Self-archiving as a way to provide open access to research publications is gaining ground in the area of scholarly publishing. An increasing number of research funders and universities are mandating open access for output associated with their research, which calls for evaluation of the effects of the phenomenon. This two years master’s thesis aims to investigate researchers’ experiences of self-archiving. A qualitative web survey was conducted and answered by 41 researchers from several different countries, and a vast majority of the respondents concur with the principle of open access. Although self-archiving shows not to be a guarantee of increased impact for the single researcher, the study shows that might be the case. The results attest that self-archiving can generate for example increased number of collaboration, comments in social media and stronger professional profile, as well as a sense of personal progress. The results illuminate an ongoing change in scholarly communications as self-archiving shows to enable a more flexible and informal communication of research material.

The following thesis concerns the conceptualization of openness within the open access movement. Open accesscan be understood as a phenomenon or a movement that aims at changing the current system of scholarly communication.Consequentially, the movements goals arose in relation to the escalating serials crisis in scholarly communicationand the increasing power of commercial publishers. The purpose of the thesis is to study three centralopen access declarations with the aim of uncovering the different conceptualizations of openness found withinthese texts. Leaning on the theoretical position known as actor-network theory, the declarations role within a surroundingnetwork is explored by focusing on how openness as a concept has been produced and reproduced bycentral actors. Two overarching questions frames the study: How is openness conceptualized within the declarations?And how can openness, as a concept, be understood as an effect generated by a larger network?The first part of the study focuses on the first question. In order to provide an answer I have conducted athematically structured text analysis of the declarations. The results of this part show that openness, in relation toopen access, is part of a discourse where research is considered a public good. I claim that this indicates thatopenness is related to the larger questions of information freedom and the enclosure of intellectual commons.The purpose of openness is described within the declarations as contributing to mechanisms of decentralized controlover information, which in itself generates a greater efficiency and lower costs in regards to scholarly communication.The second part of the study is concerned with the larger, overarching network and in what way the conceptualizationof openness can be seen as a network generated effect. To answer this question I deploy the theoreticaltools provided by ANT. Focus lies on how the declarations relate to each other and on how central actors havecontributed to the conceptualizations. The results show that openness and open access has shifting meanings thathave been modified in various ways. They also show that actors through a collective negotiation process defineand shape the meaning of openness by circulating ideas on electronic dissemination and distributed processes

Since the 1990’s Open Access has developed into an alternative model for scientific publication. Today an increasing political interest in promoting Open Access is commonly channeled through the implementation of policies by research funders. However, in the scientific community the uptake and acceptance of the model has been of notably different character.This Master’s thesis examines the understanding of and attitudes towards open access among eight senior Swedish researchers and how these have been affected by the implementation of the Swedish Research Council’s Open Access-policy as implemented in 2010. It further asks the question of how researchers’ publishing practices can be understood as shaped by and performed within actor-network configurations. The study is based on interviews with researchers from three academic disciplines. The empirical material has been analyzed through the perspective of actor-network theory.The study finds that the impact of the Swedish Research Council’s policy has been low. Yet, perceived as a floating object, the policy has forced the researchers to adhere to and position themselves in relation to the immanent powers of the policy and, thus, to Open Access both as movement and publishing model. The study also finds that both the traditional model for scientific publishing and the Open Access model can be understood as actor-networks, currently competing for the researchers’ loyalty and involvement in order to secure future dominance. The study finally concludes that in order to fully understand researchers’ practices and attitudes it is necessary to perceive these as shaped in and by extra-social contexts and forces. / Program: Masterutbildning: Digitala tjänster - kultur, information & kommunikation

The aim of this paper is to compare subject headings by the authors of the work and those administrated by professional indexers. The empirical setting for the study lies within the sociological discipline. The questions asked are: What overall similarities and differences between subject headings administrated by authors versus indexers can we find? What qualitative advantages and disadvantages can we establish between subject headings generated by natural language versus controlled vocabularies?Subject headings in the Swedish national library catalogue Libris and in five Swedish universities platforms for academic publishing are studied and compared. Today it is praxis at Swedish universities that administration of subject headings is done by authors and not by professional indexers. We consider this to be a clash between professions. The paper is based on Birger Hjørlands domain analysis. We discuss the practice of subject heading administration within these two professions. Furthermore we wish to determine advantages and disadvantages with subject headings indexed by natural language versus controlled vocabularies. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The main purpose of this Master thesis is to investigate the journalists' attitude towards Internet as a news medium. The thesis also gives a general synopsis of the changing role of news media as enter the scene of Internet. The major part of this study consists of empirical studies though there is not much research-work made in this area. This case study is based on qualitative interviews of journalists. This method was the most suitable as the aim was to see tendencies and attitudes in a more individual light. The interviews were made in May and August 1999 at Göteborgs-Posten, a newspaper located in Gothenburg. Nine interviews were made with journalists of different positions, mainly staff from the department of finance and economics. The study focuses on four main areas of interest: (1) Relations strategies (2) News selection (3) Users (4) Internet The results indicate that the journalistic profession has not changed notable although a new group of journalists has entered the scene. These journalists have gained an expanding role, as the Internet demands more of the publisher. It is in the attitude towards Internet and online-publication one can note great differences among the journalists of the study. Two categories were identified, which differ in their view of Internet and the journalistic opportunities. The first type can be described as a traditional approach and the second as a more visionary approach. To clarify this differentiation some generalisations had to be made which make it less certain to find any of these two types in its pure form in real life. The study shows that Newspapers on the Internet still are considered a new phenomenon searching its form, but obviously has a great potential. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The main objective of this essay is to present the views of nine Swedish publishers and four other agents in the literary field regarding the possibilities of and obstacles to publishing fiction in an electronic format. Furthermore, whether or not electronic publishing is today actually a viable alternative. A substantial part of the essay functions as background to our interview findings and is based primarily on material originating from the Sociology of Literature field. The introductory chapter expounds the methodological and theoretical basis of the essay and is followed by a chapter placing our study in a larger, international media, context. Chapter three deals with the past decades’ restructuring of the publishing sector, the professional functions involved in traditional publishing and Pierre Bourdieu’s theories on the cultural and economic forces at work in the literary field. The fourth and fifth chapters present the many roles of the traditional printed book, as well as new media for the distribution and consumption of literature, and looks at the kind of partnerships evolving between agents in e-publishing. The main emphasis is, however, placed on the following sections: Chapter six, which exemplifies a few of the existing national and international web publishers; and chapter seven, which presents our examination based on qualitative interviews with publishers and other agents connected with the Swedish book industry. The essay finishes with a discussion of our findings and concludes that, despite new media and textual carriers, the traditional book remains the main player regarding the production, distribution and consumption of serious fiction, as far as the traditional Swedish publishers are concerned. / Uppsatsnivå: D

For hundreds of years the scientific journals has been the foremost tool for scholarly communication. Publishing of research results is very important for scientists. Often the research is bound to the university and the research libraries supplies the scientist with all journals needed. The last decades the libraries have seen the costs for subscriptions to journals explode. Commercial publishers often lie behind the mostly unmotivated escalation in price. The purpose of the study has been to analyse which strategies a Swedish research library has to meet this changes in journal costs and electronic development, and also to analyse the development of alternative scientific publishing. We tried to find the answer to these four questions:If you look at scientific journals, what consequences has the last years of economic and electronic development done to the strategies the library has got for collection management?How does the library work with collection management of scientific publications?How do the library weigh different publications and forms of publications (monographs, e-journals and paper journals) against each other?Do the library develop new forms for scientific publishing?The case study shows that the library has developed several different strategies to meet the changes within the formal scientific communication. The libraries have been heavily affected due to the rising expenses. The consequences has been cancellation of subscriptions and lowered grants for monographs. To meet the changes the university has, the last years, developed an own model for publishing scientific publications produced by the researchers at the university. Our conclusion is that the lowered economic resources due to rising subscription fees affects the library negatively and that many of the strategies the library has developed to meet the changes within scientific publishing aims to set free resources or in many cases set free means to finance the journal collection. We believe that the university is on the right track when developing an own model for publication. We also believe that co-operation with other universities have to increase. The communication inside the university will have to improve to raise the knowledge for the role of the library in the university of the future. A possible future role that would strengthen the library's position within the university is to be responsible for the university's scientific publication. To accomplish this more co-operation and communication is needed between library and university. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this master thesis is to show how the dissemination of scientific information took place and developed during the 19th century. The main focus is Lund University. Therefore I have formulated two questions: How did the five heads of the history department at Lund University publish their research findings in the 19th century? What factors in society influenced the scientific spreading of results in the 19th century? To assess the scientific reliability of the sources I have used a method based on source criticism and hermeneutics. The thesis covers important concepts such as the exchange of publications between the universities, commercium litterarium and Akademischer Tauschverein and also the development of Lund University yearbook. By taking a closer look at how five history scholars published themselves during the 19th century an interesting picture appears of how channels for scientific publication changed and developed. This concerns mainly the periodical literature. Before the regulations of 1852 the university lecturers had the possibility to write their dissertations in their capacity of “preses” and let the respondents pay for the cost of the publication. If you look at the articles registered in “Svensk historisk bibliografi” 1875–1900 it is evident that the publications were followed by reviews in different journals. The number of scientific journals was growing during this period. The publication of articles and reviews in scientific journals had gained larger impact. Between 1870 and 1890 one may notice a higher level of international orientation of the scientific production. An interaction between books and journals appeared. The scholars published themselves through books but the opportunities to publish their papers in journals were growing. Thus the number of reviews increased as the number of journals continued to grow. The increasing public discussion and polemic were both made possible through the publication of scientific research results in different journals. The geographic dissemination increased.

The main aim in this thesis is to analyse the attitudes of fivearchaeologists at the Department of History, University ofGothenburg, on the subject of scholarly publishing injournals. The investigation has been led by a set of questionsconcerning the motives and conditions for submitting articlesto scholarly journals.The primary way of collecting emprical data is based onsemistructured qualitative interviews. To get a broaderpicture, the publishing patterns of the archaeologists at theDepartment of History were mapped using the databaseGöteborgs universitets publikationer (GUP). A documentstudy was also conducted.The analysis uses Björk & Holmström’s The net value ofsubmission model to highlight which factors are assumed toinfluence an author when submitting to a scientific journal.This model is reduced and developed to six aspects whichmore or less effect the decision making of the author whenpublishing an article in a scientific journal. These six aspectsare: culture, strategy, medium/form, readership, prestige andperformance.The results of the investigation show that a set of factorsinfluence the publishing decision. As a disciplinetraditionally rooted in the humanities, the archaeologists atthe Department of History have established a scientific wayof publishing. Motives and attitudes to journal publishingshow that all aspects, in varying degrees, are important indeciding where to submit an article. / Program: Bibliotekarie

This thesis takes its point of departure in how the digitization of research libraries has changed how researchers search for information. The study examines how digitization has affected the library and librarians. It investigates the information seeking and information needs of researchers within a specific context i.e. the Institute of Biomedicine at the University of Gothenburg. It explores how researchers search for relevant information and whether the support provided by the Gothenburg University Library is sufficient for their (information) needs. Interviews were conducted with seven researchers at different stages of their career. This was complemented with a review of user studies research in library and information science (LIS) as well as reports from different universities.The results show that on one hand the researchers are satisfied with the information they retrieve from searching in PubMed and Google and do not want assistance from the library regarding this. On the other hand they do want support with other specific tasks i.e. data curation, making graphic figures, registration of information in the university’s repository. The study concludes by discussing how librarians have become invisible to the researchers due to digitization of the research library and to gain visibility the library needs to proactively seek the researchers’ attention and create places to interact.