Interest Group talks readers’ advisory at Beyond Hope

News from BCLA Readers’ Advisory Interest Group (RAIG)

Lumière sur le Web universitaire : l’influence de la culture disciplinaire sur les représentations en ligne

INTRODUCTION Cet article a pour but d’établir un pont entre les caractéristiques culturelles fondamentales de divers domaines d’études et la façon dont les activités de recherche sont représentées sur le Web universitaire, en mettant l’accent sur l’analyse qualitative des liens hypertextes. Pour ce faire, nous nous demanderons si la théorie de Whitley [1984] concernant l’organisation intellectuelle et sociale des sciences, bien connue dans le champ des études des sciences et des techniques, p..

The influence of journal publisher characteristics on open access policy trends

Examines SHERPA/RoMEO publisher Open Access (OA) policy information for 100 publishers over a thirteen year period (2004-2016) to consider whether their size, type or country (UK or US) affected the development of their OA policy over time. A publisher’s RoMEO colour code, whether they offered a Gold OA option, and the mean number of restrictions as to when, how and where papers may be self-archived, were all mapped. Kruskal Wallis tests were run to assess whether the differences between their 2004 and 2016 positions were statistically significant. Finds that the growth of Green and Gold OA policy approaches has not been evenly distributed amongst publishers with some significant differences amongst publishers of different size, types and country (UK and US). Large commercial publishers are more likely to be allocated a RoMEO colour code, but at the same time place a high volume of restrictions as to where and how authors might self-archive. Small publishers are less likely to have a RoMEO green colour code, but the volume of restrictions they place on self-archiving are minimal. University presses appear not to be engaging with either OA agenda to any considerable degree. UK and US publishers’ OA policies appear to be influenced by the national OA policy environment which, considering the global nature of the scholarly journals market, was more pronounced than might have been anticipated

Long-Term Preservation and Reusability of Open Access Scholar-Led Press Monographs

This brief report outlines some initial findings and challenges identified by the Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project when looking to archive and preserve open access books produced by small, scholar-led presses. This paper is based on the research conducted by Work Package 7 in COPIM, which has a focus on the preservation and archiving of open access monographs in all their complexity, along with any accompanying materials.&nbsp

How are UK academics engaging the public with their research? A cross-disciplinary perspective

This paper takes a cross-disciplinary perspective in examining the views and practices of public engagement with research by UK academics. Using a mixed method approach consisting of a survey questionnaire and interviews, the paper identifies the range of audience groups that can potentially be engaged with by academics, and shows that some audiences are more relevant to particular disciplinary groups than others. The paper also identifies the various public engagement activities undertaken by academics and finds that some academics are using creative ways of engaging the public, such as using the services of public relations firms to help in disseminating their research in traditional media outlets, and also by using social media. Essentially, the study reveals that some academics feel the pressure of engaging particular audiences at the expense of those that are relevant to them and that, academics in the main, are opposed to the notion of mandating public engagement as part of appraisal systems

Towards an understanding of the relationship between disciplinary research cultures and open access repository behaviours

This paper explores the cultural characteristics of three ‘open access (OA) friendly’ disciplines (physics, economics and clinical medicine) and the ways in which those characteristics influence perceptions, motivations and behaviours towards green OA. The empirical data are taken from two online surveys of European authors. Taking a domain analytic approach, the analysis draws on Becher and Trowler’s (2001) and Whitley’s (2000) theories to gain a deeper understanding of why open access repositories (OAR) play a particularly important role in the chosen disciplines. The surveys provided a unique opportunity to compare perceptions, motivations and behaviours of researchers at the discipline level with the parent metadiscipline. Albeit, participants were not drawn from a stratified sample of all the different sub-disciplines that constitute each discipline and therefore the generalizability of the findings to the discipline is limited. The differential role of informal and formal communication in each of the three disciplines has shaped green OA practices. For physicists and economists, preprints are an essential feature of their respective OAR landscapes, whereas for clinical medics final published articles have a central role. In comparing the disciplines with their parent metadisciplines there were some notable similarities/differences, which have methodological implications for studying research cultures

Factors affecting knowledge sharing in the virtual organisation: employees' sense of well-being as a mediating effect

In view of the importance of employees' knowledge sharing, this research, which draws on social capital theory and employees' sense of well-being, develops a comprehensive theoretical model which aims to explore deeply the mediating impact of employees' sense of well-being on social capital and the contribution of knowledge in the complex context of a virtual organisation. The quantitative approach was conducted at a virtual organisation of Taiwanese NGOs. 135 valid questionnaires were distributed and retrieved personally; subsequently these were analysed using partial least squares (PLS). The findings revealed that employees' sense of well-being improved considerably when they demonstrated stronger levels of social capital tendency. Meanwhile, employees increasingly contributed, not only their tacit but also their explicit knowledge, when they experienced a greater sense of well-being. Even more surprisingly, the results showed that employees' sense of well-being played a positively and pivotally mediating role in the relationship between social capital and employees' tacit and explicit knowledge-sharing behaviour in the virtual organisation. These suggest that managers within virtual organisations urgently need strategies to create an ambiance in which employees can feel a sense of well-being in order to enhance their willingness to share both their explicit and tacit knowledge

Researchers’ green Open Access practice: a cross-disciplinary analysis

The EC-funded Publishing and the Ecology of European Research (PEER) project (http://www.peerproject.eu/) is an unprecedented collaboration between stakeholders involved in scholarly research and scholarly publishing, looking into specific aspects of the complex relationship between Open Access (OA) and scholarly communication. The project includes publishers and representatives, libraries, open access repositories (OARs) and researchers themselves, both as authors of journal articles and as readers (or consumers) of journal literature. The behavioural research is one of three strands that form the PEER Observatory, which was set up to investigate the effects of the large scale deposit of stage-two manuscripts (also known as authors’ final peer-reviewed and accepted manuscripts) on reader access, journal visibility and viability, and the broader ecology of European research (Shepherd & Wallace, 2009). The PEER behavioural research project was carried out in two phases, between April and September 2009, and from September 2010 to August 2011. Researchers at Loughborough University examined the behavioural aspects affecting self-archiving of stage-two manuscripts in OARs as well as the use of these manuscripts by fellow researchers. Most discussion of Open Access recognises the two main mechanisms to achieving open access. The gold route, often referred to as the ‘author pays’ route, involves payment of an article processing charge to publishers enabling the article to be made available to all without subscription or charge barriers. The alternative green route, often referred to as the ‘self archiving’ route, entails authors submitting manuscripts to traditional journals but maintaining the right to mount a version of their work on an open access repository. Much debate has focussed on the most effective way to achieve Open Access. There are many advocates of the green self archiving route to OA; subject-based repositories containing both stage-two manuscripts and preprints of research articles are a widely accepted development in certain disciplines such as physics and economics. Alongside this, many institutions are developing their own open access repositories and some are mandating deposit into these respositories. ROARMAP (http://roarmap.eprints.org/) and OpenDOAR (http://www.opendoar.org/) outline the extent of these developments worldwide. On the other hand, the recent report by the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, chaired by Professor Dame Janet Finch (Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, 2012) recommended developing clear policies in support of publication in Open Access journals. In recommending gold OA, the Finch report requests that repositories carefully consider the balance between the aims of open access and possible risks ‘to the sustainability of subscription-based journals during what is likely to be a lengthy transition to open access’, however the report does recommend the continual development of the infrastructure surrounding subject and institutional repositories, though primarily for the purposes of research data and grey literature. In the lights of current policy developments in favour of the different routes to Open Access, a cross disciplinary analysis of researcher’s views and attitudes towards green (self archiving) OA practice is timely. Based on Phase 2 of the project, this article extends the preliminary results from phase 1 reported in Creaser et al (2010), and further develops understanding of researchers’ green OA experience both as authors and readers of peer-reviewed journal articles by looking in greater detail at their reported use of OARs and the context of that use. The article identifies disciplinary patterns of behaviour at the level of the Medical sciences, Life sciences, Physical sciences & mathematics, and Social sciences, humanities & arts in order to better understand the role of OARs in the scholarly communication landscape

Adolescent mental health priorities during the Covid-19 pandemic

Increasing evidence has shown that the Covid-19 outbreak has impacted adolescents’ mental health. Utilising a mixed-method design, the current study examined a total of 518 adolescent perspectives (60% female), in Scotland, on what has and could help their mental health in the context of Covid-19. A reflexive thematic analysis revealed three themes in relation to what has helped adolescents’ mental health since the Covid-19 outbreak. These related to findings about the value of: (1) engaging in recreational activities, (2) engaging with friends, and (3) the disruption to schooling. The remaining four themes related to what could have helped adolescents mental health and wellbeing since the Covid-19 outbreak. These focussed on (1) better support: in relation to mental health; school work; and communication, (2) contact with friends, and (3) more opportunities for recreational activities. Males were more likely to report recreational activities had helped and less likely to report better support could have helped. Adolescents who reached clinical threshold for depression and anxiety and those with elevated PTSD-like symptoms about Covid-19 were more likely to state more support could have helped, and adolescents who reached clinical threshold for depression were less likely to report that friends could have helped their mental health. The findings may inform mental health policy and interventions in the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic