ABSTRACT
The process of scholarly communication can be understood only in the context within which communication among scholars originates: the world of higher education and the academic profession. The processes leading to scholarly publication are embedded in a complex network of institutions, personal and professional values, incentives, technologies, and resources. That is to say, scholars, just as any other occupational group, order their priorities and accomplish (or fail to accomplish) their objectives within an environment of motivations, opportunities, and constraints. More to the point, the environment for academics has been undergoing rapid and accelerating change, and those changes have far-reaching consequences for how the process of scholarly communication is triggered and fulfilled. It is a process which, in all its variegated forms, culminates a million and more times each year in published scholarship.
