implements the tools, services and policies that make up our program using an iterative design process that draws from the best practices of program design, and the organizational change frameworks of Bolman & Deal (2008) and Kezar & Eckel (2002).