IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jpubli/v8y2020i3p44-d413779.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Open Access Perceptions, Strategies, and Digital Literacies: A Case Study of a Scholarly-Led Journal

Author

Listed:
  • Noella Edelmann

    (Department for E-Governance and Administration, Danube University Krems, A-3500 Krems, Austria)

  • Judith Schoßböck

    (Department for E-Governance and Administration, Danube University Krems, A-3500 Krems, Austria)

Abstract

Open access (OA) publications play an important role for academia, policy-makers, and practitioners. Universities and research institutions set up OA policies and provide authors different types of support for engaging in OA activities. This paper presents a case study on OA publishing in a scholarly community, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data gained from workshops and a survey. As the authors are the managing editors of the OA eJournal for eDemocracy and Open Government (JeDEM), the aim was to collect data and insights on the publication choices of authors interested in OA publishing and other crucial factors such as personal attitudes to publishing, institutional context, and digital literacy in order to improve the journal. In the first phase, two workshops with different stakeholders were held at the Conference for e-Democracy and Open Government (CeDEM) held in Austria and in South Korea in 2016. In the second phase, an online survey was sent to all the users of the e-journal JeDEM in October 2019. From the workshops, key differences regarding OA perception and strategies between the stakeholder groups were derived. Participants strongly perceived OA publishing as a highly individualist matter embedded within a publishing culture emphasizing reputation and rankings. The survey results, however, showed that institutional support differs considerably for authors. Factors such as visibility, reputation, and impact play the biggest role for the motivation to publish OA. The results from both inquiries provide a better understanding of OA publishing attitudes and the relevant digital literacies but also suggest the need to investigate further the enablers or difficulties of scholarship, particularly in a digital context. They clearly point to the potential of regularly addressing the users of the journal as well as communicating with them the more nuanced aspects of OA publishing, non-traditional metrics, or respective digital literacies, in order to reduce misconceptions about OA and to support critical stances.

Suggested Citation

  • Noella Edelmann & Judith Schoßböck, 2020. "Open Access Perceptions, Strategies, and Digital Literacies: A Case Study of a Scholarly-Led Journal," Publications, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-22, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:8:y:2020:i:3:p:44-:d:413779
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/8/3/44/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/8/3/44/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jenny Fry & Valérie Spezi & Stephen Probets & Claire Creaser, 2016. "Towards an understanding of the relationship between disciplinary research cultures and open access repository behaviors," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(11), pages 2710-2724, November.
    2. Thomas Arndt & Claudia Frick, 2018. "Getting Scientists Ready for Open Access: The Approaches of Forschungszentrum Jülich," Publications, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-15, May.
    3. Carol Tenopir & Elizabeth Dalton & Allison Fish & Lisa Christian & Misty Jones & MacKenzie Smith, 2016. "What Motivates Authors of Scholarly Articles? The Importance of Journal Attributes and Potential Audience on Publication Choice," Publications, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-22, July.
    4. Bo-Christer Björk & Mikael Laakso & Patrik Welling & Patrik Paetau, 2014. "Anatomy of green open access," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 65(2), pages 237-250, February.
    5. Stuart Brody, 2013. "Impact factor: Imperfect but not yet replaceable," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(1), pages 255-257, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kendall Faulkner, 2021. "Faculty Use of Open-Access Journals: A Case Study of Faculty Publications and Cited References at a California University," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-12, August.
    2. Nguyen Xuan-Huynh & Luu Quoc Chien, 2021. "Performance Measurement of Vietnamese Publishing Firms by the Integration of the GM (1,1) Model and the Malmquist Model," Business Systems Research, Sciendo, vol. 12(1), pages 17-33, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sandra Miguel & Ely Francina Tannuri de Oliveira & Maria Cláudia Cabrini Grácio, 2016. "Scientific Production on Open Access: A Worldwide Bibliometric Analysis in the Academic and Scientific Context," Publications, MDPI, vol. 4(1), pages 1-15, January.
    2. Alexandre López-Borrull & Mari Vállez & Candela Ollé & Mario Pérez-Montoro, 2021. "Publisher Transparency among Communications and Library and Information Science Journals: Analysis and Recommendations," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-12, November.
    3. Hajar Sotudeh & Zahra Ghasempour & Maryam Yaghtin, 2015. "The citation advantage of author-pays model: the case of Springer and Elsevier OA journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(2), pages 581-608, August.
    4. Svetla Baykoucheva, 2019. "Eugene Garfield’s Ideas and Legacy and Their Impact on the Culture of Research," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-12, June.
    5. Mikael Laakso & Juho Lindman & Cenyu Shen & Linus Nyman & Bo-Christer Björk, 2017. "Research output availability on academic social networks: implications for stakeholders in academic publishing," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 27(2), pages 125-133, May.
    6. Hall, C. Michael & Page, Stephen J., 2015. "Following the impact factor: Utilitarianism or academic compliance?," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 309-312.
    7. Wei Ming & Zhenyue Zhao, 2022. "Rethinking the open access citation advantage: Evidence from the “reverse‐flipping” journals," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(11), pages 1608-1620, November.
    8. Ilgaz Arikan & Oded Shenkar, 2022. "Neglected elements: What we should cover more of in international business research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(7), pages 1484-1507, September.
    9. Adriana Bin & Sergio Salles-Filho & Luiza Maria Capanema & Fernando Antonio Basile Colugnati, 2015. "What difference does it make? Impact of peer-reviewed scholarships on scientific production," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1167-1188, February.
    10. Bo-Christer Björk, 2017. "Scholarly journal publishing in transition- from restricted to open access," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 27(2), pages 101-109, May.
    11. Doyle, Cathal, 2020. "How Can I Share My Work? A Review of the Open Access Policies of IS Journals," OSF Preprints xr8mv, Center for Open Science.
    12. Vivek Kumar Singh & Rajesh Piryani & Satya Swarup Srichandan, 2020. "The case of significant variations in gold–green and black open access: evidence from Indian research output," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 515-531, July.
    13. Elizabeth Gadd & Chris Morrison & Jane Secker, 2019. "The Impact of Open Access on Teaching—How Far Have We Come?," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-17, August.
    14. Kendall Faulkner, 2021. "Faculty Use of Open-Access Journals: A Case Study of Faculty Publications and Cited References at a California University," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-12, August.
    15. Li, Huixu & Liu, Lanjian & Wang, Xianwen, 2021. "The open access effect in social media exposure of scholarly articles: A matched-pair analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    16. Hajar Sotudeh & Zohreh Estakhr, 2018. "Sustainability of open access citation advantage: the case of Elsevier’s author-pays hybrid open access journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 563-576, April.
    17. Mario Pagliaro, 2021. "Did You Ask for Citations? An Insight into Preprint Citations en route to Open Science," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-10, June.
    18. Pranpreya Sriwannawit & Ulf Sandström, 2015. "Large-scale bibliometric review of diffusion research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1615-1645, February.
    19. Abdelghani Maddi, 2019. "Construction of a Normalized Open Access Indicator (NOAI)," CEPN Working Papers 2019-08, Centre d'Economie de l'Université de Paris Nord.
    20. Abbas Ghanbari Baghestan & Hadi Khaniki & Abdolhosein Kalantari & Mehrnoosh Akhtari-Zavare & Elaheh Farahmand & Ezhar Tamam & Nader Ale Ebrahim & Havva Sabani & Mahmoud Danaee, 2019. "A Crisis in “Open Access†: Should Communication Scholarly Outputs Take 77 Years to Become Open Access?," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(3), pages 21582440198, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:8:y:2020:i:3:p:44-:d:413779. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.