The Scholarly Communication Institute (SCI) began in 2003 with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation at Dartmouth College and has been hosted by the University of Virginia Library since 2004. Our mission has been to provide opportunities for leaders in scholarly disciplines, academic libraries, advanced technologies, and higher education administration to study, develop, and implement creative strategies to advance scholarly communication in the context of the ongoing digital revolution.

SCI’s nine summer institutes have produced spirited debates (documented in annual reports) and the incubation of significant initiatives and productive relationships, including digital activities of the Society of Architectural Historians, the creation of the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture, a formal partnership between centerNet and CHCI, and the development of EthicsShare.

Following the completion in July 2011 of our last planned summer session, SCI enters a new phase of work (1 January 2012 to 31 August 2013) focusing on scholarly production, graduate education, and philanthropic support of the humanities in and for the digital age.

With continued generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, SCI will undertake concentrated work in three program areas:

• further development of new‐model scholarly authoring and production processes;
• rethinking and redesigning the methodological training of humanities scholars and scholarly communication professionals for the digital age; and
• building support for the humanities in and for the digital age by articulating the case for expanding the pool of humanities funding.

These program areas evolved from conversation at recent SCI institutes. Participants’ attention reflected a growing sense of urgency felt by scholars and their scholarly societies, by presses and academic publishers, and by research libraries. The urgency is not only to understand the rapidly evolving landscape of scholarly communication, but to shape it by enacting a clear vision for scholarly communication in and for the digital age, a vision that carries forward centuries‐long traditions of humanities scholarship.

Developing a shared vision is difficult given the scale of uncertainty about even near‐term conditions—economic, political, technical, and social. But SCI participants and leaders have long agreed that the way to shape the future is to participate actively in building it. That is the goal of the following activities.

SCI 2012-2013

Scholarly production:

We plan to accelerate the development and testing of new scholarly authoring and production models by convening meetings around ground-breaking initiatives in this area: the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture, led by Tara McPherson of the University of Southern California; PressForward, led by Dan Cohen of George Mason University, and the Modern Language Association’s new program in scholarly communication, led by Kathleen Fitzpatrick. These meetings will run through the period of the grant and SCI will help participants strengthen and share these models as they develop by publicizing outcomes.

Graduate education:

SCI will undertake three related strands of activity to explore and test new programs for the education of scholars and scholarly communication professionals. These are designed to survey needs and opportunities, develop and articulate new models, and foster the growth of collaborative networks among organizations, institutions, and sectors of the academy with a stake in graduate and professional methodological training in the humanities. As part of this initiative, SCI will undertake and publish a broad survey of humanities-trained respondents who self-identify as working in digital scholarship and alternative academic careers, to illuminate perceived gaps in graduate-level preparation. Working with the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) and centerNet, the international consortium of digital humanities labs and centers, we will host a number of meetings to facilitate conversation on curricular change at the graduate level and the roles of scholarly societies, libraries, centers, and professional schools in driving that change. In addition, we will refine and document the Praxis Program and Graduate Fellows models of methodological training and early‐career research support offered by the UVa Library Scholars’ Lab, and explore the development of a network of allied but differently‐inflected initiatives.

Support for the humanities:

In 2012, with the assistance of the Council on Library and Information Resources, we will publish a case statement for expanding philanthropic engagement with the humanities. As humanities take a digital turn they become uniquely positioned to engage students and the public in exploring the human condition. Supporting a revitalized and accessible humanities for the digital age is top priority for private and public philanthropic support.