Beyond scholarly communication: knowledge transfer in Humanities

Abstract

Knowledge transfer between scientific research and industry is especially relevant today, because of the resolute demand for innovation on the part of the European Commission.
Libraries and documentation centres – traditionally committed to improving the efficiency of the process of knowledge sharing within the scientific community, with special regard to information access and retrieval – might soon be summoned to support knowledge transfer between research institutions and industry. This is one of the subjects investigated by the IPS – Information Policies in Science – project, briefly described in the paper. With respect to the European Commission’s demand for innovation, Humanities seem to be one of the most critical research fields: for this reason they are one of the privileged areas of investigation of the IPS project.