Thesis (M.A. ( Information Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / This study aimed to examine the extent of awareness and the adoption of Open Access (OA) publishing for the purpose of scholarly communication by academic staff at the University of Limpopo (UL). The study was guided by Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation theory (1) to measure the level of awareness of academics on the availability and use of OA resources; (2) to determine the adoption and usage levels of OA publishing as a platform for information sharing by academics in scholarly communication; (3) to establish academics’ attitudes towards the use of the OA publishing platforms; and (4) to identify perspectives of academic staff with regards to challenges and benefits presented by OA publishing. A dominantly quantitative research approach was adopted using a google forms questionnaire with closed ended questions to collect data from 250 academics at the University of Limpopo. Academics were selected using the systematic simple random sampling method. To ensure the survey instrument’s reliability and validity, the researcher conducted a pilot study through a web-based survey. A descriptive statistics method of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyse data. The study established that the majority (82%) of academics were aware of OA publishing platforms. The internet and subject librarians were the main communication channels through which they became aware of OA publishing. The study also found that there was minimal the adoption and usage of OA publishing among academics. Their attitudes towards OA and their perceptions of the benefits and challenges of OA. The general attitudes of academics about OA were positive, signifying the acceptance of this scholarly communication mode. However, some of the challenges encountered in adopting and using OA publishing include slow internet connectivity and access, publication charges by some publishers, lack of skills to publish online, power interruptions, lack of policies on OA, fake and predatory v publishers and OA articles not being peer-reviewed. These were reported as problems that directly or indirectly hinder academics from publishing in OA platforms. The study recommends the institutionalisation of OA publishing at UL to improve research output dissemination. An area for further research will be to establish more insights regarding the feasibility of OA development and possible ways of dealing with article processing fees. Keywords: Open Access publishing, scholarly communication, Academic staff, Institutional Repositories, Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation theory, University of Limpopo.

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

<p>Open access to scientific literature on Internet is a concept which is supposed to change librarians' work. The aim of the thesis was to examine librarians' perception of Open access. A questionnaire survey was conducted among librarians at libraries with specialisation in technique, natural sciences, medicine and pharmacy in Sweden. Even though Open access can be regarded as an alarming for librarians' work, the results of the survey showed that the future of the librarians' profession can be positive if they flexibly adopt their work routines according to changes in publication forms and library users' needs.</p>

Open access to scientific literature on Internet is a concept which is supposed to change librarians' work. The aim of the thesis was to examine librarians' perception of Open access. A questionnaire survey was conducted among librarians at libraries with specialisation in technique, natural sciences, medicine and pharmacy in Sweden. Even though Open access can be regarded as an alarming for librarians' work, the results of the survey showed that the future of the librarians' profession can be positive if they flexibly adopt their work routines according to changes in publication forms and library users' needs.

D. Litt. et Phil. / The use of data in science has evolved to a new level in e-science. Collaboration in e- science is important as scientists, engineers and technologists work together to solve scientific problems, through the collection and analysis of large data sets. These experiments can generate enormous amounts of data, creating a need for more efficient storage, management and processing of data. Data needs to be managed effectively to ensure possible future use for secondary analysis and further experimentation. The practice of data curation deals with the management of data, with the objective of sustaining data as a resource for future use. A number of frameworks and models have been developed to address the curation of data, but only the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) has been accepted internationally. The World Data Centre (WDC) is an organisation that was established to ensure access to scientific data for a number of different scientific disciplines. This organisation consists of 52 individual data centres (iWDCs) that are members of the WDC, and are responsible for the curation of scientific data. Because the data curation practices and needs of each iWDC differ, the purpose of this study is to determine to what extent it is possible to develop a framework for the curation of data in the WDC. This study used a mixed method research design through the collection of data from an online survey (quantitative data) and a multiple-case case study (qualitative data). All the iWDCs were invited to participate in the online survey, which was created to quantify OAIS functional model compatibility, sampling for the case study was conducted based on the OAIS functional model compatibility scores. v Based on the findings from this study, suggestions towards a suitable framework for the curation of data in the WDC are made. The key outcomes from this research included a quantitative OAIS functional model compatibility test and suggestions towards a suitable framework for the curation of data. The suggestions towards a suitable framework for the curation of data in the WDC should in future be tested in the newly formed World Data System (WDS) and adjustments made to create a viable framework for curating data in the WDS.

The thesis presents a conceptual literature review of the subject of open access as it is reflected in literature relevant to digital library research. An approach to the grounded theory method specifically created for the purpose of performing a literature review is applied to 70 articles and conference proceedings found in the databases LISA and LISTA. Through the coding of the literature five categories that conceptually order the subject of open access emerged; Open Access, Authors, Scholarly Communication, Libraries and Librarians, and Developing and Transitional Countries. The conceptual relations of the categories are discussed in the presentation of the categories. The emerged theory is then validated through a review of earlier literature, which focused on literature reviews on open access. A model of the emerged theory with explanatory narratives are then presented in the concluding chapter.

Scholarly and scientific communication has a long history, while the Open Access (OA) movement began to take part in this communication with the emergence of Internet in the late 1960s and the web that emerged in mid-1990s. OA is beneficial for sharing knowledge because the OA movement demands scholarly literature freely available on the internet and it is free of most licensing restriction copyright. OA will close the barrier of access to knowledge. The OA movement in Indonesia may be considered slow. So far, only 33 academic libraries have registered their repositories with OpenDOAR, which is still small compared to the total number of HE institutions in Indonesia. Those 33 OARs vary in the stages of development. Some have already had large size of contents, while others are still developing. Using Weiner’s theory of organizational readiness for change, this mixed method investigates the readiness of academic librarians for Open Access Repository implementation. The results show that academic librarians in Indonesia are somewhat familiar with OA and OAR. However, their understanding of OA is still limited to the technical nature of it. They also know the benefits of OA in relation to scholarly communication and are ready to implement OAR, but the implementation was mostly based on the goal of achieving a specific rank in the world-class university ranking and Webometrics. They implemented Open Access Repositories with limited technological infrastructure, skills, and limited knowledge of OA.

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. et Phil. (Information Science)

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2005. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: South African science shows a decline in its global competitiveness in that its scholarly publication rate has not kept pace with that of other countries, both developed and developing. This, together with a decline in publication rate especially among junior South African scholars, suggests a structural problem in the South African national system of innovation. A declining publication rate indicates a problem of knowledge diffusion for South Africa, and hints at a possible knowledge generation problem. This assignment limits itself to the dynamics of knowledge diffusion with specific reference to Open Access scholarly communication. Open Access scholarly communication is an overt intervention regarding knowledge diffusion. The marginalisation of science in and of developing countries, leading to a state of knowledge imperialism and knowledge dependence, is addressed, and it is argued that knowledge diffusion and generation are at the heart of longterm economic growth. This assignment has been structured around two core sections, a theoretical framework based in the literature, and empirical study. The central concepts of scholarly communication and Open Access, national information policy (NIP), and national system of innovation (NSI) are elaborated upon in the theoretical framework (Chapters 2 and 3). The empirical part of this study (Chapters 4 and 5) in turn consist of two parts. Both parts used the survey method, however the first part made use of a questionnaire instrument, and the second part made use of a structured record review. Both empirical studies were used to assess levels of activity and extent of adoption of Open Access within a defined South African scholarly community, one discipline-based, the other institution-based. The aims of this study were two-fold: to assess levels of awareness of and investment in Open Access modes of scholarly communication within defined scholarly communities; and to create a benchmark document of South Africa's involvement to date in various Open Access initiatives. The argument is made for the openness of scholarly systems, and furthermore that the disparate and uncoordinated nature of Open Access in South Africa needs a policy intervention. The policy intervention so identified would exist within an enabling policy environment and would be minimally disruptive to the South African science system. Said policy intervention would constitute a National Information Policy since it would address the storage, dissemination, and retrieval of scholarly research output. This assignment recommends the amendment of the current statutory reporting mechanism - used by scholars to report and obtain publication rate subsidies - which would require that scholars make their research available via an Open Access mode of scholarly communication, and moreover, would require scholars to report on having done so. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die wetenskap as praktyk in Suid-Afrika toon 'n afname in internasionale mededingendheid. Laasgenoemde is sigbaar in die tempo waarteen Suid-Afrikaanse vakpublikasies nie tred hou met dié van ander nasies nie, beide ontwikkelde en ontwikkelende lande. Hierdie afname, gepaardgaande met 'n afname in publikasiegetalle van veral junior navorsers, sou kon dui op 'n strukturele probleem in Suid-Afrika se nasionale innovasiestelsel. 'n Afname in die vakpublikasietempo dui daarop dat Suid Afrika 'n probleem het ten opsigte van die distribusie van kennis. Hierdie werkstuk is beperk tot die dinamiek van kennisdistribusie met spesifieke verwysing na 'Open Access' wetenskaplike kommunikasie. 'Open Access' wetenskaplike kommunikasie is 'n eksplisiete intervensie gemik op kennisdistribusie. Wetenskap binne en vanuit ontwikkelende lande word al hoe meer onbelangrik geag en kennis-imperialisme and kennis-afhanklikheid neem toe. Aan hierdie laasgenoemde aspekte word ook aandag geskenk. 'n Deel van die argument wat geopper word is dat kennisdistribusie en kennis-generering kern aspekte van langtermyn ekonomiese groei is. Hierdie werkstuk bestaan uit twee kern afdelings: 'n teoretiese raamwerk gebaseer op 'n literatuuroorsig, en 'n empiriese studie. Die sentrale konsepte van wetenskaplike kommunikasie en 'Open Access', nasionale inligtingsbeleid, en nasionale innovasiestelsels word beskryf in die teoretiese raamwerk (Hoofstukke 2 en 3). Die empiriese deel van hierdie studie (Hoofstukke 4 en 5) bestaan uit twee dele. Beide laasgenoemde dele maak gebruik van 'n opname as metodiek, maar die eerste deel het gebruik gemaak van 'n vraelys, en die tweede deel het gebruik gemaak van gestruktureerde studie van rekords (in die vorm van Webtuistes). Albei empiriese studies was gebruik om die vlak en mate van aktiwiteit rondom 'Open Access' binne 'n beperkte Suid-Afrikaanse wetenskaplike gemeenskap vas te stel. Hierdie gemeenskappe is gedefinieer óf volgens dissipline óf volgens instansie. Die doel van hierdie werkstuk was veelvoudig: om die vlak van kennis van en betrokkenheid by 'Open Access' inisiatiewe vas te stel binne Suid-Afrika; sowel as om 'n basis-dokument te skep insake Suid-Afrika se betrokkenheid tot op hede by verskeie 'Open Access' inisiatiewe. Die argument vir 'n oop wetenskaplike stelsel word gestel. Verder word geargumenteer dat die lukrake en ongekoordineerde manier waarop 'Open Access' tot dusver in Suid-Afrika bevorder is, daarop dui dat 'n intervensie op die vlak van beleid benodig word. Laasgenoemde beleid sou binne die bestaande beleidsomgewing geformuleer word, en sou relatief min ontwrigting meebring in die huidige Suid-Afrikaanse navorsingsopset. Die spesifieke beleid wat ter sprake is, is die nasionale inligtingsbeleid aangesien dit regulasies daarstel ten opsigte van die berging, distribusie, en herwinning van navorsingsuitsette. Hierdie werkstuk stel voor 'n verandering van die huidige statutêre verslagdoeningsmeganisme - wat gebruik word deur wetenskaplikes om verslag te doen oor hul gepubliseerde navorsing om navorsingsubsidie te kry - wat sou vereis dat wetenskaplikes hul navorsingsuitsette beskikbaar stel via 'n 'Open Access' kanaal, en verder, dat navorsers verslag doen oor laasgenoemde.

Thesis (Ph.D)--Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010. / Committee Chair: Bruckman, Amy; Committee Member: Grinter, Rebecca; Committee Member: Grudin, Jonathan; Committee Member: Guzdial, Mark; Committee Member: Kolodner, Janet. Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.