Scholarly Communication involves the production, distribution of and access to academic research publications. Academic writing is published in a variety of formats; including peer-reviewed journals, books, conference proceedings and various online platforms.

One of the significant movements, in recent times, to facilitate the distribution and access to scientific research, is the Open Science Movement. This is accomplished by making research and research data available free online, without restrictions, to under resourced academic institutions, researchers and the general public. Open Access and Open Data are part of the Open Science movement. This movement encourages research collaboration by sharing research data, methods, processes, laboratory notes and publications for reuse, distribution and reproduction.

The library manages three repositories through which research output (publications) are made available under the banner UWCScholar. These are the Electronic Theses and Dissertations Repository (ETD Repository), the Research Repository for research publications, and Kikapu, the research data repository.