A recent blog by Altmetric reviews some recent innovations that have taken place in scholarly publishing, and discussed their implications, including:

• Greater openness
• Greater diversity
• Greater engagement

The author of the blog also provides interesting insights into what scholarly communications might look like in 5 years. The following text is taken from the blog:

• Better understanding: We’ll start to see more nuanced conversations about what “impact” really means, as well as an increased acceptance of more varied flavors of impact. As part of this, universities and funders will increasingly recognize metrics beyond citations, including altmetrics, some of which can showcase the “broader impacts” of research;
• Better dissemination: Publishers will continue to experiment with new ways to make research consumable online, building on important work like eLife’s Lens and PeerJ’s PaperNow;
• Better bottom lines for OA publications: Publishers, societies, and libraries will also invent and test new Open Access financial models like F1000 Research’s length-based article processing charge fees and Open Library of the Humanities’ “collaboration, not competition” funding model, moving academia away from the idea of “one size fits all” OA publishing; and
• Better recognition: The many varied scholarly contributions of individuals will finally be recognized by the powers that be, whether it’s related to data curation, designing protocols, or scholarly service activities (which creates discrete important but currently undervalued outputs like peer reviews, blog posts, and so on). Perhaps we’ll even be more nuanced in our recognitions, seeing those activities as merely different from (not lesser than) traditionally valued scholarly activities