The scholarly communications system has undergone a series of profound changes in the last decade, and change continues apace. Indeed, this book comes at a time when governments, research funders, learned societies and universities, as well as researchers themselves, are showing unprecedented levels of interest in how researchers communicate their findings. In the UK, the Finch Report, the government's response to it and the policies announced by the Research Councils have signalled a sharp acceleration in moves toward Open Access (OA). In Europe, the EU Commission has announced that OA will be a requirement for all publications arising from research funded under the Horizon 2020 programme, and that it will introduce a pilot scheme on access to and reuse of research data. It has also recommended that governments of the member states should introduce policies for OA to both publications and data arising from publicly funded research. In the USA, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued in February 2013 a policy memorandum directing Federal agencies to develop plans to make the published results of federally funded research freely available to the public within one year of publication and requiring researchers to manage the digital data resulting from research.

Such developments indicate how important it is now to find ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of communications both between researchers themselves and between the research community and the many other people and organizations who are interested in their findings. Effective communication is essential if we are to reap the full benefits – in the form of tangible contributions to social welfare and economic growth, and also to the intellectual and cultural life of nations – that can and should arise from the substantial investments that governments, charities and others make in research.

The development of effective channels of communication between researchers across the globe has underpinned the growth in our understanding of the world for at least 350 years. The communication of theoretical and empirical findings through scientific journals and other publications has been at the heart of the scientific and broader research enterprise since Henry Oldenburg, the first Secretary of the Royal Society, created its Philosophical Transactions in 1665, defining its core functions as: