Disciplinary Differences
‘Researchers’ are not a uniform group, and practice varies across subject disciplines. The Scholarly Communication Group commissions research to understand disciplinary differences and needs and how these may influence how researchers will respond changes in scholarly communication.
Changes in the scholarly communication landscape will present researchers with new opportunities and challenges. Studies have shown that ‘researchers’ are not a uniform group, and practice varies across subject disciplines. Researchers in the sciences may exhibit different behaviours than those in the social sciences and humanities, and researchers in the hard sciences may behave differently than those in the biological sciences and medicine.
The Scholarly Communication Group feels it is important to understand how disciplinary differences will affect scholarly communication. For example, will disciplinary differences influence how researchers embrace new challenges and how quickly? In 2005, they commissioned a study to test some of the widespread assumptions about how subject discipline affects information-seeking behaviour and modes of communication and collaboration.
The area of disciplinary differences was a recurring theme of JISC conference, Moving Towards Open Access held in October 2006. Participants identified a number of areas where practice may vary across disciplines, e.g. peer review, publication profile, shelf life of publications, use of article versions, and views on embargoes. There was interest in building on the 2005 study and identifying the specific differences that are likely to influence the take-up of open access. This is an area that the Group is considering.
Study on Disciplinary Differences and Needs
The aim of this study was to test assumptions about disciplinary differences that could influence scholarly communication. The study focused on information-seeking behaviour, access to and use of resources, and dissemination of research results. It also covered communication, collaboration, copyright and self-archiving, and views on the Research Assessment Exercise and peer review. The study is based on a survey of 780 UK research academics in a wide variety of institutions and departments.
Among the many findings of the report was the importance of journal articles for the medical and biological sciences, the importance of e-prints (pre-prints and post-prints) in the physical sciences and engineering, a broader mix in the social sciences, and the particular importance of books in languages and area studies.
The study finds that the overwhelming majority of researchers in all disciplines do not know if their university has an institutional repository. For those aware of repositories, disciplinary differences were marked, with around 50% of respondents in the physical sciences routinely depositing in institutional repositories against 18% in the medical and biological sciences.
Interestingly, there was a high level of awareness of the current debates about open access across all disciplines, with the majority of respondents favouring the mandating of self-archiving in institutional repositories by research funding bodies.