The Ethos of Online Publishing

This chapter argues that online academic journals are not only a legitimate venue and sustainable source of disciplinary inquiry, but an important professional development opportunity for graduate students as future faculty and are therefore crucial to maintaining a discipline's ethos. The authors begin by reviewing the ethos of individually produced print publications in the humanities, paying particular attention to the value such publications hold in helping scholars earn tenure and promotion. The authors then posit that efforts within the rhetoric and writing scholarly community to recognize the collaborative nature of multimodal digital texts and to advocate for the collaborative production of such digital texts, which has helped such scholarship achieve a higher level of ethos over the past two decades. Emphasizing the role of graduate students in these ongoing efforts, the authors conclude by recommending three benchmarks developing and advanced scholars should implement to increase their own professional development and thus the ethos of online academic publishing: curricular development, team development, and dissertation research.

Changing Face of Scholarly Communication and Its Impact on Library and Information Centres

Scholarly communication involves publishing the research findings by academics and researchers in order to share and make available the academic or research output to the global community of researchers. Emergence of Internet and World Wide Web has brought revolutionary changes in the process of scholarly communication. Increasing price of serial publications, time lag in the publication and readership and other associated problems were addressed by the electronic journals and open access initiatives. Other models like – Consortia and Institutional Repositories have evolved as a cost saving models and improving communication. The social networking sites on the Internet are also promoting scholarly communication to a great extent. In the light of the changing technological environment this chapter depicts the history of scholarly publishing and reviews the changes that took place in the process of scholarly communication. Further, the impact of the changing models on Library and Information Centres (LICs) is examined.

Research and Web 2.0

The scientific publishing industry has witnessed a plethora of innovations across the life cycle of writing, publishing and archiving of scientific journals. Open access is only the visible tip of an iceberg that contains new players and new services and modes of publishing—which span from new review processes, online citation indexes and social media tools—that have become available over the past 20 years. One might have the impression that disruptive innovations are underway and that many of the well-established themes of digital transformation, such as business model and service innovation, disintermediation, ProSuming and new pricing models, have had a profound impact on the market of scientific journals. Nonetheless, the commercial academic publishing houses (the incumbents) so far have not only successfully defended but even extended their market position. By categorizing the innovations underway and relating them to the constellation of actors in this market, the authors reflect on and try to explain the lasting influence of traditional publishers in the market.

Citation Essentials in Scholarly Communication

This Chapter defines Citations, Citation Standards/Style Manuals and Scholarly Communication. It explains the importance of Scholarly Communication, and use of Citations in meeting the objectives of Scholarly Communication, especially in avoiding the accidental danger of plagiarism. It also explains how Bibliographic Management Systems (software)—both open / free and proprietary—have been helpful to the academics and researchers in providing standard methods of citations that is, both in-text citations and references list at the end of the text of the document while writing documents. It concludes by emphasizing the need for use of standard citation or style manual for proper dissemination of scholarly communications. There is a need for gaining adequate knowledge on how to cite and provide references in correct form in the publications to make them quality and scholarly works and also to avoid from the accidental danger of plagiarism.

Research Methodologies for Multitasking Studies

The research on multitasking is scattered across disciplines, and the definitions of multitasking vary according to the discipline. As a result, the research is not coherent nor consistent in the approaches taken to understanding this phenomenon. In this chapter, the authors review studies on multitasking in different disciplines with a focus on the research methodologies used. The three main research paradigms (empirical-analytical, interpretive, and critical) are used as a framework to understand the nature of the research. The strengths and weaknesses of the research in each of the paradigms are examined, and suggestions are made for utilizing different research methodologies to bring clarity to the research in this field. Such an endeavour will help to build interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research and help guide future research and theory building.

Research Protocols and Ethical Considerations in Indigenous Knowledge Systems

Research in Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) in South Africa has grown at a very high pace in a relatively short period of time. The growth thereof has presented researchers and the knowledge holders with challenges that have never faced them in the same way before. It has necessitated a review of how researchers interact with those who hold the knowledge and has required that protection mechanisms be implemented to safeguard the misuse and misappropriation of the indigenous knowledge. This Chapter outlines the focus on IKS in South Africa since 1995 and reflects on the challenges related to this focus. Specifically the Chapter looks at the challenges related to the recognition of knowledge holders, the ethical issues facing both researchers and knowledge holders, and the protocols that have been designed and used in South Africa and other places. It concludes by indicating the challenges that still remain and how these can be explored further by the research community.

Ethical Issues in Qualitative Data Collection and Management

Qualitative data collection is largely defined by the personal experience and opinions of the examinee. The examinee is central in the approach, and not so much the researcher. The essence is a communication between the researcher and the examinee, where interpretation of both the questions asked and the answers provided serves the purpose of understanding. This type of research is interpretative and almost exclusively subjective, because the personal or subjective way of understanding and interpretation is central. However, there is certainly a serious possibility for external influence on the answers to be provided or even the way answers are interpreted. Additionally, there is a fair chance that the questions are phrased towards expected answers. There are various moments where ethics are paramount to the quality and acceptability of the research. To protect objectivity, ethical professionalism and professional morale are important. This chapter aims to describe and discuss ethical issues related to collection and management of data from qualitative research.

Ensuring Research Integrity

Ethics is the study of man's internalization of his understanding of terms such as value, dignity, integrity, fairness, justice, and care among others. These terms are relevant to man in his private as well as public life, in official and unofficial settings. Man must realize that he interacts with others either on one-on-one basis or through other materials, which include recorded voice, written documents, speeches made, interviews granted, and the like. He must take cognizance of his sense of morality therefore or become immoral, that is using people solely to achieve his purpose, or worse still degenerate to being amoral. Where a researcher is indifferent to the impact of his work on others, his research base or benefactors, he is an egoist. In order to assist the researcher, journalist, teacher, etc. every organization, institute, corporation, etc. must have laid down rules generally referred to as “code of conduct.” These must be binding on all members, serving as a guide to members' behaviors in their day-to-day interactions.

Plagiarism, Licensing, and the Proper Use of Digital Textbooks

This chapter explores ways to avoid plagiarism in digital textbooks' use and development. Traditionally, the plagiarism recommendation refers to books and articles. How about textbooks? However, to avoid plagiarism it is important to make sure that licensing in digital textbooks' use and development is properly used. For licensing to be a benefit for learning, it is important to note that it may impose additional costs. This chapter reflects and includes in discussion the issue on licensing, specifically the Creative Common (CC) license of open educational resources. Secondly, it considers how the Creative Common License could improve the proper use of digital textbooks. Finally, it explores how the use of digital tools can allow students to learn more effectively.

Hybrid Segmentation Prototype for Arabic Text-Based Documents

The contribution of this work relates to the field of Arabic text-based document analysis for the detection of plagiarism. This analysis will be carried out according to the triadic computation model of document similarity. The authors propose a hybrid segmentation prototype for Arabic text-based documents that links different processing steps in order to generate the similarity rate between the documents of an Arabic corpus. It involves two segmentation systems and a morphological analysis in order to obtain a matrix representation adapted to the triadic similarity computation according to three abstraction levels: documents, sentences and words.