Actors of the scholarly communication system: notes for discussion of their roles

Abstract

Introduction: The scholarly communication system, which underlies the scientific community, consists of elements and processes, between the positions they perform and the functions and activities. It is the result of the functions and activities of researchers, publishers, libraries, funding agencies and universities that contribute to the production, sharing and knowledge use so that a science can be made viable. Objective: Identify the functions and activities performed by the main actors of the scholarly communication system (researchers, publishers, libraries, development agencies and universities). Methodology: A large bibliographic survey was carried out in Google Scholar, Web of Science and Scopus in the months of June and July 2015. The survey disregarded time limit and type of document. The search strategy was a combination of the terms "researchers", "publishers", "libraries", "funding agencies" and "universities" combined with the terms "scientific communication", "scientific information", "open access", "communication system”. After the preliminary analysis of the texts retrieved and the selection of the relevant texts, a literature review was elaborated for the purpose of identifying functions and activities performed by the main actors of the scholarly communication system.The revision took the character of narrative and was structured from each of the actors. Results: The results are presented in the form of a narrative literature review in which the functions and activities performed by each of the actors of the scholarly communication system contemplated in the study were defined and identified. Finally, a diagram was drawn up to represent graphically both the functions and activities of the actors of the scholarly communication system and the interactions between them.