OAPEN-UK: An open access business model for scholarly monographs in the humanities and social sciences

This paper presents the initial findings of OAPEN-UK, a UK research project gathering evidence on the social and technological impacts of an open access business model for scholarly monographs in the humanities and social sciences

Using Economic Incentives to Conserve CITES-listed Species: A Scoping Study on ITQs for Sturgeon in the Caspian Sea

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Space Governance for the 21st Century: Balancing Space Development with Sustainability

The development of space is occurring in new ways and at an accelerated pace compared to even just a decade ago. As new and greater volumes of space activities, like large constellations of small satellites, space traffic management, and on orbit rendezvous, proximity, servicing, and assembly operations become routine, new international governance will be necessary to balance the development of space with space sustainability. While some international space governance does exist, it is poorly suited to govern new space activities and the environmental threats posed by space development. The need for new governance is well documented, yet the international community, and specifically the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), has been unable to organize around space governance and produce effective international governance measures.This research will compare governance regimes of the air, maritime, and internet domains to understand how stakeholders and international organisations approach governance of a global commons. Through the examination of the International Maritime Organization, International Civil Aviation Organization, and the multistakeholder group responsible for internet governance this research will draw insight into the organisational structures, processes, tools, and techniques that aid in the creation of international governance to inform new governance for space.Findings offer insight into the organisational qualities, governance tools, and necessary change needed to govern space more effectively. First, despite differences across case studies, there are key features of effective international governance present in each. Each system of governance is designed based on unique features and qualities of that domain and its stakeholders. Still, decision-making processes, membership participation, enforcement, and keeping pace with new technology all play central roles in effective international governance.Proper consensus decision-making can play an outsized role in whether a forum can advance governance or not. The case studies make clear that to properly use consensus as a decision-making approach requires thoughtful consideration of the increased transaction costs weighed against necessary agreement compliance. For example, not all governance outputs require a high degree of compliance to be effective and therefore do not justify higher transaction costs associated with strict consensus processes. Similarly, thoughtful use of consensus also requires evaluating where in the diplomatic process consensus is required. Not every diplomatic decision requires full consensus. Yet, COPUOS currently does not adjust its decision-making approach based on output or where in the diplomatic process it requires consensus, which has allowed the forum's use of consensus to hinder the development of new governance.Another finding is that strong governance leverages a multitude of governance tools. Treaties are an important governance measure, but so too are standards and recommended practices, guidelines, codes, performance-based measures, audit schemes, scoping exercises, and educational resources, among other tools. Many of the emerging space activities will continue to evolve quickly, which requires producing governance in a timely manner and continuous evolution of agreements. In each case study, evolving activities were governed by a spectrum of measures that allowed the IO to affect member behaviour quickly and overtime through complementary outputs.Each case study made clear that effective governance requires constant work across multiple workstreams, yet COPUOS is a small three body organisation with too few resources to increase work cadence or volume. A larger secretariat and the capacity to create new subcommittees or working groups is likely to aid space governance. COPUOS will require major changes to accommodate space governance needs. Finally, this research offers recommendations for future research capable of exploring additional possible solutions to existing space governance problems

CSR Communication on Twitter - A Scoping Review on Social Media Mining and Analytic Methods

Adopting corporate social responsibility (CSR) is becoming increasingly mandatory as international legislation puts pressure on companies to implement and report on appropriate CSR measures. As of 2024, a significant number of companies will need to report on CSR topics for the first time. To identify relevant topics that resonate best in the industry or even with one's own stakeholder groups and should therefore be picked up, addressed and reported on preferentially, social media mining (SMM) can be an efficient ap-proach for companies. By reviewing applied SMM and analytic methods of Twitter data, we identified four methodological approaches that use algorithms to identify relevant CSR topics for companies to engage with. This scoping review thus provides a systematized overview of SMM pipelines for use, being equally relevant for academics and practitioners aiming at computational analysis of Twitter content regarding CSR activities and communication

Digital publishing and the knowledge process

The digital information environment has ensured that the twenty first century will be a global watershed, like that of the fifteenth century in the Western world, for changes in the creation, distribution and access of knowledge and information. Changes however are not being reflected in the formal frameworks of scholarly publishing. In the digital information environment, the challenges will be significant ranging from information overload to a multimedia non-linear access to information. Developments in the public and private web reflect the tensions of initiatives and consequent challenges, such as currently being experienced between the increasing aggregation of multinational publishers on the one hand and Open Access Initiatives on the other. Globally publish or perish pressures have increased on researchers with the need for publication becoming the pathway to success in research assessment exercises, leading to tenure and promotion. The book and the article are no longer intrinsically a means of distributing knowledge. Depending on ones viewpoint of the Faustianbargain between authors and publishers, the scholarly publishing environment has been in crisis for a number of years. While this has been particularly reflected in the debates on serials, many humanities scholars have experienced declining sales of their monographs and a lack of appropriate outlets for their research publications. While many traditional university presses have been closing down or losing money for a number of years, new models are emerging with different philosophies and capitalizing on new electronic settings. User studies have indicated that Print on Demand (POD) is universally seen as an essential requirement of output. in those contexts Open Archives Initiatives have seen the creation of a number of E-Print repositories which in turn have organically led to the establishment of E-Presses. Future scholarly publishing patterns will be much influenced by author attitudes at the creation level. Major programs of scholarly advocacy in the context of scholarly communication processes will, however, need to be implemented if scholarly authors, their institutions and their research output are to benefit from the new digital frameworks

Supporting policy packages: the future of road pricing in the UK

Transport is already a large component of our economy and society. Historically, transport programmes were substantially about developing basic infrastructure networks. Now the emphasis is on the active management of systems and operating them to maximum advantage in the face of growing travel demand and capacity limitations. Combined developments in technology and the world economy have accelerated change to almost unpredictable levels. The change affects many areas and transport is not an exception. With new vehicle technologies, radical policies and the persistent growth in private and commercial vehicles, a new changing transport landscape is emerging. One of these changes comes in the form of sustainable transport management - managing the demand of existing infrastructure networks. The role of demand management has been illustrated in many reports and papers and it seems that governments are becoming more aware of it. This paper focuses on one particular demand management policy that is often regarded as radical and generally unacceptable. Road pricing often gets delayed or abandoned due to controversy, disagreements, unanticipated problems and a whole host of other delaying factors. There are complex interactions in transport management - there is a need for cooperation between networks, stakeholders and different authorities. Single measures that focus on 'sustainable transport' usually address a limited set of objectives and are not usually combined with other policy measures. When combined, it is sometimes unclear whether the multiple interactions between policy tools and implementation networks have been considered. An emerging case of implementation of a policy package in the UK is the support of road pricing initiatives combined with public transport improvements by the Transport Innovation Fund. The paper will present a review of the UK road pricing situation along with key implementation factors that show firstly the importance of combining policy tools and secondly the necessity in creating and maintaining strong implementation networks

Managing Innovation Search and Select in Disrupting Environments

This thesis explores how organisations manage new product development (NPD) focused innovation across a portfolio of core, adjacent and breakthrough environments. The study focuses on the search and select phases of the innovation process, and how incumbents identify and validate a range of opportunities. Organisations face the paradox of how to establish search and select routines for focal markets, while also setting up routines to sense and respond to disruptive innovation signals from adjacent and more peripheral environments. The study builds on research into peripheral vision, and considers how organisations operationalise innovation search and select in disrupting environments. To analyse how organisations manage search and select in turbulent environments, the author conducted research in the disrupting higher education (HE) publishing industry using qualitative research methods. The study focused on ten case companies, and the researcher conducted 61 interviews with 63 individuals over a six month period across ten companies publishing 9,000 out of the world’s 32,000 academic journals. The interviewees ranged from CEOs and CTOs to production, operations, editorial, publishing, sales and marketing directors and managers. The analysis revealed 11 search and select capabilities that need to be in place to manage NPD effectively in HE publishing. The research identified five contextual factors that influence how search and select is operationalised in disrupting environments. A framework is proposed to enable the mapping of individual opportunities within a wider NPD portfolio. The project identified ten key market insight areas where firms in the HE publishing sector need to focus. The findings have implications for practice, especially for HE publishers, online media companies, and business to business service organisations. Further research is proposed into how the cognitive frames of boards and senior teams affect the structure and operationalisation of NPD portfolios; how visual media companies search for, develop (ideate) and select programme and film projects in the disrupting media sector; and how workflow mapping and the identification of jobs-to-be-done is deployed within the NPD process in different settings

Predatory publishing: A threat to the credibility of science

Predatory journals pose a global threat to science. Young scientists and scholars are easy victims of the predatory publications. Predatory publications reduce the accuracy, reliability, and validity of the scientific works published. The predatory publications are worthless, just a waste of time, resources, money, and efforts. Predatory publications undermine the value of legitimate publications. In order to discourage predatory publications, educational and research institutions should set the rules for publication in the journals that must be indexed in web of science, Journal Citation Reports (JCR, Clarivate Analytics, formerly Thomson-Reuters) or other famous scientific databases such as Scopus, DOAJ, PubMed, and MEDLINE. Citation of articles from predatory journals should be discouraged. The students, academics, and researchers should be careful to avoid predatory publications to maintain their credentials