RLI 287 Research Library Issues: A Report from ARL, CNI, and SPARC 2015 Issue on the Transformation of Scholarly Communications M. Sue Baughman, ARL Deputy Executive Director and RLI Editor I n the three articles presented in this issue of Research Library Issues (RLI), Rikk Mulligan offers an overview of the history of scholarly communication from its beginnings in the 17th century to recent innovations in digital and hybrid publishing. The first piece provides a brief background and context to frame the formation of the first academic journals and monographs, the rapid growth in scholarly publications after World War II, and more recent hurdles faced by serial and book publishing over the past 30 years, with more attention to the changes resulting from the invention of the World Wide Web. The second article considers in more detail the scholarly journal and article, experiments in digitization to provide online access beginning with JSTOR and Project Muse in the 1990s, and more recent innovations to meet increasing demands for broader and more open access to journal articles and other short- form scholarship. The third piece examines longer formats of scholarship. This article frames the crisis in monograph publishing along with responses that include digitized books, born-digital ePubs, and current efforts to attempt alternative forms of funding and to strengthen the infrastructure for electronic publishing and support innovations in format that promote greater discoverability, accessibility, and use of long-form scholarship. These articles provide the background for ARL’s strategic initiatives that are focused on promoting wide-reaching and sustainable publication of research and scholarship. A final discussion forthcoming this fall will build on these three pieces to describe emerging forms of digital research and scholarship that derive from the article and book but enhance and extend these modes of discourse far beyond their current states. © 2015 M. Sue Baughman This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. To cite this article: M. Sue Baughman. “Issue on the Transformation of Scholarly Communications.” Research Library Issues: A Report from ARL, CNI, and SPARC, no. 287 (2015): 1. http://publications.arl.org/ rli287/1. In This Issue Part I: Context and Background 2 Part II: Journal Articles and Short-Form Scholarship 7 Part III: Long-Form Scholarship: Monographs and Scholarly Books 17