Acceptance of OA models by German researchers: results of an online survey

Vortrag im Rahmen des Symposiums der Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main in Kooperation mit der Frankfurter Buchmesse 2011 "Economy and Acceptance of Open Access Strategies", am 14.10.2011

User’s Attitude – Contemporary Reflections of an Old Concept

User’s attitude is a central construct in IT adoption models. Based on the Theories of Reasoned Action and Planned Behaviorthe affect-based attitude scales adapted by Davis et al. 1989 in the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) have remainedbasically unchanged ever since. However, scientometric results from MISQ and ISR from 1989-2010 resulting in a total of 37articles indicate that 26% of attitude-behavior-relations in IT adoption models are insignificant. This paper represents anattempt to explain and analyze these findings by adding aspects of contemporary social psychology research on attitude anddeveloping a research framework that merges these aspects with IT adoption characteristics. As a result, two propositions aredeveloped containing combinations of adoption characteristics, where attitude is assumed to have a larger impact on usagethan in others. Scientometric data supports the proposition that the attitude-behavior relation is likely to be significant, whenusage is voluntary combined with hedonic IT systems and post-adoption scenarios. This research questions the manner ofadapting the attitude scales applied by Davis et al. and advocates the usage of situation-based scales that incorporate thespecificities of IT adoption in order to reduce the level of insignificance of the attitude construct in IT adoption models

MATERNAL IDENTITY AND MATERNAL ROLE ATTAINMENT – DETERMINANTS OF MOTHERS\u27 PARTICIPATION IN MATERNAL VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES

The importance of local communities for mothers has been well documented in the social literature. However local communities have changed significantly in the last decades due to a number of cultural factors, including women’s increased participation in paid workforce and increasing geographical distance between family members. As easily accessible, location independent substitutes of local communities, maternal virtual communities (VC) have evoked an increased interest in the recent years. A considerable amount of literature has been published on the factors affecting members’ participation behaviour in various types of VCs. However only limited research has focused on their specific form targeting mothers and future mothers as main audience. Subsequently, there is only limited understanding of what motivates especially mothers to actively participate in maternal social networks. Hence to fill this research gap, the primary goal of our planed research is to provide some understanding of the crucial factors that determine mothers’ participation behaviours in maternal VC environments. Integrating the Technology Acceptance Model and the Updated Virtual Community Model extended by two new social factors Maternal Identity and Maternal Role Attainment we propose a research that might contribute to the newly evolving research stream on maternal motivation to participate in VCs

FOSTERING ACADEMIC RESEARCH BY CLOUD COMPUTING - THE USERS\u27 PERSPECTIVE

The adoption of Cloud Computing (CC) is growing rapidly. However, studies on the adoption of these new technologies by individual users are rare and almost exclusively focused on the business context. This paper presents first results of a research project addressing the adoption of CC by individual researchers and small research groups in Higher Education institutions. We surveyed users of the Frankfurt Cloud, an IaaS environment provided at the Goethe University of Frankfurt that serves affiliated researchers with on-demand computing and storage resources. On the one hand, the findings indicate that users benefit from fast and easy access to computing power for their research, on the other hand, user concerns related to cloud adoption are identified, which have to be taken into account during further development of CC services for academic research

The Attitude Construct in IT Adoption Research – A Scientometric Analysis

Understanding user’s attitudes represents one of the major objectives in IS adoption research. However, in some IS adoption models, as the most famous representative the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the relationship between user’s attitude and behavioral intention was found to be insignificant and was therefore excluded from later modifications of the respective models (e.g. TAM II and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology). Some authors in IS adoption literature indicate that there are operational and conceptual misconceptions of the attitude construct in IS adoption literature. To provide more information for this discussion within this paper, the descriptive results of a scientometric survey of fourteen IS top journals spanning 20 years and 147 articles, are presented with regards to the socio psychological grounding of attitude research. Several situational factors of adoption situations in literature e.g. adoption context or voluntariness of usage were captured in the data in order to analyze the occurrence of each characteristic in IS adoption models with reference to their influence on the attitude construct

General cost analysis for scholarly communication in Germany : results of the "Houghton Report" for Germany

Management Summary: Conducted within the project “Economic Implications of New Models for Information Supply for Science and Research in Germany”, the Houghton Report for Germany provides a general cost and benefit analysis for scientific communication in Germany comparing different scenarios according to their specific costs and explicitly including the German National License Program (NLP). Basing on the scholarly lifecycle process model outlined by Björk (2007), the study compared the following scenarios according to their accounted costs: - Traditional subscription publishing, - Open access publishing (Gold Open Access; refers primarily to journal publishing where access is free of charge to readers, while the authors or funding organisations pay for publication) - Open Access self-archiving (authors deposit their work in online open access institutional or subject-based repositories, making it freely available to anyone with Internet access; further divided into (i) CGreen Open Access’ self-archiving operating in parallel with subscription publishing; and (ii) the ‘overlay services’ model in which self-archiving provides the foundation for overlay services (e.g. peer review, branding and quality control services)) - the NLP. Within all scenarios, five core activity elements (Fund research and research communication; perform research and communicate the results; publish scientific and scholarly works; facilitate dissemination, retrieval and preservation; study publications and apply the knowledge) were modeled and priced with all their including activities. Modelling the impacts of an increase in accessibility and efficiency resulting from more open access on returns to R&D over a 20 year period and then comparing costs and benefits, we find that the benefits of open access publishing models are likely to substantially outweigh the costs and, while smaller, the benefits of the German NLP also exceed the costs. This analysis of the potential benefits of more open access to research findings suggests that different publishing models can make a material difference to the benefits realised, as well as the costs faced. It seems likely that more Open Access would have substantial net benefits in the longer term and, while net benefits may be lower during a transitional period, they are likely to be positive for both ‘author-pays’ Open Access publishing and the ‘over-lay journals’ alternatives (‘Gold Open Access’), and for parallel subscription publishing and self-archiving (‘Green Open Access’). The NLP returns substantial benefits and savings at a modest cost, returning one of the highest benefit/cost ratios available from unilateral national policies during a transitional period (second to that of ‘Green Open Access’ self-archiving). Whether ‘Green Open Access’ self-archiving in parallel with subscriptions is a sustainable model over the longer term is debateable, and what impact the NLP may have on the take up of Open Access alternatives is also an important consideration. So too is the potential for developments in Open Access or other scholarly publishing business models to significantly change the relative cost-benefit of the NLP over time. The results are comparable to those of previous studies from the UK and Netherlands. Green Open Access in parallel with the traditional model yields the best benefits/cost ratio. Beside its benefits/cost ratio, the meaningfulness of the NLP is given by its enforceability. The true costs of toll access publishing (beside the buyback” of information) is the prohibition of access to research and knowledge for society

DISMANTLING THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT - THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS IN THE ORGANIZATIONAL ADOPTION OF OPEN STANDARD-BASED INTER-ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Open standard-based inter-organizational information systems play a critical role in today´s organizations and their relationships with business partners. However, theoretical understanding of organizational adoption of such systems in existing research is limited. Prior studies highlight the role of the external business environment in influncing organizational adoption of such systems, but lack focus on the various environmental context characteristics influncing organizational adoption decisions. This study conducts a structured analysis of scientific literature on factors of the organizational, technological, and environmental contexts that are able to influnce the organizational adoption of open standard-based inter-organizational information systems. Using the results of the literature analysis, this study focuses on the critical role of the business environment in influncing organizational adoption of such systems and derives a typology of environmental context characteristics exhibiting inherently differing types of business environment related influnce on organizational adoption decisions. The derived typology leads to a better theoretical understanding of organizational adoption of such systems and provides practitioners with a structured view on the external forces operating in the business environment of their organization. Finally, the study discusses important implications for future research in this context as well as for decision makers considering the adoption of particular systems

Emotions in Information Systems Research – A Five Component View

Many scientific viewpoints and research streams occurred over the last decades with the objective to create structure and common understanding on a more abstract level how emotions affect human behavior (e.g. constructivist or appraisal theories). As a consequence, Information Systems (IS) researchers have adopted diverse mixed up theoretical foundations about emotions. This brings the need for a more structured way to study emotions in the IS field. Thus, within this research a five component view on emotions is developed, based on appraisal theories of emotions and the 3-emotions´ nomological network by Gregor et al. (2014). The new view provides better guidance for IS researchers studying the occurrence or effect of human emotions in terms of a better understanding of the emotion concept and an easier transfer of theoretical considerations from psychology to the IS field, especially the adaptation of emotional constructs and their subjective and objective measurement

Peer Influence, Family Dysfunction or Conditioning? – An Empirical Analysis of Facebook Addiction Predispositions

The high increase of usage rates of Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook are a worldwide phenomenon as are people spending hours in Facebook especially among young adolescents. However, beside their useful and enjoyable features, SNS like Facebook have also proven to have undesired outcomes in terms of technostress, social overload, or even addiction. Addiction as a variable in adoption models has been introduced into the IS community by Turel and Serenko (2011) who operationalized online-auction addiction and assessed its impact on adoption determinants as perceived usefulness. By means of an empirical study of 125 young adults, the present research shifts the focus to the causes of addiction using the example of Facebook. We thereby focus on three groups of addiction predispositions (Family dysfunction, peer influence and behavioral conditioning) and empirically investigate their impact on Facebook addiction

Does Your Smile Mean That You’re Happy? – a Multi-Channel Analysis of Emotional Reactions

In Information Systems (IS) research, emotions are primarily measured using facial expressions of participants or self-reported survey results. To unite both measurement foci, we analyze the impact of facial emotional reactions to computer-induced stimuli on self-reported evaluations towards the respective stimulus by using a multi-method experimental approach with multi-channel analysis. We collected emotional expressions of happiness of 176 participants using eye-tracker and webcam technology together with a post-experimental survey. We contribute to IS research by supplementing self-reported measures of emotion with a physical emotional measure in response to a system’s feature, and by relating these measured emotional physical responses to individual behavior