Open-access-policys och humaniora : forskningsbibliotekens roll.

Abstract

The 14th of November 2005 Lund University decided that all research at the univer-sity if possible shall be published in scientific journals with free online access or in journals that allow self-archiving (Open access). This is a reaction to the dissatisfac-tion with commercial journals whose prices have risen continuously and the possibili-ties offered by the internet to spread information. Research that's easily accessible gets a higher impact. Many other universities have implemented similar policies. In Swe¬den the Association of Swedish Higher Education (Sveriges universitets- och hög¬skole¬förbund, SUHF) signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in 2004. This declaration is one of the most important documents for the Open access movement and it's due to SUHF's recommendation to its members that more and more universities and colleges have implemented or started to formulate their own policies.

Since the first of January 2012 even the Swedish research council demands that the research they pay for is published Open access (OA). The universities' policies and declarations such as the Berlin declaration are often formulated on the basis of a reality for so-called STM subjects (science, technology, medicine), where research usually is published as articles in international journals. The various ways of publi¬shing in the humanities often differ from that. In many subjects the monograph is the dominating way to publish research. Articles with their space limitations are not sufficient enough to do these subject's descriptions of methods and material justice. Besides that researchers in the humanities often publish in more regional journals in languages other than English.

This master’s thesis deals with a part of this complex of problems, namely the college and research librarians roll in it. Librarians are often those who pursue this question the most and they often play an obvious roll in their researchers publishing. They both operate the university's institutional archive and some kind of publishing support usually is included in the college and research libraries tasks. The question to be answered in this thesis is how OA policies relate to the humanities researchers ways of publishing and what that means for the college and research librarians. How do these policy documents influence the librarians work and how do they handle the humanities researcher’s ways of publishing their research? These questions are answered by investigating five Swedish colleges and universities (Lund University, Malmö University, Stockholm University, Umeå University and University West) that have their own policy and researchers in diverse humanities subjects. The study is based on analysis of the policy documents and interviews with college and research librarians working with e-publishing at the five colleges and universities.

Results include the fact that there are policies that more or less force the researchers to publish in a way that makes their research freely accessible, whilst others are more of a recommendation to do so. There are indications that the more forcing policies are better known amongst the researchers than the more voluntary ones. The analysis is also showing that many of the documents indeed focus on articles in international journals and not take the humanities researcher’s ways of publishing into account. Some librarians in the study simply concentrate their work on what's included in the policies, whilst others use the documents for starting discussions about OA as a phenomena with their researchers, even if those aren't directly affected by the policies' text. By doing so they promote the OA way of publishing and contribute to making the research at their university more accessible.

The documents lead to new working tasks which demands that the profession's expertise is defined afresh. Changed expertise demands a negotiation of what the profession is characterized by. If the library's users don't know which tasks they can be helped with they won't turn to the library and ask for it. There's a disagreement amongst the interviewed librarians whether it's necessary to recruit for example lawyers in order to get expertise on copyright or whether it's better to include this into the librarians own professional expertise. Another result is that there's an indication that librarians who work with only a few subjects and close to their researchers have a more extensive knowledge about the researchers scientific communication than others which means that they have the possibility to give advice more suitable for specific subjects. That leads to a higher degree of trust in the librarian’s expertise.

• author: Hoppe, Anja
• supervisor: Sara Kjellberg
• organization: Division of ALM and Digital Cultures
• course: ABMM43 20121
• year: 2012
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Cultural Sciences
• keywords: Open access policies, Open-access-policys, college and research libraries, forskningsbibliotek, humaniora, humanities, library and information studies, biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap, ABM, ALM, bibliotekarieprofessionen, theory of professions, professionsteori, institutionella arkiv, vetenskaplig kommunikation, vetenskapskulturer, epistemiska kulturer, publiceringsstöd
• language: Swedish
• id: 2688851
• date added to LUP: 2012-06-15 14:48:36
• date last changed: 2014-08-27 11:21:47