Scholarly communication in the digital environment

2005 ◽  
Vol 57 (6) ◽  
pp. 481-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Rowlands ◽  
David Nicholas
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
Substantial Contribution ◽  
Disciplinary Culture ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Journal Publishing ◽  
Institutional Repositories ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Regional Location

PurposeThis paper aims to make a substantial contribution to the ongoing debate about the potential of open access publishing and institutional repositories to reform the scholarly communication system. It presents the views of senior authors on these issues and contextualises them within the broader framework of their journal publishing behaviour and preferences.Design/methodology/approachA highly representative online opinion survey of more than five and half thousand journals authors, building on an earlier (January 2004) benchmarking study carried out by CIBER.FindingsSenior researchers are rapidly becoming more informed about open access publishing and institutional repositories but are still a long way off reaching a consensus on the likelihood that these new models will challenge the existing order, nor are they in agreement whether this would be a positive or a negative development. Disciplinary culture and, to a less extent, regional location are key determinants of author attitudes and any policy response should avoid “one‐size‐fits‐all” solutions.Research limitations/implicationsThis survey reflects the opinions of senior corresponding authors who have recently published in a “top” (i.e. ISI‐indexed journal) with 95 per cent confidence. The findings should not be generalised to represent the views of all authors in all journals, open access or otherwise.Originality/valueThe journal publishing sector is facing enormous challenges and opportunities as content increasingly migrates to the web. The value of this research is that it provides an objective, non‐partisan, assessment of the attitudes and opinions of more than 5,000 senior researchers, a key stakeholder group, and thus contributes both to the development of public policy as well as more realistic commercial strategies.

Faculty Attitudes Towards Open Access Publishing, E-Print Servers and Institutional Repositories

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Wust
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Faculty Attitudes ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
Impact Factors ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
Institutional Repositories ◽  
Etude Qualitative

This qualitative study investigates how faculty gather information for teaching and research and their opinions on open access approaches to scholarly communication. Despite generally favorable reactions, a perceived lack of peer review and impact factors were among the most common reasons for not publishing through open-access forums.Cette étude qualitative examine comment les membres du corps professoral recueillent l’information pour l’enseignement et la recherche, et leurs opinions envers les approches de la communication scientifique à libre accès. Malgré des réactions généralement favorables, le manque perçu de révision par les pairs et les facteurs d’impact comptent parmi les motifs habituellement évoqués pour ne pas publier sur ces tribunes à libre accès. 

scholarly journals Researchers' perspectives on open access scholarly communication in Tanzanian public universities

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
F.W. Dulle ◽  
M.K. Minishi-Majanja
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Open Access ◽  
Public Universities ◽  
Research Output ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
Institutional Repositories ◽  
Recognition Quality ◽  
Dissemination Of Research ◽  
Research Findings

This research explored the awareness, usage and perspectives of Tanzanian researchers on open access as a mode of scholarly communication. A survey questionnaire targeted 544 respondents selected through stratified random sampling from a population of 1088 university researchers of the six public universities in Tanzania. With a response rate of 73%, the data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. The study reveals that the majority of the researchers were aware of and were positive towards open access. Findings further indicate that the majority of researchers in Tanzanian public universities used open access outlets more to access scholarly content than to disseminate their own research findings. It seems that most of these researchers would support open access publishing more if issues of recognition, quality and ownership were resolved. Thus many of them supported the idea of establishing institutional repositories at their respective universities as a way of improving the dissemination of local content. The study recommends that public universities and other research institutions in the country should consider establishing institutional repositories, with appropriate quality assurance measures, to improve the dissemination of research output emanating from these institutions.

The role of institutional repositories in developing the communication of scholarly research

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 163-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Mary Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Perceived Barriers ◽  
Communication Process ◽  
Research Information ◽  
Scholarly Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Institutional Repositories

Purpose – This paper aims to uncover the central purposes of institutional repositories, how developments are being affected by policies and researcher behaviour and also what services and approaches are appropriate in supporting repositories from those partners involved in scholarly communication with a particular focus on services that support the publication of research. Design/methodology/approach – The research reviews the literature and current practices within higher education with regard to the core purposes of institutional repositories, the possible causes of low population of repositories in some institutions and subject disciplines, how this is being addressed and likely future developments. A qualitative survey using semi-structured interviews explores current best practices and tests the specific research questions that emerged from the literature review. Findings – The rate at which institutional repositories have grown in number has been very fast in recent years, but the population of repositories with research has been relatively slow. The research identified a number of reasons as to why the population of repositories was likely to accelerate in the future and have a more significant impact on scholarly communication. The main catalysts are: strengthening of national and funder policies that serve to both mandate open access (green or gold) and raise awareness of open access amongst faculty; the alignment of repositories with current research information systems within universities; and the development of metadata and open archives initiative harvesting that will improve discoverability and usage data. Research limitations/implications – As many of the issues around the development of repositories centre on the attitudes of faculty, it would also provide an interesting extension to the research to understand their views of the role of institutional repositories, too. Practical implications – The study presents a number of possible new ways of working by both information professionals and publishers to improve scholarly communication through the inclusion of research within institutional repositories and how perceived barriers could be overcome. Social implications – The study provides guidance on how the communication of scholarly research could be improved and reach a wider audience. This, in turn, will benefit researchers, corporate organisations and the public at large. Originality/value – The paper provides a review of current best practices in managing institutional repositories and identifies new ways of addressing some of the perceived barriers to populating repositories and the benefits for each stakeholder in the scholarly communication process.

scholarly journals What Matters More in Open Access Journal Publishing: Scientific Rigor or Financial Vigor?

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-21
Author(s):  
Barbara J. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Open Access Journal ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
Scientific Rigor ◽  
Journal Publishing ◽  
Current State ◽  
Academic Association ◽  
Take Back ◽  
The World

Academics and librarians around the world are raising concern about the current state of scholarly journal publishing in that the majority of journals are under the control of five multinational commercial journal publishing companies. Some are advocating for scholars to take back control of scholarly communication, particularly because it is the academics who are supplying and managing most of the content for journals. Open access publishing is one option, but the question of sustainability in funding streams raises concerns. Also the roles of scholarly societies, academic association, and universities in looking for stability in nonprofit journal publishing are discussed.

Integrating the IR into strategic goals at the University of Toledo: case study

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arjun Sabharwal ◽  
Gerald R. Natal
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Current Model ◽  
Scholarly Activity ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Institutional Repositories ◽  
Management Approaches ◽  
The University

PurposeThe purpose of this case study is to demonstrate a current model, as well as explore future models, for integrating institutional repositories (IRs) in higher education goals at the University of Toledo. Design/methodology/approachThis is a case study that uses literature review as an exploratory framework for new approaches while reflecting on existing literature to present the current practical framework for using IRs. FindingsThe digital environment has pushed academic institutions toward new strategies for curating their record on scholarship and preserving their heritage collections, using their IRs. Innovative approaches are also vital to curating the IR content digitally to facilitate access to those contents in ways that was not possible a few decades ago. Surveys and existing literature point to increasing uses of IRs despite abstinence from considering open access for scholarly activity among faculty concerned about copyright, plagiarism and sustainability. Staffing and funding IR initiatives are important factors in sustaining the curation of scholarship in the digital environment. Practical implicationsIRs with open access publishing, expert gallery and digital library features place academic libraries in a central role as partners in digital scholarship. Originality/valueThis case study presents an original approach to incorporating the IR into the curation of digital content while also considering potential uses of knowledge management approaches for data and knowledge sharing in an academic environment.

Acceptance and adoption of open access publishing by researchers in India

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 148-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Nazim ◽  
Sana Zia
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
English Language ◽  
The Self ◽  
Google Scholar ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Institutional Repositories ◽  
Raising Awareness ◽  
Institutes Of Technology ◽  
Research Outcome

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the level of open access (OA) adoption by researchers in Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), identify predictors of OA status (OA vs non-OA) and explore the availability of OA versions of the articles and venues used by the researches for hosting of their articles.Design/methodology/approachArticles contributed by the researchers in IITs were searched using an advance search option in the Web of Science Core collection database. The search was restricted to journal articles published in English language in the year 2015. Of the 10,049 articles retrieved, 1,023 (10 per cent of the total) were chosen randomly. Articles selected after randomizations were exported to MS Excel for further analyses. Title of each article was searched in Google Scholar to assess its OA availability and venues used by the author for self-archiving. Details of ten articles could not be traced in Google Scholar, and they were excluded from the analysis. Based on the analysis of URLs, all OA articles were classified into three categories: gold OA, green OA and both gold and green OA. The OA articles available through green route were further classified into six categories based on the analysis of the websites and the self-archiving venues used by the authors: institutional repository, subject repository, researcher or scholar’s website, organizational website, ResearchGate and other websites.FindingsOf 1,013 articles examined, OA versions were found for 68.70 per cent of articles. Of the total OA articles, 10.26 per cent articles were available through gold OA and 58.44 per cent were available through green OA, while remaining 6.21 per cent were available via both gold and green OA routes. Although researchers use different venues for self-archiving their articles, ResearchGate and institutional repositories are the most preferred choices by the researchers in IITs. Researchers in IITs are seemed to be unaware of the self-archiving policies of publishers, as more than 85 per cent self-archived articles were found as final PDF versions that are normally not allowed by the publishers.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is limited to IITs, but it offers theoretical implications for extending its scope to different subjects and institutes. The findings of the study may be useful for the publishers and institutions for formulating OA policies. The findings of the study might be used for raising awareness of OA among researchers and encouraging them to contribute their research outcome in OA outlets.Originality/valueThis is the first study in India focusing on the availability of OA research.

Evolution of institutional repositories: Managing institutional research output to remove the gap of academic elitism

2021 ◽  
pp. 096100062110095
Author(s):  
Saimah Bashir ◽  
Sumeer Gul ◽  
Shazia Bashir ◽  
Nahida Tun Nisa ◽  
Shabir Ahmad Ganaie
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Research Output ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Learning Objects ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
Supplementary Information ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
Institutional Research ◽  
Institutional Repositories

The article tries to highlight the evolution and conceptual framework of institutional repositories and their impact on the academic and scholarly circles in terms of better visibility, wider audience and earlier communication of research. The characteristics associated with the institutional repositories are also highlighted, which makes them stand out from the crowd in the family of open access scholarly platforms. The study is based on the examination and evaluation of the articles published across various peer-reviewed journals showcasing numerous dimensions of institutional repositories, ranging from their evolution to open scholarly acceptance. A preliminary search on institutional repositories was carried through two well-renowned indexing/abstracting databases of peer-reviewed literature, Clarivate Analytic’s, Web of Science and Elsevier’s Scopus. Search terms like institutional repositories, institutional research output, open access repositories, green open access, open access, open access publishing, open access initiatives, digital libraries, directory of open access repositories, open DOAR and scholarly communication were run across the databases for article retrieval, and the relevant studies were extracted accordingly. To make the study more comprehensive and current, the studies citing the retrieved articles were also consulted. The study reveals that the benefits associated with institutional repositories are manifold. They recounter users with the information which was otherwise unavailable due to the reasons ranging from the non-availability of supplementary information (like unpublished reports and working papers, multimedia and audiovisual items, learning objects, other special item types, bibliographic references, datasets, lecture notes and so forth) to the paywall/subscription models adopted by commercial channels of scholarly communication. Furthermore, the social, research and technological factors tend to be the main motivating factors for their wider acceptance by the scholarly community at global, national, organizational, and individual levels. They enhance the preservation of institutional research output with increased viewership and prestige apart from achieving a potential research impact. They, in a real sense, have abrogated the unilateral assault orchestrated by the commercial publishers on the author community by democratizing their scholarly voices via open and barrierless scholarly platforms. They are the future of the academic output of an institution/author as they perform successfully within the constitutional boundaries of scholarly and academic publishing, thus safeguarding the rights and claims of every academic actor. Given the importance of institutional repositories for a more democratic, barrierless and impactful information communication, they are for sure going beyond various scholarly circles by breaking the traditional and rigid walls of scholarly endeavours. The study presents a useful overview of the progression of the institutional repositories, their intended purpose and how they serve to fill the gaps in scholarly publishing and meet the needs of the wider academic community. The article summarizes in one place a concise overview of the use and impact of institutional repositories. The study is also an eye-opener for scholars interested in the research in the field of institutional repositories.

scholarly journals Supporting and Enhancing Scholarship in the Digital Age: The Role of Open Access Institutional Repository

2004 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Chan
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Research Impact ◽  
Experimental Models ◽  
Communication Process ◽  
Institutional Repositories ◽  
Scholarly Output ◽  
Digital Format ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Relationship Of

Abstract: Scholarly communication and publishing are increasingly taking place in the electronic environment. With a growing proportion of the scholarly record now existing only in digital format, serious and pressing issues regarding access and preservation are being raised that are central to future scholarship. At the same time, the desire of scholars to maximize readership of their research and to take control of the scholarly communication process back from the restrictive domain of commercial publishing has prompted the proliferation of access options and experimental models of publishing. This paper examines the emerging trend of university-based institutional repositories (IRs) designed to capture the scholarly output of an institution and to maximize the research impact of this output. The relationship of this trend to the open access movement is discussed and challenges and opportunities for using IRs to promote new modes of scholarship are provided. Résumé : La communication et l’édition savantes ont de plus en plus lieu dans un milieu électronique. En effet, une proportion croissante de la recherche existe seulement sous forme numérique. Cette situation soulève des questions sérieuses et pressantes sur l’accès et la préservation qui sont vitales pour l’érudition future. En même temps, les désirs de chercheurs de maximiser leur lectorat et de retirer la communication savante de l’emprise des éditeurs commerciaux ont mené à une prolifération d’options pour l’accès et de modèles d’édition expérimentaux. Cet article examine la tendance émergeante vers des entrepôts institutionnels basés dans des universités conçus de manière à préserver la production savante d’une institution et à maximiser son impact sur la recherche. Cet article discute du rapport de cette tendance au mouvement favorisant un accès libre et il propose des défis et des occasions dans l’utilisation d’entrepôts institutionnels pour promouvoir de nouvelles approches érudites.

scholarly journals Making Open Access work

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 604-636 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Pinfield
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Grey Literature ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Dissemination Of Research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of one of the most important and controversial areas of scholarly communication: Open Access publishing and dissemination of research outputs. It identifies and discusses recent trends and future challenges for various stakeholders in delivering Open Access (OA) to the scholarly literature. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on a number of interrelated strands of evidence which make up the current discourse on OA, comprising the peer-reviewed literature, grey literature and other forms of communication (including blogs and e-mail discussion lists). It uses a large-scale textual analysis of the peer-reviewed literature since 2010 (carried out using the VOSviewer tool) as a basis for discussion of issues raised in the OA discourse. Findings – A number of key themes are identified, including the relationship between “Green” OA (deposit in repositories) and “Gold” OA (OA journal publication), the developing evidence base associated with OA, researcher attitudes and behaviours, policy directions, management of repositories, development of journals, institutional responses and issues around impact and scholarly communication futures. It suggests that current challenges now focus on how OA can be made to work in practice, having moved on from the discussion of whether it should happen at all. Originality/value – The paper provides a structured evidence-based review of major issues in the OA field, and suggests key areas for future research and policy development.

GREEN OPEN ACCESS IN KENYA: A REVIEW OF THE CONTENT, POLICIES AND USAGE OF INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES

Mousaion ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 25-54
Author(s):  
Wanyenda Leonard Chilimo
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Open Access ◽  
Descriptive Study ◽  
Google Scholar ◽  
Research Institutions ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Institutional Repositories ◽  
Current State ◽  
Theses And Dissertations

 There is scant research-based evidence on the development and adoption of open access (OA) and institutional repositories (IRs) in Africa, and in Kenya in particular. This article reports on a study that attempted to fill that gap and provide feedback on the various OA projects and advocacy work currently underway in universities and research institutions in Kenya and in other developing countries. The article presents the findings of a descriptive study that set out to evaluate the current state of IRs in Kenya. Webometric approaches and interviews with IR managers were used to collect the data for the study. The findings showed that Kenya has made some progress in adopting OA with a total of 12 IRs currently listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) and five mandatory self-archiving policies listed in the Registry of Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies (ROARMAP). Most of the IRs are owned by universities where theses and dissertations constitute the majority of the content type followed by journal articles. The results on the usage and impact of materials deposited in Kenyan IRs indicated that the most viewed publications in the repositories also received citations in Google Scholar, thereby signifying their impact and importance. The results also showed that there was a considerable interest in Swahili language publications among users of the repositories in Kenya.

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