The starting point of this study is a letter to the Swedish Research Council which maintained the difficulty to reconcile chemistry with open access. Previous studies show that when other sciences is increasing in both the deposition rate and selection of OA journals, there is a lull in chemistry. The purpose of the master thesis is to gain an understanding of chemists reluctance to open access in the light of the implementation of Chalmers' mandating open access policy and through field theoretical perspectives understand why. The survey is conducted with a qualitative approach and the empirical data consist of interview material from nine interviews that took place at Chalmers Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. The interviews show that chemists believe that the idea of open access is certainly sympathetic but incompatible with the chemical sciences. It is believed that the discipline´s traditions, practice and publishing culture as well as opportunities for career differs from other sciences, including what open access is concerned. This uniqueness has not been taken into account in the implementation of OA policies of funding agencies and universities, according to the informants. Evaluations of other universities implementations of open acces policies have identified success factors like support, legal advice and hands-on help in self-archiving. According to the results of this thesis, functionality and infrastructure appears to be less significant if university management and funders does not establish an atmosphere of alliance and thus undermines confidence in the policy and its proponents. The study confirms the importance of the researchers feel invited and involved in the process of change.

This dissertation addresses a specific aspect of the broad area of communication systems used among researchers. This research has undertaken to establish a broader view of the communication practices of scholars to understand the motivations behind their publication choices. Open access offers a solution to issues with the scholarly publication system such as delays in publication and restricted visibility of research due to high subscription costs. The principle of open access is to enable maximum access to findings from publicly funded research to maximise social returns on public investments. Despite the apparent benefits of open access, the uptake has been limited. ¶ This thesis research takes a holistic view of the researcher as a communicator to uncover the reasons why researchers are making the publishing decisions they are. In-depth interviews were conducted with 43 researchers in three disciplines at two institutions, the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales. The disciplines, Chemistry, Sociology and Computer Science, were known to have different publication practices, The questions asked about all aspects of researcher communication including researching, authoring, informal communication, article submission, refereeing, mentoring and data storage. ¶ The findings show that traditional arguments for open access are ineffective. The Reward function of scholarly publishing is central to managing academic careers and supports traditional publishing systems. While having work openly accessible increases an academic’s exposure and possibly therefore their citation counts, unless alternative internet-based forms of metrics are adopted, the open access option will not directly appeal to researchers. ¶ Information-seeking behaviour demonstrates how disciplinary differences affect researcher’s interaction with technology. The disciplines showed marked differences in almost all the areas explored, and the behavioural norms expressed in each discipline have direct bearing on the likelihood of members of that discipline embracing open access. The ‘institutional/disciplinary divide’ means that researchers must publish in ways that run counter to their disciplinary norms in order to satisfy institutional and grant funding requirements. ¶ Until governments, and particularly university administrations, recognise the need to consider the discipline and the need to consider the individual and respond to these needs, and until there is a realisation that different disciplines may require radically different approaches, there will not be a large-scale adoption by individual researchers of the current open access tools. Either institutional repositories need to adapt dramatically to offer work practice benefits or the broader academic population will only use institutional repositories under duress, which is not the situation envisaged by open access advocates. The alternative is for communities to develop their own subject-based repositories, a development that again is likely to be highly dependent on communication norms in different disciplines.

This presentation was one of several presentations delivered at the First International Open Access Day event held on October 14, 2008 at UBC. In support of the open access movement, the UBC Library joined with SPARC, PLoS (Public Library of Science), and Students for FreeCulture along with 65 other institutions in celebration of this worldwide event.

This presentation was one of several presentations delivered at the First International Open Access Day event held on October 14, 2008 at UBC. In support of the open access movement, the UBC Library joined with SPARC, PLoS (Public Library of Science), and Students for FreeCulture along with 65 other institutions in celebration of this worldwide event.

This presentation was one of several presentations delivered at the First International Open Access Day event held on October 14, 2008 at UBC. In support of the open access movement, the UBC Library joined with SPARC, PLoS (Public Library of Science), and Students for FreeCulture along with 65 other institutions in celebration of this worldwide event.

This presentation was one of several presentations delivered at the First International Open Access Day event held on October 14, 2008 at UBC. In support of the open access movement, the UBC Library joined with SPARC, PLoS (Public Library of Science), and Students for FreeCulture along with 65 other institutions in celebration of this worldwide event.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / In this study an attempt was made to explore the challenges with regard to publications experienced by academic women at three selected Historically Black Universities (HBUs). Although based predominantly within a feminist qualitative metholodogical framework, both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used in this study. Based on the findings of the study, the recommendations illustrated participants' responses. Some of the recommendations illustrated participants' expressed need of staff development with a specific focus on training in publication skills; mentoring and support networks; assistance and support for their publishing venture at both institutional and departmental level and the development of strategies that would assist academic women in 'juggling' their personal and academic roles. / South Africa

Based on informal discussions with a range of scholars across the African continent, it was felt that there was a need for a scholarly publisher located in Africa, focusing on African content, and targeting an African audience. It had also been expressed by a number of researchers, and was of wider potential interest – given the author’s institutional situation and context at the time, as well as management imperatives – that the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA) could use its existing capacity and strengths in the area of African studies, specifically from a social science and development perspective, and its networks on the African continent, to form a possible institutional base for such a press, through the expansion of its publishing division. But there was no certainty as to whether this was in fact a viable business idea. Thus, this study carries out a feasibility study, to investigate and evaluate whether a scholarly press focusing on African material would be viable in the current South African, continental and international context. The study takes the form of a literature survey, questionnaire-based empirical survey, and business planning exercise. The key research question that is investigated is: Given the limitations of and challenges currently facing the South African (and wider African) scholarly publishing industry, could a scholarly publisher working according to the above vision be viably set up, and how could this be achieved? Broad support is found for the notion of a new scholarly publisher, and a business plan is developed to show how such a press could be set up, working within certain constraints and assumptions. / Dissertation (MIS)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Information Science / MIS / Unrestricted

No description available.

This paper examines the potential impact of Large Language Models (LLMs) in the press and in the production of books and academic journals. LLMs, such as OpenAI’s GPT-3, are trained on massive text corpora and can predict the next word in a given context through probabilistic methods. They have demonstrated autonomy and versatility in a variety of tasks, including question answering, translation, summarization, text classification, and code generation from natural language instructions. The paper discusses the trends, opportunities, and challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) and LLMs in the publishing industries, as well as the existing research on these topics. It also conducts experiments and operations with GPT-3 to explore its potential benefits and limitations, and offers reflections on the medium- and long-term impact of LLMs in those sectors.