Dear Colleagues,

Participants in the Mellon funded Grand Challenges Summit hosted at MIT in March of 2018 have written a DRAFT white paper identifying selected grand challenges related to information science and scholarly communication. During October 10-31 all interested parties are encouraged to actively engage in this iterative research and writing process to generate a usable set of recommendations that reflects a broad perspective. Your participation, comments, and contributions are needed before a final version of the paper can be ready for dissemination later this year.

A global and multidisciplinary community of stakeholders came together in March 2018 to identify, scope, and prioritize a common vision for specific grand research challenges related to information science and scholarly communications. The participants were both traditional domain researchers and those who are aiming to democratize scholarship. An explicit aim of the summit was to identify research needs related to barriers in the development of scalable, interoperating, socially beneficial, and equitable systems for scholarly information; and to explore the development of non-market approaches to governing the scholarly ecosystem.

This DRAFT white paper reflects the outcomes of the March 2018 discussions and the paper will improve when a wider community actively contributes too. In order to embody the grand challenges themselves, and open the conversation to a wider range of perspectives, you and your community are encouraged to participate in this online writing process. The scholarly eco-system can be improved if communities work toward a set of common goals and your expertise, knowledge, and contributions, will make this a stronger set of recommendations.

To participate in the public comment period, please create a free account on PubPub, an open publishing platform for publishing that will allow for a robust conversation directly on the DRAFT white paper < https://grandchallenges.pubpub.org/pub/publicdraft >.

Please help share this announcement about the October 10th to October 31st public comment period as widely as possible.  (For confidential comments, or to request to edit a section directly, please use [log in to unmask] ) All author contributions will be recognized in the final paper.

Thanks

Micah Altman & Chris Bourg

On behalf of the program committee,

Micah Altman, Christine Borgman, Chris Bourg, Sayeed Choudhury, Charles Henry, Abby Smith Rumsey, Ethan Zuckerman