Innovating Support for Research: The Coalescence of Scholarly Communication?

Information professionals housed in academic libraries are increasingly taking a role in supporting scholarly communication activities. This article investigates the extent to which a formal role has grown in ARL libraries, the skills and competencies necessary for supporting work with data in this capacity, and how those skills and competencies relate to the research lifecycle. We find that scholarly communication has formalized in ARL libraries since 2012. We also find that the requisite skills and competencies for scholarly communication work have coalesced since 2009 in support of a core group that, when the research lifecycle is considered, also support the work of scholars.