M.Bibl. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

"During the past fifty years, the number of organized university presses in the United States has steadily, from five in 1902, to many times that number in 1952, while the scope of press activities has expanded to the extent that thirty-five presses accounted for 'about 1.5 per cent of the dollar value of all bound books sold in the United States' in the one year period from April 1, 1948, to March 31, 1949. Not only has their share of the book publishing volume reached important dimensions, but the scholarly nature of university press publications means that teachers, librarians, and book agents must become increasingly aware of the range and significance of these publications"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "January, 1953." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisors: Mary Edna Anders and Lewis Haines, Professors Co-Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-46).

"In consideration of the foregoing advice from a recognized leader in the field of librarianship, it behooves librarians now in service, as well as those about to enter the profession, to acquaint themselves with some of the lesser known publishing houses in America. The present study is undertaken with such a view. It is hoped that it may serve, not only to fill one of the lacunae in professional literature, but to stimulate similar pursuits in other areas as well, and in so doing, contribute a minor share to the advancement of library service. The subject of the study is The Caxton Printers, Ltd., of Caldwell, Idaho. It would appear, from a search of library literature, that no analytical study has been made of this house. It is felt, therefore, that the choice is particularly appropriate. The study has the following objectives: (1) an examination of the origin and history, as well as the governing philosophy of the firm; (2) an examination of the output with a view toward determining the quality, quantity, subject matter, and potential value to the library"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1956." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Science." / Advisor: Robert G. Clapp, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 40-41).

'Institutional differentiation' is a prominent feature of the South African higher education system. It is used as a lever to ensure diversity within higher education and to ensure that the system caters for the needs of a diverse student body. However, increasing requirements for all universities to do research and to be rated in similar terms according to a single set of research-related criteria is slowly eroding the basis of differentiation. This research study attempts to understand research and publication milieus and cultures in a differentiated university system that is currently categorised as traditional university, comprehensive university and university of technology. In the study I excluded the comprehensive university. I particularly wanted to explore a university and a university of technology as research and publication milieus, because of the strong distinction between universities and technikons that existed before the advent of democracy in 1994. I used a multiple case study design and I present two case studies to show the relation between an institution's research policy trajectory and the types of researchers who contribute to the research publication count of that university. The research study shows that the traditional university has a well-established research culture moving from research-led to research intensive while the university of technology has an emerging research culture. The study found a different range of academics contributing to the publication count at each type of university. Even though those who publish at both universities are motivated differently they had all been enculturated into a strong research culture, which they acquired at a traditional university. A second finding is that those academics who publish have learnt the 'rules of the academic game', either by informal role modelling or by formal mentoring where senior research active academics make the implicit codes explicit. The third finding is that not having a PhD is a major barrier to career advancement even though publication is not determined by having a PhD. The last finding is that the establishment of a research culture takes place over a long period of time and is not grown overnight. The findings raise questions about the extent to which it can be pre-supposed that all three university types can be measured using the same research performance criteria.

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The academic publishing sector in South Africa is facing many changes and challenges in a post- 1994 democracy. Most of these changes were brought about by the Higher Education Act No 101 of 1997. Challenges and new trends include new business and threats from multinational corporations; a limited buying market at higher education level; a need for localised content; new emerging technologies in publishing and knowledge distribution; the merging of 36 higher education institutions into 22; escalating book production costs and book prices; a non-book buying and book reading culture; illegal photocopying and widespread copyright infringement; changing student and lecturer profiles including the language of instruction; increasing pressure on academics to publish research; inefficient student loan schemes; decreasing library acquisition budgets and the transformation of the publishing industry itself in terms of BBBEE. Within the midst of all these challenges, publishers are faced with a new trend, that of selfpublishing of academic textbooks, which lecturers then prescribe to their own group of students. Self-publishing implies that authors undertake all processes related to publishing on their own, including the financial risk of publishing a book. There is a multitude of literature available on self-publishing, but very little focuses on this trend within the academic environment. A literature survey of self-publishing provided various reasons and conditions for the existence of the phenomenon. The researcher made use of two questionnaires that were sent to academic campus bookshops and academic self-publishing authors. From the results of these two surveys it is evident that academic self-publishing is an increasing trend in the higher education environment of South Africa. Reasons for self-publishing collected from the literature survey were supported by the empirical research findings from the two surveys. The main reasons for self-publishing in the academic environment include financial incentives; a volatile author-publisher relationship; issues of copyright and control; possible rejection suffered by authors; technological advances and a sense of community service among academics and lecturing staff. The study was able to prove the existence of academic self-publishing in the higher education environment of South Africa. Academic self-publishing is most apparent in the academic fields of Business, Economics and Management Sciences to the extent that it could have far-reaching financial impact on markets that are traditionally lucrative for commercial publishers. Commercial publishers are encouraged to engage with author associations and seek out possible new alternatives to satisfying author needs in a changing market place. / Dissertation (MIS)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Information Science / unrestricted

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)