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Thesis (doctoral)--Stockholms universitet, 1993. / Summary and abstract in English. Leaf containing abstract inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 206-221).

I Sverige bedrivs en stor del av all forskning vid universitet. Det finns dock även forskningsinstitut; organisationer som helt inriktar sig på forskning. I takt med dagens moderna kunskapssamhälle så har kunskapshantering som ämne vuxit sedan 1990- talet. En viktig fråga inom kunskapshanteringen är hur kunskap och erfarenheter från projekt kan dokumenteras och arkiveras för att senare återanvändas i framtida arbeten. Anledningen till att vi valde kunskapshanteringen i just forskningsinstitut är att de är projektintensiva organisationer och att vi inte hittade några tidigare studier om det sambandet. Syftet med undersökningen är att analysera hur kunskapshanteringen ser ut i sex utvalda forskningsinstitut och för att lyckas så har två frågeställningar besvarats. Frågeställningarna är hur kunskap som skapas i projekt hanteras och hur instituten strukturerat sin kunskapshantering. För att svara på frågeställningarna genomfördes kvalitativa intervjuer med varsin anställd på sex svenska forskningsinstitut som arbetar med forskningsprojekt av olika slag. Den insamlade empirin analyserades med hjälp av kunskapsterminologi och utefter två teman: metoder och verktyg samt interaktion. En del av syftet var att undersöka om särskilda metoder och verktyg för kunskapshantering förekom i forskningsinstituten. Efter genomförd analys kan vi konstatera att typen av arbetsuppgifter spelar stor roll i kunskapshanteringen där skillnaden mellan de två samhällsvetenskapliga instituten och de övriga tekniska och naturvetenskapliga är tydlig. Förekomsten av de utvalda metoderna och verktygen för kunskapshantering skiljer sig, men de är till stor del frånvarande från de analyserade instituten där exempelvis endast hälften dokumenterar projekterfarenheter och arkiverar dem för framtida användning. De medvetna och strukturerade valen av kunskapshantering varierar mellan instituten, men den mänskliga interaktionens roll har visat sig vara väsentlig för att hantera projektrelaterad kunskap. / In Sweden, a large part of all research is conducted at universities. However, there are also research institutes; organisations wholly focused on research. Keeping up with today’s modern knowledge society, knowledge management as a subject has grown since the 1990’s. A key issue in knowledge management is how knowledge and experience from projects can be documented and archived for later use in future projects. The reason we chose knowledge management in research institutions is that they are project-intensive organizations and that we did not find any previous studies of the relationship between the two. The purpose of the study is to analyse what the knowledge management looks like in six selected research institutes and to achieve this two questions have been answered. The questions are how knowledge created in projects is managed and how the institutions have structured their knowledge management. In order to answer the questions qualitative interviews were conducted with a staff member from six Swedish research institutes of various kinds. The collected empirical data was analysed using knowledge terminology and by using two themes: methods and tools and interaction. Part of the purpose was to investigate if specific methods and tools for knowledge management were used in the research institutes. After completing the analysis, we can conclude that the type of assignment plays a major role in knowledge management where the difference between the two social science institutes and the other technical and natural sciences ones is clear. The presence of the selected methods and tools for knowledge management differs, but they are in large part absent from the analysed institutions where, for example, only half of them document project experiences and archive them for future use. The conscious and structured choices of knowledge management vary between the institutes, but the role of social interaction has shown itself to be essential for the management of project-related knowledge.

The Open Access (OA) movement came to be as a reaction against the enclosure of information resources, facilitated by new distribution technologies. The purpose of the OA movement is to make research results freely available. The aim of this master´s thesis is to increase the understanding of how libraries outside of the academic sphere and within research institutes relates to OA. As a theoretical framework I created two different ideologies, the OA ideology and the nonsharing ideology. I also conducted six interviews with librarians. Through an idea and ideology analysis I relate the materials to the two different ideologies. The theories used concern information commons and gifting economies. My study shows that the informants have different views of the OA ideas depending on what aspects that is in question. Especially when it comes to economics and copyright issues the informants express a great degree of criticism against the traditional publishing models. In some other aspects the informants relied on the traditional publishing and thereby on the nonsharing ideology. The idea to make research results freely available was positively viewed upon by many of the informants. They sometimes plan and have ideas connected to the OA ideology. In a few cases they also work with OA materials, but the context that the libraries functions within makes it complicated and sometimes less urgent than it is in the universities to adopt to OA to a larger extent.

The Open Access (OA) movement came to be as a reaction against the enclosure of information resources, facilitated by new distribution technologies. The purpose of the OA movement is to make research results freely available. The aim of this master´s thesis is to increase the understanding of how libraries outside of the academic sphere and within research institutes relates to OA. As a theoretical framework I created two different ideologies, the OA ideology and the nonsharing ideology. I also conducted six interviews with librarians. Through an idea and ideology analysis I relate the materials to the two different ideologies. The theories used concern information commons and gifting economies. My study shows that the informants have different views of the OA ideas depending on what aspects that is in question. Especially when it comes to economics and copyright issues the informants express a great degree of criticism against the traditional publishing models. In some other aspects the informants relied on the traditional publishing and thereby on the nonsharing ideology. The idea to make research results freely available was positively viewed upon by many of the informants. They sometimes plan and have ideas connected to the OA ideology. In a few cases they also work with OA materials, but the context that the libraries functions within makes it complicated and sometimes less urgent than it is in the universities to adopt to OA to a larger extent.

The Swedish industrial research institutes are research organisations that exist somewhat in between academy and industry, fulfilling an intermediary role as well as providing a space for research relevant to industrial companies, and they have a history of being funded by both state and industry as a way to support technical research in Sweden. The present study examines the history one of these institutes – the Institute for Surface Chemistry – with respect to three dimensions of its knowledge production: the role that basic and applied research has played for the institute, its external connections and the heterogeneity of its knowledge production, and how it has evaluated the quality of its research. The time period considered is 1975-2005, a challenging time for the Swedish institute sector, and the analysis is based on an interpretation of annual reports, research programs and newsletters from the period, as well as on interviews with institute managers and researchers.This work contributes to a wider research field in two respects. First, it provides input to the ongoing debate about how a changing research system is linked to changes in knowledge production. Second, it increases our knowledge of the Swedish industrial research institute sector, something interesting in its own right but that also can provide input to the ongoing policy reorientation vis-à-vis these institutes. The main novelty of the work is that it engagessystematically and historically with changes in knowledge production within an industrial research institute, something not done in previous studies of the sector. To briefly summarise the results, applied research gradually becomes more important than basic research at the institute, but basic research still keeps playing a rather large role for some time, even as this roleis downplayed in the official publications. At the same time, the institute becomes more heterogeneous in its knowledge production, associates closer with its industrial partners, and loses some of its independent knowledge production in favour of a more classic intermediary role. During the study period, the institute mainly ascertains the quality of its work through the use of traditional academic standards, and it retains a strong publication culture throughout.Three main conclusions are drawn: that the institute generally has oriented itself more towards its industrial partners; that this is the result of adapting to a situation in which the traditional state funding and political support appear ever more insecure; and that in spite of this general dynamic of adaption, the institute, thanks to a unique knowledge base or strong and well-connected actors, has sometimes been able to defend its preferred modes of knowledge production instead of adapting,something which also has had a notable impact on its development.