Thesis (Ed.D.) -- Teachers College, Columbia University, 1991. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Gary Natriello. Dissertation Committee: Aaron Pallas. Includes bibliographical references: (leaves 190-204).

Thesis (doctoral)--Åbo akademi, 2004. / Dissertation t.p. laid in. Includes bibliographical references (p. 232-252) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Buffalo, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-176).

Thesis (doctoral)--Åbo akademi, 2004. / Dissertation t.p. laid in. Includes bibliographical references (p. 232-252) and index.

Thesis (Ed. S.)--Miami University, Dept. of Educational Psychology, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 22-24).

Scholarly communication of all types is changing dramatically with the introduction of electronic technologies. This new environment means that standalone print publishing risks being left behind, and as many STM journals acquired or launched by commercial publishers have been subject to dramatic price rises in the last few years, there has been much talk of ways to by-pass commercial publishers. The scholarly publishing market is fertile ground for innovation and there has been a lack of objective research regarding the UK university press. Despite the many changes that have occurred in the scholarly publishing industry in recent years, university presses in the UK that have not been in the forefront of innovation have remained minor players. The research focused on the university press, it's current situation and it's role in the electronic future. The research included: case studies that were conducted at both UK and USA university presses, along with the corresponding libraries, a questionnaire which was sent to academic authors that had published with both a university press and a commercial publishing house, and both qualitative and quantitative questionnaires sent to all operating UK university press directors. The thesis argues that university presses (in particular the smaller presses), as not for-profit organisations, are in a prime position to increase their power in the scholarly publishing system and can make changes to provide valued services to the Higher Education Community. Findings show that university presses, both in the USA as well as the UK, have faced, and continue to face change. Lack of funding and HEI support continues to make the traditional publishing role of the university presses difficult, and, in many cases, has caused the closure and sale of university presses in the UK. The university press continues to play an important role, and will continue to do so in the near future. However, in order for smaller university presses in the UK to remain sustainable, they must continue to adapt to, and take advantage of, change, recognise the value they add to the scholarly communication system and not rely on others to improve their situation. They cannot remain static in a changing environment. Through the work with university presses three potential business plans are proposed for a UK organisation of university presses, along with two business models to help the presses adapt to the changing environment and continue to play a role that is required by the HEI. Based on the results and conclusions of the research recommendations are made to stakeholders and ideas for further research are identified.

The study adopts a case study examination of three student reflective joumals written about class and field based applied Drama experiences over one year. The journals were written as part of a curriculum outcome to develop reflective practice, for one Drama Honours paper (Educational Drama and Theatre) at Rhodes University Drama Department, South Africa. Based on a narrative inquiry approach, the study documents the changes in identity, discourse, and representation of self and other, which emerge through the journal writing process. The research analyses how identities are constructed through reflective writing practices, and how these identities might relate to the arguments for the development of reflexivity. The development of reflexivity is seen as integral to contemporary educational policies associated with lifelong learning, and the skills required of graduates in South Africa's emerging democracy. These policies centre on means of preparing students for a world characterised by change and instability, or what Barnett (2000) has termed a "supercomplex world". The research findings suggest that journal writing within a Drama Studies curriculum, allows students to construct subjectivities which support Barnett's claim that "the main pedagogical task in a university is not that of the transmission of knowledge but of promoting forms of human being appropriate to the conditions of supercomplexity" (Barnett, 2000b: 164). In addition, the development of different writing genres within a Drama Studies curriculum allows students to develop disciplinarily relevant ways of discussing and researching artistic processes and products. A reflective journal is a potential site for students to interrogate and construct emerging identities which enable them to negotiate diversity, thus preparing them for their lives beyond the university.

The scope of this master thesis is the scientific publishing at Uppsala University's Faculty of Arts. The aim of the thesis is to investigate publication patterns and publishing strategies. To investigate how the publication patterns of the faculty is structured and what priorities and considerations the researchers have regarding scientific publishing.  Furthermore, the aim is to compare these publishing strategies and publication patterns to incentives and selection principles of the bibliometric indicators in the performance based research funding systems on the national and local scale. The thesis is based on the theories of disciplinary differences developed by Richard Whitley and Tony Becher and Paul R. Trowler. These theories suggest a framework based on organizational and sociological perspectives, that offers ways to explain differences in publication patterns between different scientific fields. The study is based on two empirical studies of the faculty. A survey of the researchers publication patterns has been conducted, and publications that are registered in the local publication database has been analyzed. Results from the study show that scientific journal articles, book chapters and monographs, are the most important publishing forms and occur at all departments at the faculty. Many respondents remarked that publication patterns are changing toward more international publishing and increased article publishing in scientific journals, which corresponds with the analysis of the actual publications. Overall, the respondents rank their knowledge of the bibliometric indicators in the lower scale, while the respondents' publication strategies are in fact consistent with the incentives in the allocation models. The selection principle of the local allocation model captures a larger share of the faculty’s publications in comparison to the national allocation model. However, results from the survey shows that there are significant differences at an institutional level, in how the local bibliometric quality indicator assess the respondents' most central and most respected publishing channels. The publishing channels of the Department of Literature have the lowest correlation and the highest correlations are found among respondents from the Department of Philosophy. The study also finds a correlation between the quality indicators’ assessment of the departments’ central publishing channels and the assessment of the departments' actual publications.

Seemingly unscrupulous entities, referred to as “predatory” journals, have appeared in scholarly publishing over the past decade. Predatory journals have been characterized as using questionable publishing practices and consequently, as publishing questionable research. At the outset of this thesis, such assertions were based on little evidence, making it difficult to understand how to identify a predatory journal and judge the extent of the potential problem they present. This thesis sought to: (1) determine how the apparent operations of predatory journals differ from their presumed legitimate counterparts; (2) to characterize the epidemiology and reporting of biomedical research published in predatory journals; and (3) to determine what, if any, guidance health research funders provide about selecting journals in which to publish funded research. Predatory journals appear to be distinct from presumed legitimate journals in several ways. For example, they lack descriptions of their editorial processes, ethical policies, and content preservation arrangements more often than presumed legitimate journals. Researchers, globally, have published clinical and preclinical studies reporting on millions of research subjects in predatory journals. Such content is poorly reported against established reporting guidelines; some of it originates from high profile institutions and is supported by well-known biomedical research funders. Most major funders propose journal publication as one way of achieving open access, yet few provide guidance on how to select a journal for this purpose. These thesis findings suggest that some features encountered on journals’ websites may signal potentially questionable journal practices. These features should be further evaluated to determine their accuracy in detecting predatory journals. Additionally, researchers may be sending research to predatory journals which may be of low quality, low priority, or unacceptable in legitimate journals. This is problematic because genuine research efforts/participant contributions may go undetected and never contribute to future knowledge generation. Future research ought to be done to determine why and how researchers, globally, choose where to publish. Research funders ought to agree on guidance and policies to ensure funded research can be found by others and is published in journals indicating basic standards for facilitating this.

This disseratition copes with a actual and controversly discussed topic. It is a compilation and knowledgable discussion of central analyses concerning the journals crisis with special regard to electronic publishing as well as initiatives of the open access, selfarchiving and preprint server community. It serves as a source of contributions of different actors in the market for electronic scholarly information, being commercial or uncommercial publishers, scholarly societies, libraries, etc.