A scholarly communication librarian is the institutional specialist who manages an organisation’s research-dissemination lifecycle — open access compliance, institutional repository content, author rights and copyright advice, and research-impact metrics — usually from within, or alongside, the university library. For research administrators scoping this function for the first time, the practical questions are rarely about the job title itself but about remit, reporting line, and how success is measured.
Scholarly communication is defined by the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) as “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use” — a definition first published in ACRL’s 2003 white paper Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication and still the field’s standard reference point.
- What does a scholarly communication librarian actually do?
- What is the remit of an institutional office of scholarly communication?
- Who does a scholarly communication librarian report to?
- What competencies and skills does the role require?
- What KPIs do institutions use to measure the role?
- Answer-first Q&A
- Implications for research administrators building the team
What does a scholarly communication librarian actually do?
A scholarly communication librarian coordinates four practical work streams: institutional repository management, publishing services, copyright and author-rights advice, and research-impact assessment. The NASIG Core Competencies for Scholarly Communication Librarians, adopted in 2017 and revised in 2020, describes the role’s duties as “broad and amorphous” by design — a single post-holder rarely owns every strand, and responsibility is often diffused across a wider library team.
In day-to-day terms, that means: encouraging and processing repository deposits, checking publisher self-archiving and embargo terms, advising authors on publication agreements and Creative Commons licensing, running open access and OER outreach (often timed around International Open Access Week), and helping researchers interpret citation and altmetrics data for tenure, promotion, or funder reporting.
What is the remit of an institutional office of scholarly communication?
An office of scholarly communication is the organisational unit — typically nested inside the university library — that holds institution-wide responsibility for these duties rather than leaving them to individual subject librarians. Its remit generally spans five areas: institutional repository management, publishing services, copyright services, research data management, and assessment/impact metrics, as set out in the joint COAR/OCLC Librarians’ Competencies Profile for Scholarly Communication and Open Access (Calarco et al., 2016).
Institutions vary in how much of this remit sits in one office versus being distributed. The University of Edinburgh’s Scholarly Communications Team is a working example of a centralised model: it “supports University staff and students before, during and after publication of their research,” managing policy compliance, the institutional repository (ERA), and the research information system (PURE) as a single service point.
Who does a scholarly communication librarian report to?
There is no single reporting model across the sector. Four structures recur most often in job postings and organisational charts, and the choice usually reflects whether an institution treats scholarly communication as a collections function, a research-support function, or a technology function.
| Reporting model | Typical manager | Institutional emphasis |
|---|---|---|
| Collections-integrated | Associate University Librarian for Collections & Scholarly Communication | Ties open access and repository work to acquisitions and collection strategy |
| Research-services-integrated | Associate University Librarian for Research Services / Academic Success | Positions the role alongside research support, data management, grants |
| Digital-scholarship unit | Head of Digital Scholarship | Groups scholarly communication with data curation and digital publishing |
| Distributed/diffuse | No single line manager; shared across subject librarians | Spreads responsibility rather than centralising it in one post |
For research administrators building a business case, the reporting line matters because it determines which budget line funds the post, which committee sets its priorities, and whether the role has authority to negotiate publisher agreements directly or must route decisions through acquisitions or general counsel.
What competencies and skills does the role require?
NASIG’s framework groups core competencies into four cross-cutting themes — background knowledge, technical skills, outreach and instruction, and team building — layered under whichever of the five areas of emphasis a given post prioritises. Practical requirements include:
- Working knowledge of copyright law, fair use/fair dealing, and publisher self-archiving policies
- Familiarity with repository platforms (e.g. DSpace, Digital Commons, Fedora) and identifier systems such as CrossRef and DataCite DOIs and ORCID
- Ability to interpret bibliometrics and altmetrics without overstating what a single indicator (such as the Journal Impact Factor) can support
- Project management skills to run cross-departmental initiatives with subject librarians, university counsel, and IT
- Comfort advising on funder open access mandates and institutional policy drafting
Author-identifier and contribution-tracking literacy increasingly falls within this remit too. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014; the standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, and scholarly communication librarians are frequently the staff who explain CRediT tagging to authors submitting to journals that require it.
What KPIs do institutions use to measure the role?
Because the remit spans compliance, service, and advocacy work, institutions typically track a mixed basket of KPIs rather than a single output metric:
- Compliance KPIs: proportion of eligible outputs deposited in the repository within funder-mandated windows (for UK institutions, this maps to REF open access requirements and UKRI’s policy, in force for journal articles and conference proceedings since 1 April 2022 and extended to monographs, book chapters and edited collections from 1 January 2024)
- Service KPIs: turnaround time on copyright and publishing-agreement queries; number of consultations delivered
- Adoption KPIs: repository deposit volume and growth; OER adoption rate and associated student cost savings
- Outreach KPIs: workshop and training attendance; policy and guidance page usage
- Impact-reporting KPIs: volume of impact-metrics consultations supporting tenure, promotion, or funder reporting cycles
Compliance and adoption KPIs are the ones most directly reportable to institutional leadership and funders, since they map to external mandates rather than internal service-level judgement calls.
Answer-first Q&A
What does a scholarly communication librarian do?
A scholarly communication librarian manages an institution’s research dissemination lifecycle: encouraging and processing institutional repository deposits, advising authors on copyright and publisher agreements, supporting open access compliance, and helping researchers interpret citation and altmetrics data for promotion or funder reporting purposes.
Who does a scholarly communication librarian report to?
Reporting lines vary by institution. Most commonly the role sits under an Associate University Librarian for Collections, Research Services, or Digital Scholarship, though some institutions run a distributed model where duties are shared across subject librarians rather than assigned to one dedicated post.
Is a scholarly communication librarian the same as a copyright librarian?
Not exactly. Copyright services are one of five recognised areas of emphasis within scholarly communication work, alongside repository management, publishing services, data management, and impact assessment — a copyright librarian is typically a specialist within, not synonymous with, the broader role.
What skills does a scholarly communication librarian need?
Core requirements include copyright and licensing knowledge, familiarity with repository platforms and identifier systems (DOIs, ORCID), bibliometrics literacy, project management ability, and comfort translating funder open access mandates into institutional policy and researcher-facing guidance.
Implications for research administrators building the team
Institutions standing up this function from scratch should decide the reporting line before writing the job description, since the five areas of emphasis rarely fit into one full-time post. A common pattern is to hire a generalist scholarly communication librarian first, then add copyright or data-management specialists as the repository, compliance, and outreach workload grows. Aligning KPIs to funder mandates — UKRI open access policy, REF-linked deposit windows — gives the post measurable, leadership-visible outcomes from year one rather than only qualitative service-desk activity.
As funder identifier requirements expand and CRediT-style contribution tagging becomes more common in submission systems, institutions that fold author-identifier and contribution-metadata literacy into this role early will spend less time retrofitting compliance processes later. Research administrators building or reviewing this function should treat it as a standing institutional capability, not a project team, and revisit its remit and KPIs whenever a major funder policy changes.