Podcasting as Open Access: A Review and Discussion of Potential Impact on Scholarly Communication and Promotion

Introduction: Academic podcasts are an informal way for faculty members to share their research expertise with an expanded and international audience. In this article, we argue that podcasts are a form of informal scholarly communication and that libraries can contribute to the successful dissemination of this informal scholarly communication.

Description of Service: At the University of South Florida, episodes of faculty-created academic podcasts are posted to the institutional repository, allowing the dissemination of these podcasts permanently via open access. The open-access nature of these materials makes them freely available to faculty, students, and other scholars; additionally, it helps to improve metrics capturing while demonstrating international impact. In comparing the measures afforded to record statistics, as well as other geographic and various platforms used, the authors leaned on internal resources and concepts from the literature to examine existing measures and reporting related to podcasting efforts.

Next Steps: Through the study of both existing services at the University of South Florida and other universities, as well as the literature, what remains is to increasingly document and standardize methods of measuring the impact of academic podcasts and related types of open-access content.