The Role of Academic Publications in Community Service

Community service has been described as “serviceswhich are identified by an institution of highereducation, through formal or informal consultationwith local nonprofit, governmental, and communitybasedorganizations, as designed to improve the qualityof life for community residents, particularly low-incomeindividuals, or to solve particular problems related totheir needs, including such fields as health care, childcare, literacy training, education (including tutorialservices), welfare, social services, transportation, housingand neighborhood improvement, public safety, crimeprevention and control, recreation, rural development,and community improvement”1. In recent years, theservice-learning movement has become a major presencewithin higher education. Community service in broadterms are programmes linked to higher education thatinvolve participants in activities designed to deliversocial benefits to a particular community in ways thatteach the participants to work jointly towards achievingthe common goal. In order for research universitiesto play a more significant role in public service, it hasbeen highlighted that academic institutions needed toredefine service as scholarship and to make knowledgemore accessible to the community in order to achievepublic service2. Public service and outreach have beendescribed as hallmarks of the university of the future andfor a university to be relevant and sustainable, it must beinvolved not only in teaching and research but be activelypursuing service and outreach activities3. However,it must be realized that participation in communityservice usually involves a degree of personal sacrifice interms of time, remuneration and convenience4.