Activities and Publications

The Office of Scholarly Communication facilitates discussions with and among the University of California's scholars, conducts applied research, and generates related reports and news items.

Research and Writings

• Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors Regarding Scholarly Communication: Survey Findings from the University Of California [August 2007]. Conducted in collaboration with Greenhouse Associates (http://www.greenhousegrows.com). Reports the results of over 1,100 responses to a late 2006 survey of UC faculty attitudes and behavior with regard to several key issues in scholarly publishing and scholarly communication. The report is timed to inform Universitywide discussions - many of them prompted by a series of faculty white papers - about strategic responses to challenges and opportunities in the evolution of scholarly publishing and communication. The survey also provides important insight into how the University's eScholarship publishing services (including those offered in partnership with the UC Press) can meet faculty needs.
  • Full Report; 124 pages [download PDF]
  • Executive Summary and Summary of Findings; 10 pages [download PDF]
  • Survey Instrument; 10 pages [download PDF]
• OSC principals contributed analysis and perspectives to the UC Open Access Policy Proposal and its review [January - July 2007].
• John Ober. "Facilitating open access: Developing support for author control of copyright." College and Research Library News. Vol. 67, No. 4. April 2006.
• Postprint Repository Services: Context and Feasibility at the University of California. This March 2005 research report, generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, provides contextual information and recommendations for a repository for open-access distribution of UC faculty article publications. It based its recommendations for establishing, promoting, and further studying a UC postprint repository service on results from six research objectives that collectively provide baseline data about the number and proportion of UC faculty articles that can be made available for simultaneous distribution in an open-access postprint repository, and faculty attitudes toward managing copyright in their work as a means of enabling its open-access distribution.
• Executive Summary; 2 pages [download PDF]
• Full report; 27 pages [download PDF]
• The OSC contributed analysis to the preparation of UC's response to the September 2004 NIH call for public comment on their proposed policy on public access and archiving.
• John Ober, Catherine Candee, and Beverlee French. “Reshaping Scholarly Communication.” Against the Grain. Vol. 16, no. 3. June 2004. Reviews the mounting evidence of the economic unsustainability of scholarly communication systems and outlines the University of California’s strategies for response. [PDF]
• Daniel Greenstein. “Not so quiet on a Western front.” May 2004. In Nature publishing group’s web forum “Access to the Literature: The Debate Continues.” [HTML]

Community Discussion

• Faculty forums: Includes background information, presentations, and reports.