1、Those who dont look dont find: disciplinary considerations in repository advocacyDanny Kingsley danny.kingsleyanu.edu.auPAGE 1 OF 15Those who dont look dont find: Disciplinary considerationsin repository advocacyDanny KingsleyCentre for the Public Awareness of ScienceAustralian National UniversityAc
2、ton ACT 0200danny.kingsleyanu.edu.auThis paper has been accepted with minor editorial changes for OCLC Systems andServices: International Digital Library Perspective (OSS:IDLP), Vol 24, No 24, early2009. This will be a special issue related to the areas of open access and scholarlycommunications (in
3、cluding case studies, scholarly communication case studies)AbstractPurpose of this paperBy describing some of the often ignored aspects of repository advocacy, such asdisciplinary differences and how these might affect the adoption of a particularinstitutional repository, this paper aims to offer pr
4、actical guidance to repositorymanagers and those responsible for open access and repository policy.Design/methodology/approachThe argument uses examples from an empirical study of 43 in-depth interviews ofacademic staff in three disciplines, Chemistry, Computer Science and Sociology, attwo Australia
5、n universities. The interviewees discussed their interaction with theliterature as an author, a reader and a reviewer.FindingsDisciplines are markedly different from one another, in terms of their subject matter,the speed of publication, information seeking behaviour and social norms. These allhave
6、bearing on the likelihood a given group will adopt deposit into an institutionalrepository as part of their regular work practice.Practical implicationsIt is important to decide the purpose of the institutional repository before embarkingon an advocacy program. By mapping empirical findings against
7、both diffusion ofinnovations theory and writings on disciplinary differences, this paper shows thatrepository advocacy addressing the university academic population as a single unit isunlikely to be successful. Rather, advocacy and implementation of a repository mustconsider the information seeking
8、behaviour and social norms of each discipline inquestion.What is original/value of paperThe consideration of disciplinary differences in relation to repository advocacy hasonly begun to be explored in the literature.IntroductionThe widespread uptake of the internet in the scholarly world over the la
9、st 15 yearsoffers opportunities to reform the long-standing scholarly communication system.Repositories have been mooted as a way to achieve open access, amongst otherpossible uses, but to date, particularly in institutional repositories, deposit of materialThose who dont look dont find: disciplinar
10、y considerations in repository advocacyDanny Kingsley danny.kingsleyanu.edu.auPAGE 2 OF 15has been slow. This paper is looking at the challenges facing digital repositories infacilitating open access and how they are changing scholarly communication. Insuch a discussion it is necessary to explore wh
11、at repositories are intended for. Thisdepends on not only the type of repository in question, but whether the end-user isan institution, an academic researcher, a practitioner or the general public. Given thework of academic researchers is usually the intended content of these digitalrepositories, w
12、e will take an in-depth look at the work practices of these researchersto determine the barriers to a general embracing of repositories as part of thescholarly communication process.This paper will examine the introduction of repositories into the academicenvironment in terms of diffusion of innovat
13、ions theory before discussing disciplinarydifferences and how this affects the acceptance or not of repositories by certainacademic groups. Specifically, the information-seeking behaviour within disciplineshas a direct bearing on the likelihood of a given group to accept repositories as theyare curr
14、ently structured. Throughout, examples will be given from a research projectinto three disciplines based at two universities in Australia. The conclusion makesrecommendations to institutional repository managers for achieving a moreenthusiastic uptake of their repository.The open access argumentThe
15、open access movement has been active for over a decade. Broadly advocatingthat peer-reviewed scholarly material should be freely available on the internet at thetime of publication, the movement originally developed from a reaction to thescholarly crisis of the 1990s when journal prices skyrocketed
16、(Harnad, 2003). Exactdefinitions of what constitutes open access have since been determined (OpenSociety Institute, 2002; Max Planck Institute, 2003).There are generally two ways to achieve open access currently: open accesspublishing and using a digital repository to deposit the authors version of
17、an article atthe time of submission or publication. These are referred to as the gold and greenroads to open access respectively (Harnad et al., 2004). Open access publishing hashistorically been in specifically created open access journals, such as PLoS Biology,or in journals that have moved from a
18、 subscription-based model to an open accessmodel, such as the Medical Journal of Australia. Generally open access journals arefunded either through a pay-on-acceptance charge (sometimes inaccurately referredto as author-charges), or through scholarly association membership fees. It shouldbe noted, h
19、owever, that most open access journals will waive the charge for authorswho are unable to pay.In the last two years, the hybrid model has become increasingly popular withpublishers, who offer authors the opportunity to have their article freely available attime of publication for a fee. Some of thes
20、e journals anticipate the subscription costof the journal will be reduced according to the number of open access articles thatappear in the issues (Suber, 2006). This paper is concerned with the second, greenmethod of achieving open access, making authors versions of articles availableonline. This c
21、an be through an authors own website, although generally repositoriesare considered to be more robust and searchable due to a requirement that theycomply with the Open Access Initiative (OAI) Protocoliwhich requires interoperablestandards for searching of repositories.Types of repositoriesThe recent
22、 widespread uptake of repositories in institutions (van Westrienen Pelizzari, 2003; Allen, 2005). Evenat Cornell University, the home of arXiv, academic deposits into the institutionalDSpace repository have been low, with faculty indicating that those using a subjectThose who dont look dont find: di
23、sciplinary considerations in repository advocacyDanny Kingsley danny.kingsleyanu.edu.auPAGE 4 OF 15archive found it fulfilled their needs, making the institutional repository redundant(Davis Brown, Griffiths, Mackie, 2004).While the above challenges are experienced across the board in academicenviro
24、nments, in would be foolhardy to think of the research community as ahomogenous group. The difficulty with developing diffusion policy within an institutionis that the existing values, past experiences and needs of academics changeaccording to the discipline. Rather than a single social system, acad
25、emics consist ofa series of small, disparate groups with distinct differences. It is for this reason that auniform advocacy or roll-out program for a given institutional repository is unlikely tosucceed. With this in mind we now turn our attention to disciplinary differences andhow they might affect
26、 the adoption of repositories.The disciplinary difference issueTo say that disciplines differ from one another is a truism, however, the extent towhich they differ, not only between disciplines but also within them is the subject ofthis section of the paper. In order to illustrate some of the propos
27、itions put forwardhere, examples will be given from interviews conducted as part of a research projectinto the barriers to the uptake of open access in Australia. A total of 43 in-depthinterviews were conducted at two Australian universities, the Australian NationalUniversity and the University of N
28、ew South Wales, from October 2006 to March 2007with academics in the field of Chemistry, Sociology and Computer Science. Thesemi-structured interviews discussed the behaviour of the researcher as a reader, awriter and a reviewer of articles as well as canvassing views on open access andattitudes to
29、their institutional repository. After analysis of the transcripts, twointerviews were conduced as triangulation, at Queensland University of Technologywith the repository manager and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Technology,Those who dont look dont find: disciplinary considerations in repository adv
30、ocacyDanny Kingsley danny.kingsleyanu.edu.auPAGE 7 OF 15Information and Learning Support. QUT was chosen because it is the only universityin Australia with a mandate to deposit scholarly output into the institutional repository(QUT, 2004). The full methodology of the research project is detailed els
31、ewhere(Kingsley, 2007b).In choosing the three disciplines for interview, the initial consideration was for theway the disciplines publish their work. Chemistry, representing a hard science,traditionally publishes in peer-reviewed articles in journals. Sociology, while alsopublishing in this manner,
32、also has a tradition of publishing books or monographs,while Computer Science primarily uses conference proceedings for peer-reviewedcommunication. Publishing output, however is only one manifestation of thefundamental differences between disciplines, and results from the general speed ofthe endeavo
33、ur in question.Fast moving research with many people working on similar topics is described asurban (using the analogy of urban life) (Becher Allen, 2005).Open access as a sales pitchThere is a distinction between an individuals attitude towards an idea and theirbehaviour towards it, and open access
34、 is an example of this. Those interviewedgenerally expressed open access sentiments suggesting the results of scienceshould be freely available:“Research is pretty meaningless if you cant communicate it. The wholepurpose of research rests on disseminating the research”“I believe work should be publi
35、shed. We are financed by the tax payer, itshould be in the public domain”.“Whats science for if you dont have things available?”.However when asked about changing their behaviour such as using a repository,there was less enthusiasm and in some cases antipathy towards the suggestion:“I cant see the p
36、oint of putting thesis on Digital Thesis when I have a copyon my own website”“I dont know what benefit it is for me, it sounds like more work to do it”“I dont see any harm in depositing in a IR, but dont see any use in iteither”“I have a concern about plagiarism”“There are all sorts of copyright res
37、trictions”.Certainly other studies have shown that in theory, academics support open access(Swan Bjork, 2004; Harley, Earl-Novell, Arter, Lawrence, Foster & Gibbons, 2005). Academicsneed to communicate and share thoughts with their small inner circle, and using atool developed by the institution is
38、unlikely to be the first choice.Considering the small size of the intended audience of a particular piece of work, it isnot surprising that many scholarly papers are never cited. A core of approximately2,000 journals now accounts for 95% of cited articles (Steele, Butler, & Kingsley,Those who dont l
39、ook dont find: disciplinary considerations in repository advocacyDanny Kingsley danny.kingsleyanu.edu.auPAGE 12 OF 152006). Even allowing that citation counts are a blunt way to determine how manypeople read a paper, the academic audience for scholarly papers is not huge. But ifwe move from scholarl
40、y communication and turn to open access the audiencebecomes considerably broader. There is a large literature demonstrating that havingarticles open access increases the citations for those papers (Hitchcock, 2006).Apart from researchers in the third world, there is a wide audience for scholarlyoutp
41、ut including practitioners, such as teachers, nurses, doctors, medical andscientific lawyers and accountants who work in fields that benefit from research butare usually not in a workplace that subscribes to the relevant journals. Fieldresearchers for private organizations and for government departm
42、ents are alsosimilarly disadvantaged. These are the benefactors of having material available asopen access. It follows, then, that institutions with these cohorts might be at anadvantage when implementing their repository. Indeed, this was suggested as apossible reason for QUTs relative success in r
43、epository uptake (Callan, 2007). It isperhaps surprising then, that the author who consistently heads the Top 50 Authorslist in QUT ePrints is researching and publishing in chemistry. With over 61,000downloads of his papers in the previous year as at (November 2007), a possibleexplanation for this e
44、xtraordinary interest is some of the work is in the area ofenvironmental chemistry another area where there are many field practitioners nottied to institutions.This current wider audience for scholarly articles does not necessarily translate intoquantifiable points for the researcher in the form of
45、 citations. The open accessargument will only tie back into reform of the scholarly communication situation if itreflects the reward system. If the way success or impact is measured changes(such as a count of downloads of material, for example), then the arguments formaking material open access will
46、 become considerably more compelling for theacademic.ConclusionA repository manager, faced with the challenge of encouraging repository use mustconsider several aspects. While touting the repository as a means to achieve openaccess may appeal to some academics, the more pressing issues of disciplina
47、rynorms and their expected reporting behaviours will take precedence. Addressingthese concerns will be the first step in successful repository advocacy. Howeveradvocacy alone will not always translate into action by the academic community, andconsideration of disciplinary differences when offering r
48、easons and methods forusing the repository will ensure a much smoother transition.Steps such as simplifying the process, offering assistance with the more technicalaspects of depositing papers, having a person available on the telephone rather thanan email enquiry have all been shown to increase ent
49、husiasm for the repository(Foster & Gibbons, 2005). Adding benefits such as an individual researcher page ortying the process into already existing administration to avoid repeated reporting willencourage take-up of the system because it offers a benefit to the researcher.When developing a university policy on open access and/or institutional repositoryuse, the existing behaviours of the academic community expected to use it need tobe considered. If the purpose of the repository is to achieve open access for theuniversity
