Project Report (M.Pub.) - Simon Fraser University, 2006. / Theses (Master of Publishing Program) / Simon Fraser University. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

This thesis reports on a study towards a sustainable open access scholarly publishing model in South Africa. The researcher defined the traditional scholarly publishing model as a foundation for scholarly publishing workflows and processes and the continuation of the publishing workflow as a sustainable business model. This model is simplified in this study to allow for further discussion in the investigation of the various business models of scholarly publishing. The researcher conducted a literature study to identify and define business models used in open access scholarly publishing in the international context and also developed a set of factors contributing to sustainability in this environment. These factors were then used to evaluate and investigate typical examples of open access role players in the South African context, using a desk study and interviews documented as case studies of the various initiatives. The researcher combined all these findings to make suggestions towards a sustainable open access scholarly publishing by identifying and exploring the various factors associated with open access models in South Africa, considering the roles of all the role players towards output of high quality research articles. The study found that South African scholarly publishers find the shift from a traditional subscription model to an open access model difficult, because they are not addressing their new client segment and also not acknowledging their own expertise within the publishing cycle.The research also indicates that the approach of either subscription or open access hinders a sustainable open access publishing model, but that the publishing community should instead encourage an approach a publishing environment that allows for both of these models to exist and function. Open access should not replace the traditional model but instead, enhance it. / Dissertation (MIS)--University of Pretoria, 2015. / Information Science / Unrestricted

Disputats, 2008.

This presentation was given during Open Access Week in October 2009. Open Access Week is a world-wide event where academic institutions explore Open Access – the ideal of free, full-text, immediate, online access to peer-reviewed scholarship and research results so new ideas and information can be obtained rapidly and freely by everyone.

This presentation was given at the 2012 Open Access Week program, “The Open Data Revolution: Challenges and Innovations” on October 23, 2012. Open Access Week is a world-wide event where academic institutions explore Open Access – the ideal of free, full-text, immediate, online access to peer-reviewed scholarship and research results so new ideas and information can be obtained rapidly and freely by everyone. Many funding agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, and journal publishers, such as Nature, require researchers to share data produced during the course of their research. When researchers share their data, other researchers can reuse it to answer new questions, opening up new interpretations and discoveries. Sharing data may also lead to sharing research processes, workflows and tools and may make research articles and papers more useful and citable by others.

This presentation was given at the 2012 Open Access Week program, “The Open Data Revolution: Challenges and Innovations” on October 23, 2012. Open Access Week is a world-wide event where academic institutions explore Open Access – the ideal of free, full-text, immediate, online access to peer-reviewed scholarship and research results so new ideas and information can be obtained rapidly and freely by everyone. Many funding agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, and journal publishers, such as Nature, require researchers to share data produced during the course of their research. When researchers share their data, other researchers can reuse it to answer new questions, opening up new interpretations and discoveries. Sharing data may also lead to sharing research processes, workflows and tools and may make research articles and papers more useful and citable by others.

In an attempt to identify motivating factors involved in decisions to publish in Open Access (OA) journals, individual interviews with biomedical faculty members at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a major research university, were conducted. The interviews focused on faculty identified as early adopters of OA/free full-text publishing. Searches conducted in PubMed and PubMed Central identified faculty from UNC-Chapel Hill who have published works in OA/free full-text journals. The searches targeted authors with multiple OA citations during a specified 18 month period. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the most prolific OA authors. Individual interviews attempted to determine whether the authors were aware they published in OA journals, why they chose to publish in OA journals, what factors influenced their publishing decisions, and their general attitude towards OA publishing models. Interview questions were based on a review of the literature and consultation with a scholarly communication working group. The interview results were analyzed to see whether these faculty members made conscious efforts to publish in OA/free full-text journals, and if so why.

Originally presented as author's Thesis (Ph. D.)--Technische Universiteit Delft, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 337-370).

Originally presented as author's Thesis (Ph. D.)--Technische Universiteit Delft, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 337-370).

The aim of this study was to investigate factors affecting the adoption of open access in research activities within Tanzanian public universities in order to device mechanisms of enhancing the use of this mode of scholarly communication. The study adopted the UTAUT model to formulate an open access research model comprising of six constructs and five moderators for guidance of this investigation. A triangulation approach for data gathering was adopted. In the first instance, a semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 398 respondents selected using the stratified random sampling from a population of 1088 university researchers from six public universities in Tanzania. The interview involving 63 policy makers and structured records review were also conducted to complement the questionnaire survey. The descriptive and binary logistic regression statistics of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) were used for data analysis. The study established that majority of the policy makers (90.5%) and researchers (72.1%) were aware of open access. Attitude, awareness, effort expectancy, and performance expectancy were established as the key determinants for researchers’ behavioural intention of open access usage while age, awareness, behavioural intention, facilitating conditions and social influence were found to significantly affect researchers’ actual usage of open access. It was concluded that researchers’ and policy makers’ general perceptions about open access were very positive signifying the acceptance of this mode of scholarly communication in the study area. Current poor research conditions and researchers’ low Internet self-efficacy such as inadequate information search and online publishing skills were cited as the main hindrances for researchers to use open access in scholarly communication. The study recommends institutionalisation of open access publishing in Tanzanian public universities and other similar research institutions so as to improve the dissemination of research output emanating from such institutions. Six areas for further research to establish more insights regarding the feasibility for open access development in the country are also recommended. / Information Science / D. Litt. Phil. (Information Science)