Scholarly communication is defined as "the process by which research is published, distributed, accessed, and used."

Traditionally, authors would publish papers in a journal, which would be distributed, accessed, and used through library or personal subscriptions by researchers. These researchers would then publish their own research, beginning the cycle again. For many years, this was the most efficient means of disseminating research.

Recently, however, the landscape of scholarly communication has changed rapidly, due to several factors:

• New technology and the establishment of standards for description of electronic materials has enabled faster, cheaper, and more efficient methods of distributing information. The internet, standards for description of digital resources, and software to facilitate the workflow of fully-edited, peer-reviewed on-line journals and the distribution of scholarly literature have greatly streamlined the scholarly communication process.
  
• Scholars have changed their methods of research. No longer is a researcher's first step a trip to the library; in most cases it is a Google search. For authors, this means that traditionally published papers may not be initially visible to researchers.
• New legislative measures and policy changes of federal funding agencies have emerged that mandate results of taxpayer-funded research be made freely available to the public .
  
• Though the distribution of information has been streamlined and made cheaper, the cost of serials subscriptions continues to rise, leading many libraries to cancel subscriptions. For the author who publishes in a traditional print-only journal, this means that colleagues at those institutions that have had to make cuts (which include such universities as Stanford, Michigan, and Cornell) will not have access to their scholarly output.