Research practices in transition: investigating the relationship between emerging digital scholarship and open scholarship in higher education settings more

1 INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF LONDON Dissertation RESEARCH PRACTICES IN TRANSITION: INVESTIGATING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMERGING DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP AND OPEN SCHOLARSHIP IN HIGHER EDUCATION SETTINGS by Antonella Esposito Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Research in Educational and Social Research 2011 2 Research practices in transition: investigating the relationship between emerging digital scholarship and open scholarship in higher education settings. by Antonella Esposito is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0 Unported License. 3 ABSTRACT This dissertation reports an interview project focusing on research practices being transformed by current digital landscape. This theme constitutes an under-researched area in higher education in Italy. This small-scale and exploratory study aims to highlight overlaps, contradictions and mutual influences of traditional and new research practices as currently mediated by personal and infrastructural technologies. In particular, it intends to probe whether and to what extent actual digital scholarship's practices are affecting cultures of sharing in different research fields, prompting emergent approaches such as open publishing, open data, open education and open boundary between academia and society. The study is carried out at the University of Milan and relies on scholars' voices to draw emergent research behaviours and needs of new values, rules, training and support. That said, the study aims to: 1) identify current and emergent digital scholarly practices being undertaken by researchers working in an higher education setting, in different subject areas; 2) explore whether, in which ways and to what extent such research practices in digital environment constitute a “break” against the tradition, and how open approaches in researching and teaching are implied. The study embeds an open research approach and consists in a series of interviews to 14 senior, young and doctoral researchers selected from different Departments. Convenience and snowball sampling strategies are applied to select informants from four different broad subject areas (Humanities, Social Sciences, Physics, Medicine). Interviews data are analyzed through comparison with previous empirical studies and by examining any implications for emerging 4 modes of knowledge production and distribution, differences in ICTs appropriation in diverse subject areas and related problems of legitimation and motivation in part of individual researchers. Key words: higher education, research practices, digital scholarship, open scholarship, knowledge production and distribution 5 CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………5 1.1 Relevance of the research topic…………………………………6 2 LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………………………9 2.1 Theoretical concepts…………………………………………...9 2.1.1 The 'new knowledge production' model ……………………….9 2.1.2 ICTs appropriation and subject areas………………………..11 2.1.3 Motivations for researchers to use ICTs ……………………..12 2.1.4 Digital scholarship and openness…………………………….14 2.2 Empirical studies…………………………………………….21 2.2.1 Adoption of technologies ……………………………………21 2.2.3 Cultures of sharing and publishing…………………………..24 3. BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGY……………………….26 3.1 Research questions……………………………………………26 3.2 Research context……………………………………………...27 3.3 Ethical issues…………………………………………………29 3.4 Meta-theoretical position……………………………………...32 3.5 Data gathering method………………………………………..33 3.6 Sampling strategy…………………………………………….33 3.7 Data collection……………………………………………….36 3.8 Data analysis…………………………………………….......37 3.9 Validity……………………………………………………...38 3.10 Reliability…………………………………………………..39 3.11 Generalizabilty……………………………………………..39 4. FINDINGS……………………………………………………41 4.1 Presentation of findings……………………………………….41 4.2 Discussion of findings…………………………………………61 5. CONCLUSIONS: LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH…..68 6. REFERENCES……………………………………………….71 APPENDIX 1 - INFORMED CONSENT…………………………..82 APPENDIX 2 - INTERVIEW SCHEDULE…………………………87 6 1. INTRODUCTION To date, the topic of changing research practices in digital environments results as a field of study under researched in the Italian higher education setting. My dissertation aims to propose a small-scale, exploratory study on this research field, focusing on an Italian university context and considering the viewpoint of digital scholarship’s practices, that is research practices - such as information access, authoring, sharing, networking, publishing - mediated by technology. In particular, my study intends to investigate changing research practices in higher education, probing comparable behaviours of technology use in different subject areas. Furthemore, digital research practices are analyzed as a possible enabling factor in the adoption of open approaches and practices both in inquiry process and teaching activities. Here it is considered and challenged the empirical evidence of a notion of ‘digital scholarship’ as a set of researchers' digital behaviours, currently being transformed by the Web 2.0 approach and tools (Pearce, Weller et al., 2010) and leading to a widespread uptake of an 'open scholarship' approach. In this view, new networked environments and tools would enable, widen and reinforce a more extended culture of sharing in academia. This latter is increasingly grounded in emergent phenomena such as open publishing models, release of open research data, initiatives of open education and a high level popularization approach aiming to blur boundaries between university and societal contexts. The research sets out to draw from individual researchers' accounts any overlaps, contradictions and mutual influences of traditional and new research practices as currently mediated by personal and infrastructural technologies. The research setting is higher education, in which the scholarly communication system has to date preserved a substantially stable asset (Borgman, 2007) and 7 where social norms and distinctive conventions of disciplinary areas have being well-established over time (Becher, 1989; Becher and Trowler, 2001) and implicitly define what is acknowledged as good practice and culture of sharing across communities of researchers. The participants in this investigation are individual researchers working in specific disciplinary fields and communities and coping with an increasingly complex digital landscape. Considering how research practices are evolving in higher education – in their relations with technologies - also allows to reveal implications for emerging modes of knowledge production and distribution (Gibbons et al., 1994) and arises related problems of legitimation of new behaviours. The aim is to consider research practices as a socio-technical system and gain understanding of the dynamics of change and of the underlying structures of knowledge production and distribution, as challenged by the digital environments and tools. The key research process focuses on interviewing well-established, young and doctoral researchers about their current digital scholarly practices and listening to their views about emergent research behaviours and needs that might generate new values, rules and requirements for training and support from institutional contexts. Interviews aim to reveal reasons why faculty are adopting behaviours they state to adopt, more than merely inquiry what they are doing with technology. The goal is to draw a 'snapshot' of both actual modes of uptake of digital tools for research purposes and informed opinions about any trends towards adopting open scholarship’s approaches. 1.1 RELEVANCE OF THE RESEARCH TOPIC In the last two decades researchers have increasingly build their expertise and conducted their inquiries in digital environments. This condition is just one of the range of influential factors that have being determined profound changes in 8 higher education research settings and practices (Gibbons et al., 1994; Becher, 1989; Becher and Trowler, 2001; Houghton et al., 2003). The use of technologies is nowadays considered as an integral part of every research process (Borgman, 2007) and has produced a body of inquiry on the relationship between technology and disciplinary conventions (Fry, 2006; Fry and Talija, 2007), on the evolution of scholarship in the digital age (Andersen, 2004; Borgman, 2007; Pearce, Weller et al., 2010; Weller, 2011; Garnett and Ecclesfield, 2011); on the impact of technologies on academic literacies (Lea and Stierer, 2000; Lea and Goodfellow, 2009). In recent times, some discussions about forms and legitimation of ‘digital scholarship’ have been informed by reflections on the disruptive action of new digital landscape namely, Web 2.0 approach and related tools (Anderson, 2007) - and its impact on the traditional asset of the scholarly communication practices. Perspectives such as those of the 'open scholar' (Burton, 2009), 'participatory scholar' (Veletsianos, 2010) and 'digital scholar' as “digital, networked and open” academic (Weller, 2011) are being proposed both as a consequence of epochmaking environmental transitions and as an intentional project towards a more radical culture of sharing in academia. The underlying assumptions of ‘open scholarship’ in these views refer to the abundance of resources and data to be analysed and to complexity of problems to be faced. Both of these issues would require innovative approaches on the part of researchers, such as: adopt collaborative forms of research conduct and communication; find new rules for peer reviewing, data sharing, and modes of academic discourse and reputation; and involve new subjects – such as students and non specialist communities in the research process. 9 Currently the terms ‘digital scholar(ship)’ and ‘open scholar(ship)’ are often being used – mainly in the blogosphere - in an interchangeable way, overlapping meanings and tacitly assuming that the former implies the adoption of practices belonging to the latter. In the literature, opinions seem to be polarised between an ideological take on innovative potentialities of digital practices towards openness and early empirical findings (e.g. Schonfeld and Housewright, 2010; Harley et al., 2010; Procter et al., 2010) that show how cautious and minority is the approach to new technologies among researchers and how resilient is their attitude to change the current scholarly communication asset. This study is situated within this gap: on the one hand claims about a 'virtuous circle' underlying the dyad digital/open scholarship and on the other hand contrasting data evidence drawn from large-scale studies. 10 2. LITERATURE REVIEW This section locates this dissertation within the existing literature, reviewing the previous theoretical and empirical work on which it is based. The intent is to gain understandings of key concepts and to highlight tensions arising at theoretical and empirical levels, that can be useful to critically analyze findings and enable comparison with previous studies' results. 2.1 THEORETICAL CONCEPTS This subsection is driven by the need to discuss a range of relevant themes: a model to interpret ‘knowledge production and distribution’ in academic work and its fundamental evolution; a framework to gain understanding on inherent features of the different subject areas and related ICTs uptake; analytical approaches to understand motivations for researchers to use ICTs; the interplay of the notions of 'digital scholarship’ and ‘openness’ in higher education. 2.1.1 THE 'NEW KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION' MODEL In their large-scale study across Australian research institutions, Houghton et al. (2003) widely utilize the framework of the new knowledge production - based on Gibbons et al.’s work (1994) - to explain typologies and evolution of research process and approach in digital environments. This framework posits the conceptualizations of a traditional mode of production of knowledge (Mode 1) and an emerging, transdisciplinary and problem-oriented mode of knowledge production (Mode 2). This descriptive model has become popular for its central tenet of the new knowledge production as socially constructed, interactive and reflexive, although its conceptual and empirical validity has been often contested in research policy studies (Hessels and van Lente, 2008). 11 “Mode 1 is disciplinary, while Mode 2 is transdisciplinary. Mode 1 is characterised by homogeneity, Mode 2 by heterogeneity. Organizationally, Mode 1 is hierarchical and tends to preserve its form, while Mode 2 is more heterarchical and transient” (Gibbons, 1994: 3). Mode 1 refers to a cluster of traditional values and practices in scholarly production and dissemination in which knowledge is being driven by disciplinary conventions and communities. Otherwise, in Mode 2 knowledge is intended as transdisciplinary, integrative and consensual and inquiry work is characterized by an emphasis on collaborative approaches and diverse and informal modes of communication and by a diversity of location of research activities. Gibbons et al. maintain that there is interaction between Mode 1 and Mode 2 and that the latter supplements rather than replaces the former (1994: 14). Moreover, Mode 2 is described as critically dependent on new information and communication technologies, due to its transdisciplinary, dispersed and interactive nature. It also prompts reflexivity and social accountability, that is a greater awareness for researchers of the societal impact of their inquiry work. Houghton et al. (2003) utilize the model proposed by Gibbons et al. to understand whether evolving research practices enabled by technologies are merely improvements of pre-existing ways of inquiry conduct or whether they are disruptive breaks against tradition (e.g. open access repositories), which should be regulated and supported. ICTs are identified as a key factor in Mode 2, while features of Mode 2 help to identify distinctive approaches to ‘openness’ – beyond any ideological positions - as many signs in a research landscape in transition, driven by a plenitude of contextual, political and economic factors. However, Houghton et al. seem to not consider the 'reflexivity' element – featuring Mode 2 – to investigate in their interviews to what extent researchers 12 intend their work as a dialogical process and show sensitivity to its societal consequences, that are both integral part of an 'open research' approach. The framework of the contrasting Modes 1 and 2 of knowledge production provides a useful tool for interpreting change in scholarly practices from a number of viewpoints, but some cautions are needed. For instance, it is worth underlining that in the Gibbons et al.’s model the dimension of teaching – so typical and controversial in academic scholarship – is quite missing. Furthemore, Laurens and van Lente (2008: 757) highlight the inherent lack of understanding of characteristics and evolution of individual disciplinary domains. As these authors suggest, it is worth thinking of the relation between Mode 1 and Mode 2 of knowledge as a continuum rather than as a dichotomy, in order to utilize it as an heuristic model and position where needed any real, current and emerging research practices. 2.1.2 ICTS APPROPRIATION AND SUBJECT AREAS Whereas Mode 2 of knowledge production and distribution relies on information technology asset, it becomes a key issue to shed light on how different subject areas relate to technology use for research. To this end, a study of Fry’s (2006) is considered, since it focuses on how “the local work organization and communication practices of scholars within specialist fields influences the use of networked digital resources” (2006: 302) both in formal and informal communication. For instance, whereas there is high level of 'task uncertainty' (scarce agreement of research priorities) and low level of 'mutual dependence' (researchers hardly made use of colleagues' outputs), an individualistic culture is more likely to be developed. Fry links such variations in cultural attitudes in different subject areas to diverse modes of appropriation of ICTs by researchers: 13 "(Academic) fields that have a highly politicized and tightly controlled research culture will develop a coherent field-based strategy for the uptake and use of ICTs, whereas domains that are pluralistic and have a loosely organized research culture will appropriate ICTs in an ad-hoc localized manner" (Fry, 2006: 303). It would seem fairly easy to assign the former type of behaviour to scientific areas such as Physics, in which there is strong agreement about research priorities and sharing and re-use of colleagues outputs, whilst the latter one is more likely to occur in Humanities area. However, to identify bounded academic fields with specific cultural features is at danger of oversimplification, due to the increasing high specialization and interdisciplinarity of research areas (Becher and Trowler, 2001). This framework suggests to empirically probe whether a different propensity towards innovative ICT-mediated research approaches may be implied for researchers working in domains either embedding a "coherent field-based strategy for the uptake and use of ICTs" or an appropriation of ICTs "in ad-hoc localized manner". 2.1.3 MOTIVATIONS FOR RESEARCHERS TO UPTAKE ICTS Issues of ICTs uptake in different disciplinary fields should also consider motivations of individual researchers with respect to prevailing activities in their career (LSE Public Policy Group, 2011: 38-58) and to their own attitude towards online engagement with emerging tools (White and Le Cornu, 2011). In the conceptual schema of a ‘balanced scorecard’ (LSE Public Policy Group, 2011: 38-58), six evolving fields of activities of scholars’ career are identified: research (building of inquiry skills through training opportunities and theoretical and empirical studies); authoring (publication of research outputs); teaching; administration (engagement in bureaucratic and coordination activities); 14 networking, celebrity (management of one’s ‘personal branding’). Engagement on a particular subset of such dimensions depends on the particular phase in one's career development, as well as on the diverse professional orientation and choices by individual researchers. I argue that there might be a close relation between the engagement in a particular subset of such conditions and the selection and the patterns of adoption of technologies by the individual researcher. In particular, the increasing convergence between the dimensions of ‘networking’ and ‘celebrity’ (LSE Policy Group, 2011: 45), as enabled by networked environments, sheds light on new forms of research impacts that might be undertaken by the individual researcher and thus on related motivations in ICTs uptake. In this sense, social and participatory media – that opens up new spaces of personal intervention (vs institutional ones) - would seem to better fit researchers working within disciplines in which an individualistic attitude towards technology is more common and the appropriation of ICTs is more likely to occur in "ad hoc localized manner". However, it is worth considering that the emergent environment of the social Web is constituted by new kinds of computing applications that are better explained with the metaphor of 'place', that is of “a sense of being present with others” (White and Le Cornu, 2011) rather than that of 'tool', that is “a means to an end”. This implies for the authors a shift paradigm from a type of online engagement by individuals as 'Visitors', who use the Web as a ‘shed’ from which selecting the appropriate tool if needed for a specific purpose, to an attitude as 'Residents', who intend the Web as “a place to express opinions, a place in which relationships can be formed and extended” (ib.), and where content and persona (or digital identity) overlap. The Visitors / Residents typology is considered by White and Le Cornu as a continuum in which 15 individual's digital behaviour can be located: the propensity towards the former or the latter can be valued within a frame of digital literacies, that is referring to the whole set of new literacies required by the context and subject area in which the individuals usually carry out their activities. In other words, a researcher aiming to get more research impact by intersecting 'networking' and 'celebrity' dimensions is likely to be more successful by adopting a Resident approach rather than a Visitor one. This provides a perspective on researchers' motivation in using digital tools that may even prescind from disciplinary conventions for ICTs appropriation but also differs from ethical values of a culture of openness. 2.1.5 DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP AND OPEN SCHOLARSHIP Whereas 'scholarship' is a broad term encompassing methods, discipline and attainment of scholars, generally speaking ‘digital scholarship’ can be considered as an ensemble of practices “concerned with technologies that support all the processes involved in research including (but not limited to) creating and sustaining research collaborations and discovering, analysing, processing, publishing, storing and sharing research data and information” (JISC e-research website, 2009). However, reviewing relevant literature the notion of 'digital scholarship' assumes a range of interpretive perspectives: as design, predisposition and preservation of digital scholarly resources (Marcum and George, 2004; Andersen, 2004; Cross, 2008); as infrastructural changes in scholarly data work and communication practices in digital environments (Borgman, 2007); and also as claims for a possible convergence with the values of ‘openness’ in higher education (Pearce, Weller et al., 2010; Garnett and Ecclesfield, 2011; Weller, 16 2011). For the purpose of this study the latter two threads are particularly considered. In her seminal work on transition of scholarship in the digital age, Borgman (2007) extensively examines how the evolution of digital infrastructures has being challenged the current scholarly publishing system and transformed the work on data and the same notion of data, across different disciplines. In her view the ongoing changes are enabling the perspective of new kind of scholarly communication and data- and information-intensive, distributed scholarship, as well as a more collaborative, interdisciplinary approach. Producing and distributing data in 'public domain' and the diffusion of open publishing alternatives are seen as fitting the emerging needs of a new kind of scholarship and enabling the long-standing principle of an 'open science'. A “gift exchange culture” (Borgman, 2007: 56) – in which researchers and other stakeholders are used to share non economic values – constitutes for this author that line of continuity within the scholarly communication practices that is likely to progressively find its natural evolution in open access models for publishing. In fact, the well-established phenomenon of alternative publishing models in scholarly communication, enabled by low cost Internet infrastructure (Laasko et al., 2011) represents one of the two broad movements that have being shaped the “nature of openness” (Conole, 2011: 2) in higher education: “Openness is becoming a trend, both in terms of the production and sharing of educational materials, as well as making research publications (and even research data) freely available” (Conole and Alevizou, 2010: 42). The second movement refers to open education stances (Ilioshy and Kumar, 2008), that are closely dependent on the recent and rapid spread of ‘social 17 media’, embedding the “powerful ideas” (Anderson, 2007: 2) of the Web 2.0 approach: architecture of participation, collaboration, user-generated content, openness as ‘philosophy’ and work practices drawn from the open source movement. Within the realm of open education, a line of interpretation of ‘openness’ as a subversive force of innovation in higher education (Wiley and Hilton, 2009; Katz, 2010) has being claimed to frame an enabling context for 'open scholarship', focusing on changes in teaching and learning. The underlying stances in the ‘open scholarship’ tenets refer to a “pedagogy of abundance” (Weller, 2011: 1) of resources, means and data to be investigated, to an increasing complexity of problems and a need to contrast a trend towards the ‘commodification’ of knowledge. Considering this background, discourses on the interplay between digital scholarship and open scholarship have being mainly developed within educational technology domain: on the one hand by defining an emerging profile of digital researcher and on the other hand by building on the popular model of the four dimensions of scholarship devised by Ernest Boyer (1990). The new researcher working in the networked environment is variously named as 'open scholar' (Burton, 2009; Anderson, 2009), 'participatory scholar' (Veletsianos, 2010), 'open faculty' (Andersen, 2010) and 'digital scholar' (Weller, 2011). Gideon Burton (2009) - in his renowned blog post that is considered a manifesto of what an ‘open scholar’ should be – suggests a model of public intellectual that endorses a number of open approaches beyond open access publishing model and despite current institutional rules for rewarding, dissemination and quality measurements. “The 'Open Scholar', as I'm defining this person, is not simply someone who agrees to allow free access and reuse of his or her traditional 18 scholarly articles and books; no, the Open Scholar is someone who makes their intellectual projects and processes digitally visible and who invites and encourages ongoing criticism of their work and secondary uses of any or all parts of it - at any stage of its development” (Burton, 2009). Anderson (2009) highlights the ethical value implied in Burton's notion of 'open scholar', to outline a view of open scholarly practices strongly grounded in a rethinking of higher education teaching and learning approach as characterized by media richness, social learning, connectivist pedagogies and production of open data and resources. Working on a definition of 'open faculty', Andersen (2010) distinguishes between analog and digital open scholar and identifies “a nature influence and a nurture influence” respectively as the individual and the institutional factor that may determine a faculty's predisposition towards openness. She argues that the surrounding context - being shaped by institutional interventions - can influence the second factor over time, as well as the acquisition of technological skills can act as a catalyst in a greater predisposition to share by faculty, enabling the transition from analog to digital open approach. That way, she leads attention to openness attitude among faculty beyond digital era facilities, but strongly focuses on value-driven behaviors, somewhat overlooking the sense of open faculty's practices as situated practices. More recently, Martin Weller (2011) has tentatively defined a “digital scholar” as “someone who employs digital, networked and open approaches to demonstrate specialism in a field” (2011: ‘Digital, networked and open’). He draws on the democratisation of the social web to envision that a “wellrespected digital scholar may well be someone who has no institutional affiliation” (ib.), because the networks and the online identity researchers are 19 able to establish are becoming more and more important for one's scholarly reputation. Whereas discussions around the status of a digital researcher strive to come to terms with an emergent 'rhetoric of openness' (White, 2011), a major thread of debates on changing research practices in digital environments builds on Boyer's (1990) model of ‘scholarship’. This model outlines four dimensions: Discovery (creation of new knowledge in a specific area); Integration (position of the individual discoveries in a wider context); Application (engagement with the world outside university); Teaching (management of all these procedure supporting teaching and learning). Pearce, Weller et al. (2010) build on this model, matching the above four dimensions with as many “trends towards openness” (Pearce, 2010: 4), that are changing the nature of academic practices: ‘open data’, ‘open publishing’, ‘open boundary between the academia and the public’ and ‘open education’. In fact, they suggest a conceptualization of ‘digital scholarship’ that assumes ‘openness’ as the only actual ‘break’ with respect to traditional research practices. It is worth noting that neither ‘digital scholarship’ or ‘openness’ are being conceptualized by the authors as further dimensions that transform those ones posited in Boyer’s model: digital tools and practices are apparently thought as embedded in the current research practices, while ‘openness’ is merely defined by its identified practices (open data, open publishing, open boundary, open education). Indeed, if Borgman focuses on digital infrastructures as enabling new data-driven research practices and as a consequence scholarly community’s adaptive behaviours, Pearce, Weller et al.’s version of digital scholarship strongly relies on the use of Web 2.0 tools by individual researchers, who increasingly act as networked 20 researchers, beyond the discipline- and institution-bounded conventions and constraints. Such a revision of Boyer's model is furtherly, empirically supported by Martin Weller (2011), that more explicitly holds a close relation between digital scholarship and openness: “Digital scholarship is more than just using information and communication technologies to research, teach and collaborate; it also includes embracing the open values, ideology and potential of technologies born of peer-to-peer networking and wiki ways of working in order to benefit both the academy and society” (Weller, 2011: ‘The nature of scholarship’). However, this individual-centric view of inquiry activities - being transformed by networked tools embedding value-laden practices - recovers a system view when the diffusion of the above concept of digital scholarship is located within the ecological perspective of a “digital scholarship resilience matrix” (Weller, 2011: ‘Digital resilience’), that considers the role of resistance to change at governmental, institutional, disciplinary and individual level. Whereas these authors (Pearce, Weller et al., 2010; Weller, 2011) lead attention to typologies of emerging open practices that are challenging traditional dimensions of scholarship, Garnett and Ecclesfield (2011) focus on the epistemological transition being enabled by the current networked environments. They work on a significant conceptual re-thinking of the Boyer’s model, as based on the blurring distinction between knowledge production and knowledge transmission in higher education. To this purpose, they add the dimension of ‘co-creating’, that refers to the participation process of both teachers and students (and practitioners) to the “permanent Beta” (2011: 13) of knowledge, through a collaborative creation of learning. Indeed, such a new 21 dimension informs all the four dimensions in Boyer's model of scholarship, including that of 'discovery', reformulated in a “co-creation of research agendas” (2011: 14) that originally updates the traditional role of researcher and goes beyond Boyer's institution-centric approach. This position is explicitly inspired by the Open Scholarship movement (Anderson, 2009) and is linked to arguments endorsing a close relationship between 'e-research' (here being used as an alternative term with respect to ‘digital scholarship’) and 'e-learning' (Borgman, 2006; Haythornwaythe, 2009). This leads discourse to frame 'digital scholarship' as a form of academic literacy, and more precisely as a reconceptualization of “academic practice in terms of its technologies of communication” (Lea and Goodfellow, 2009: 3). In this sense, digital scholarship and open scholarship come to be combined in a new long-term project of revision of scholarship in which an emerging teaching and learning dimension enabled by networked environments is able to develop an iterative process of knowledge production and distribution practices. These practices assume features that resonate the socially constructed, interactive and reflexive Mode 2 by Gibbons et al. (1994) and opens up the possibility that such a mode can be shaped by a new type of online engagement (White and Le Cornu, 2011) to be undertaken by the individual researcher. It is worth noting that whereas claims on the emerging profiles of a new researcher underly a belief on the transformational power in part of individuals versus the well-established conventions of specific research contexts, often discourses on overlapping digital/open scholarship are drawn from changes occurring in other sectors (e.g. media industry) or are constructed on an idealized perception of the teaching role of faculty. This latter risks to overlook the further components that in the last decades have been added to the 22 scholarship's activities being required to researchers (Becher and Trowler, 2001: 18; LSE Policy Group, 2011: 127). Moreover, so far claims on open research practices heavily rely on the same argument of ‘potentialities of social media’ that affects recent debates on innovating education: an analysis of ‘openness’ in research may be in danger of becoming another “edtech bubble” (Selwyn, 2010: 11), that is a “self-contained, self-referenting, and self-defining” (ib.: 11) debate which tends to attribute value-driven ‘digital’ behaviours belonging to a group of early adopters in specific disciplines (e.g. educational technology), to all subject areas, every national and local university contexts and irrespective of any individual researchers’ attitude towards technology use. However, also thanks to such critical views, some maintain that “the field is in dire need of empirical data” (Veletsianos, 2011) and urge on informing research agendas with the investigation of actual digital research practices. 2.2 EMPIRICAL STUDIES This sub-section mainly aims to provide an overview of key findings from four main large scale studies on changing research practices (Maron and Smith, 2008; Harley et al., 2010; Procter et al., 2010; CIBER, 2010). Except from the latter one – an online survey addressing researchers all over the world – the inquiries being considered were carried out across US and UK. 2.2.1 ADOPTION OF TECHNOLOGIES In the perspective of future development of university libraries, Maron and Smith (2008) identify eight principal types of new scholarly resources, that are supplementing the traditional printed publications: e-journals; reviews; pre-prints and working papers; encyclopedias, dictionaries and annotated content; data; 23 blogs; discussion forums; professional and scholarly hubs. These emergent scholarly resources are being produced and used across every subject areas and present both old constraints (e.g. following legitimacy mechanisms such as credentialing, peer review and citation metrics; reaching credibility through longevity and quality controls) and new opportunities (e.g. reaching narrow, niche audiences; blurring boundaries among typologies of scholarly work, e.g. video articles). However, many recent studies particularly focus on social media in research activities and agree that there is very limited evidence of the spread among faculty of the celebrated new channels of communication (Harley et al., 2010; Procter et al., 2010; Schonfeld and Housewright, 2010). Traditional channels (such as conferences, seminars), “often made more efficient by the transition to digital but otherwise largely unchanged – remain the most important ways in which faculty communicate both formally and informally” (Schofeld and Housewright, 2010: 25). Web 2.0 tools (e.g. blogs, RSS feeds, wikis, twitter) are not cited as popular mechanisms and are even seen as a “waste of time because they are not peer reviewed” (Harley et al., 2010: 25). This is also confirmed by small-scale inquiries, such as Kraker and Lindstaedt’s (2011) carried out in the e-learning research field and Pearce's (2010) within the Open University. On the one hand Procter et al.’s study reveals that “The process of experimentation and innovation is currently highly localised and dispersed, and likely to be protracted” (2010: 8). On the other hand, CIBER’s one – explicitly surveying social media adopters – states that “Social media have found a place 24 in the research workflow for many academics and are proving their worth” (2010: 16). Focusing on demographic factors, whilst in the UK the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies is increasingly spread across PhD students (JISC/British Library, 2011) and early career researchers (James et al., 2009), data related to the frequency of usage of new tools reserve some surprises in favour of older generations of researchers (Procter et al., 2010). More interestingly, Procter et al. (2010) and CIBER (2010) investigate reasons why researchers are likely to adopt any of social media tools: “The services most likely to succeed are those where researchers are actively involved in uncovering, exploring and exploiting new capabilities, and adapting them to their own purposes, in accordance with the broader cultures and contexts and contexts in which they undertake their work” (Procter et al., 2010: 8). Moreover, whereas working with peers based in other institutions may be a driver in the adoption of new technologies (CIBER, 2010: 21), the most important barriers to uptake of digital tools are reported to be the “lack of clarity over the precise benefits that might accrue to the researcher” (CIBER, 2010: 25) and the fact that “few services have achieved yet the critical mass needed to achieve the positive network effect that stimulate pervasive use by particular communities” (Procter et al., 2010: 7). However, it is worth noting that these kinds of studies focusing on emergent media fail to get the whole picture of technology adoption in research practices, because they often do not appropriately link ‘old’ with ‘new’ tools and patterns of adoption, overlook studies on ICTs in research before social web (see Fry, 25 2006), and omit to consider the role being played by well-established institutional digital environments and tools such as personal webpages, digital libraries, email accounts, research information systems (Bitter and Muller, 2011). 2.2.2 CULTURES OF SHARING AND PUBLISHING Following the traditional conventions of scholarly communication system, researchers keep on strongly relying on formal publishing in printed journals and – more recently – e-journals, even if networked environments provide informal opportunities to open up academic publishing in various modes and in different moments within the research process (e.g. Lockley and Carrigan, 2011). In fact, it is commonplace that “a broad circulation among a faculty’s members own peers is the ultimate motivating factor in determining where to publish” (Schonfeld and Housewright, 2010: 25). Other types of behaviour belong to a small minority of enthusiastic open researchers that are used to “publish their outputs and their work in progress openly, using blogs and other tools“ (Procter et al., 2010: 5). As Harley et al. (2010: 12) draw from their interviews in 45 prestigious US research universities: “it is premature to assume that Web 2.0 platforms geared toward early public exposure of ideas or data, or open peer review, are going to spread among scholars at the most competitive institutions” (Harley et al., 2010: 15). 26 It seems that there is no significant difference between users and non-users of social media (CIBER, 2010): however, social media users are more likely to use the internet as a complementary activity in disseminating research findings. Physicists, political scientists and economists have the lowest threshold for sharing scholarship prior to formal publication, but they share only works that have already reached a good level of quality, rather than actual work-inprogress (Harley et al., 2010). Moreover, the same authors report that in some subject areas such as sciences, economics and political sciences, journals are increasingly requiring authors to publish datasets along with their papers. However, concerns about ownership and privacy, lack of personal time to prepare data for publication, lack of directions on how to do it, general lack of institutional support are reported as many common hindrances in the spread of data sharing. Finally, recent studies investigating the dissemination of research findings report an increasing acceptance of open access publishing models in part of researchers as authors (Dalmeier-Tiessen et al., 2011). However, issues such as charges for publishing and the perception that open access journals are of lower quality than traditional publications deter researchers across all disciplines from the open access route. 27 3. BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGY This section intends to synthetically provide information needed to gain understanding of the specific research decision-making process being adopted. To this purpose, the following paragraphs account for the identifed research questions, for the general inquiry approach and its underlying metatheoretical position, for the ethical issues and data gathering and analysis methods, and for the selected options of validity, reliability and generalizability. Such issues are discussed relating the modeling of the methodological choices with respect to the university context being researched and to features and needs of the informants being selected. 3.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS The preliminary literature review reveals that there is an hype on the transformative potential of new digital tools and environments on current research practices, enabling a culture of sharing – instantiated in the adoption of open publishing, open data, open education and open boundary between academia and society - as a disrupting force with respect to the traditional research system in university. On the other hand, critical approaches and empirical studies highlight a gap between the proven uptake and use of new digital tools for research purposes and the actual adoption of open scholarship’s practices. Here it seems to occur the same discrepancy between the discourse on the “state-of-the art” and that on the “state-of-the-actual”, recently argued by Neil Selwyn (2011), referring to educational technologists’ accounts of revolutionary use of digital tools and actual evidence on technology adoption from educational settings. It is this gap that it is worth investigating, because the 28 relationship between digital and open scholarship can be considered as one of the loci in which transformation of research practices is being enacted. However, the definition of the research questions also took into account the small-scale dimension of the study, to be carried out in one university context by an individual researcher, in a limited timespan and only relying on one data gathering tecnique. Given that, the proposed study aims to: 1) identify current and emergent digital scholarly practices from researchers in an higher education setting, considering different subject areas; 2) explore whether, in which ways and to what extent such emerging practices in digital environments constitute a ‘break’ against the tradition, and how open approaches in researching and teaching are implied. In particular, this study aims to answer the following research questions: - What are current uses of digital tools and environments for research purposes in an higher education context? - What do researchers think of a likely impact of digital tools and environments on changing research practices towards an 'open scholarship' approach? The research embeds an exploratory and qualitative approach, aiming to gain a picture of faculty’s views in different subject areas and to draw prevalent behaviours and trends. To this purpose, an interview study was undertaken by using face-to-face individual interviews as data gathering method and as a reporting technique. 3.2 THE RESEARCH CONTEXT Before describing methodological decisions undertaken in this study, it is worth considering a few notes referring to the university context being researched, in order to gain essential information on the institutional digital facilities which the 29 interviewed researchers currently benefit. The University of Milan has one of the largest and long-standing information system among the Italian universities, that extensively serves administrative, teaching and research activities being carried out by students, faculty and non-teaching staff. A specific Research Management System provides support to individual faculty and departments in managing funding procedures, recording information of research products (e.g. articles, books, critical editions, patents, etc.) and enabling related self-archiving in a central open repository (AIR – Institutional Research Archive), beyond further on demand functions of business intelligence. In addition, shortly a competency-based repository will be released, that will allow to collect and highlight in unique online dossiers information related to the ensemble of activities undertaken by teaching and research staff, including doctoral students. Moreover, huge investments in digital library’s services enable researchers of all departments to utilize one of the largest set of digital collections of journals, monographs et similia in the Italian academia. Furthemore, about three years ago, - within the library of the Humanities area a publishing service for open access journals was set up and has been offered to all the research Departments across university: currently about 7-8 journals have been activated, but only one in a non-humanistic discipline. More recently, it has also been launched the self-archiving service of all the doctoral dissertations, whose full texts should mandatorily be submitted by the authors in open access, within the AIR online repository. As regards to the web-enhanced services for teaching, every faculty is enabled to adopt a personalized space and sync and async tools within the in-house elearning university platform: currently about 700 faculty (out of 2.500) chose this opportunity. 30 Finally, it is worth noting that the logistics characterizing research work in the four subject areas being considered (Humanities, Social Sciences, Physics and Medicine) is quite different. In fact, only researchers in Social Sciences and Physics are based in a unique compound, whilst faculty in Humanities teach and do research in three different locations, and all Medicine researchers are even scattered in more than ten different (university and hospital) locations, across the city of Milan and Lombardy Region. 3.3 ETHICAL ISSUES Ethical issues constitute an integral part of design process in qualitative research: they should frame and inform the study as a whole rather than be applied when problems occur (Kiegelmann, 1996). In the research design, the opportunity to increase awareness of digital scholarship’s practices occurring in different disciplinary settings was identified as a general potential benefit for both participants and university being involved in this study. Given that, the conduct of this study aimed to minimize any dangers, by considering issues related to informed consent, vulnerability of participants (anonymity, confidentiality) and debriefing. My study was conducted in an environment which I am well acquainted with but in which I routinely take part in administrative staff’s responsibilities. This facilitated gaining access to the field (for instance, there was no need of a formal letter by my supervisor) and allowed a direct selection of suitable informants (I was well acquainted with a range of potential informants). However, I had to clarify that my role as an “apprentice researcher” - as enrolled in the online MRes at the Institute of Education - did not have anything to do with my current role at the University of Milan. I personally informed the Administrative Director, the Deputy for Research and the local Ethics 31 Committee as my early contacts before starting the study: it is worth noting that, considering the Italian law frame for research ethics, informing the local Ethics Committee was not due for my kind of inquiry. Providing detailed information about the research project was the basis to start building trust: an extended abstract was sent to potential informants, together with the invitation to participate to interviews and a copy of the informed consent form. Moreover, a web space (Cloudworks, 2011) was set up to disseminate additional information about the dissertation work, rough materials and links drawn from my literature review. In addition, a blog (Wordpress, 2011) was run as a research journal on some methodological aspects, in order to practice reflexivity, mark my presence in the field over time and contribute to give a sense of transparency to the research process. The maintenance of such online spaces also made sense as a tentative 'open' research approach, that did not imply either participative research or disclosure of data while the study was underway. However, the use of member checking and debriefing was planned to foster a sense of participatory approach, that is not applied as a standard procedure in qualitative inquiry. Moreover, my permanence in educational technology digital networks – by interacting through Cloudworks, Twitter and many relevant blogs - helped me to better understand digital and open practices, in a perspective of research process intended as a learning process, in which researcher is engaged in gaining skills necessary to participate in the activities being described (Flyvbjerg, 2004). Before starting the interview, individual participants were invited to re-check the informed consent form and to sign it: the form (see Appendix 1) explicitly states that names and quotes are fully anonymized, that participants are allowed to withdraw consent at any time and are able to ask for additional information by 32 emailing to the address included in the consent form. As regards to issues of vulnerability, the topic being researched is not particularly sensitive and the involved research participants were all adult professionals (senior, young researchers or PhD students), working in different disciplines within Humanities, Social Sciences, Physics and Medicine. However, default anonymization of personal data (in any reports, including the devoted web space and blog) was intended to preserve all informants from an overexposure. Moreover, when applying convenience and snowball sampling, hierarchical relations within the respective departments were taken into account, in order to obtain permission for the doctoral students to participate. All the interviews followed one schedule (see Appendix 2), took place each in one session of a maximum duration of 90 minutes and were planned to have a weekly or bi-weekly frequency. The interviews’ audiorecordings, transcripts and/or email were kept confidential and statements drawn from specific interviews were explicitly quoted only in agreement with the respective authors. The interviews were conducted in Italian language to enable a more natural fluency of the discourses: a translation of the selected quotes in English language were sent to interviewees for approval and any further integration. 3.5 METATHEORETICAL POSITION A metatheory can be defined as a particular way of linking theory within the mode of interrogation of research, that highlights reasons why researchers do what they do, how they situate it, how they validate it, in a specific inquiry (Brown and Dowling, 2010). This means that a particular metatheory can be useful to account for a specific class and range of phenomena to be researched and in fact helps to provide a ‘narrative of coherence’ to all design components 33 of a specific inquiry, by making explicit epistemological, ontological and methodological researcher’s position. The aim, research questions, methodology and technique adopted in my study frame it as a qualitative inquiry, within an interpretive epistemological orientation, that strives to “understand and interpret the world in terms of its actors” (Cohen et al., 2007: 26), gives value to the negotiation of meanings and implies a conception of findings as tentative and provisional. Within this perspective, I endorse a constructivist approach, in which the reality is seen as something discovered through the interactive process between an observed (interviewed) and an observer (interviewer) (Charmaz, 2000). Nonetheless, I also acknowledge that my study is subjected to one of the most common criticism to interpretivist orientation, whereas this kind of analysis tends to be limited to micro-sociological settings and to overlook the influence of external factors on shaping situations (Cohen et al., 2007: 26). Taking my research questions as a guide, I selected appropriate methodology and tecniques that were able to be functional to my study and consistent with the metatheory drafted above. 3.6 RESEARCH METHOD The general exploratory goal of this dissertation work is to draw a 'snapshot' of current digital research practices and opinions about trends of openness from researchers in hard sciences and soft sciences. Given that, the kind of questions being asked allow to adopt qualitative interviews as main data gathering technique, in order to give voice to informants to grasp their own views. In this study I consider interview as more of a dialogical process that approximated Holstein and Gubrium’s (1995: 141) 'interpretive' concept of the 34 ‘active interview’: in this view meanings are being produced through “collaborative accomplishments” between interviewer and interviewee, against a mode of interview – more aligned to a 'positivist' perspective - in which respondent is seen as a “vessel-of-answers” and the interviewer's intervention is intentionally limited. Moreover, I set out to draw from each interview comparable data, to be analyzed though thematic analysis. To this purpose, I chose to carry out a semistructured interview (Fielding, 2003:136), in which the sequence and wording of the questions are considered as many cues to structure an “interview-as-event as a setting for data collection” (Brown and Dowling, 2007: 74). This kind of interview “facilitates modes of analysis, for example thematic analysis” (Miles, 1994, as mentioned in Gibson, 2009: 41), allowing for an easier comparison of different transcripts through key themes. 3.7 SAMPLING STRATEGY The study was carried out across one institution, the University of Milan, in which I have been working for years, previously as director of the e-learning unit and currently as non-teaching staff in the executive office supporting the Evaluation University Board. The University of Milan is one of the largest public and multidisciplinary universities in Italy and encompasses a range of research areas: the study was planned to select informants working in disciplines from four broad subject areas, such as Humanities, Social sciences, Physics, Medicine. My condition as an “insider” at the University of Milan allowed me for an effective use of convenience and snowball sampling strategies to recruit research participants. So, firstly I contacted one researcher for each subject area, selecting among people I knew as examples of scholarly behaviour in digital environment and/or I was told to be interested in discussing the topic 35 being researched. These early interviewees acted as many gatekeepers in their subject area and led me to identify other colleagues it would be worth interviewing. The aim was to select a group of 12 informants, and to interview at least three academics for each area, preferably belonging to different generations (e.g. a senior researcher, a young researcher, a doctoral student). Cases and interviewees were selected on the basis of the expectations of information content they were likely to provide (Flyvbjerg, 2004: 426). The construction of the sample was progressively guided by the goal of “maximizing variation” (Larsson, 2009: 31) of opinions, searching for examples of specific research practices as undertaken in digital environments within different work contexts and traditions of disciplinary conventions. This approach is apparent in the choice of the four broad subject areas: Humanities, Social Sciences for soft sciences, Physics and Medicine for hard sciences. Each subject area in turn represents distinctive research needs and practices, but a particular attention was applied in order to not select interviewees working in the same discipline, department or project. Moreover, whereas it was possibile, one researcher was selected from an interdisciplinary context (e.g. Informatics for Humanities) and/or from a research setting located at the boundary between the university and external research institutes. Furthemore, in order to pursue the goal of maximizing variation, the number of interviewees raised to 14, increasing from 3 to 4 informants for Humanities and Medicine. Below a list of the interviewee' profiles is reported. SUBJECT Humanities Humanities DISCIPLINE Medieval Philosphy Informatics for Humanities TYPOLOGY Senior Researcher Young researcher 36 Humanities Language and Culture of the Ancient Greece Humanities Social Sciences (Digital) Archeology Sociology of cultural processes Social Sciences Social Sciences Social Research Methods Human Resources Management Physics Physics Physics Medicine Medicine Medicine Medicine Theoretical Physics High Energies Optics Dentistry Anatomy Psychology Translational Medicine Senior Researcher Doctoral researcher Young researcher Senior Researcher Young researcher Young researcher Young researcher Senior Researcher Senior Researcher Doctoral researcher Doctoral researcher Young researcher 3.8 DATA COLLECTION Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were organized with the selected informants, aiming to gain first hand accounts of living experiences and informed opinions about digital and open research practices. One interview schedule with twelve questions (see Appendix 2) was produced, building on the two initial broad research questions reported above. So, a first group of questions focuses on informants’ technological practices in everyday life and in research activities, attempting to understand whereas and how the use of technology shapes the research process, which digital resources are being 37 utilized and produced, and what are the boundaries of the research community. A second group of questions aims to reveal behaviours and beliefs concerning the role of technology on interdisciplinarity, collaboration vs exchange of information and engagement with the public. Finally, some synthesis questions were asked: on the meaning of the expression ‘digital researcher’, the comprehension and degree of acceptance of any form of 'digital reputation' in the research evaluation process and any foresight on the development of one or more dimension of ‘openness’ in scholarship (referring to trends to openness identified in Pearce, Weller et al., 2010) . In fact, one interview protocol was utilized in individual interview sessions of a maximum of 90 minutes: interviews actually lasted between 75 and 90 minutes. The interviews were scheduled from March to July 2011, taking into account informants' diaries. Interviews were initially planned with a frequency of not more that two weekly sessions, in order to allow some early reflections by listening to audio-recordings. However, it happened to concentrate three interviews in a week, due to informants' unexpected commitments. Apart from these occasional slight shifts in the schedule, the interviews were grouped according to the different subject areas: so, interviews to researchers in Humanities and Social Sciences were undertaken in sequence before those occurring with researchers in Physics and Medicine areas. Grouping interviews this way let me to better focus on specific conventions and behaviours characterizing the different subject areas and to draft early considerations. Only in the case of Medicine area there was a fairly large time span between the three interviews (about two weeks between one interview and the next one), due to the busy schedule of the informants. 38 Locations of the interviews were in most cases researchers' own offices: only in three cases the interviews took place elsewhere (2 in an administrative office and 1 in a small library), because the researchers did not have assigned an office on their own. Every interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, summarized and tagged within ten days from the respective interview session. 3.9 DATA ANALYSIS The relatively limited extension of the dataset – about sixteen hours of audiorecording - made not necessary the use of coding software. This choice was also motivated by my personal need – as an apprentice researcher - to directly experience transcription's practicalities. The collected data were transcribed using 'unfocused' transcription technique, to provide a general overview of the entire data set “without attempting to represent its detailed contextual or interactional characteristics" (Gibson and Brown, 2009: 116) and thus analyzed through thematic analysis. Preliminarily the interviews' transcripts were read through to get an overall impression. Then the transcripts were read again to sift statements significant for the specific questions of the interview schedule and indicating different attitudes from researchers, by using techniques such as noting patterns, clustering and making contrasts/comparisons among data (Miles and Huberman (1994: 2456). Then, data were indexed under the respective subject areas, grouped in topics relevant to match the two main research questions and to be compared with findings from previous empirical studies. The aim was on the one hand to provide a detailed "conversational" account of patterns of technologies adoption and related problematic areas, on the other hand to draw emergent themes through a comparison of findings with a wider empirical domain. Finally, interviews' excerpts were interpreted considering modes of knowledge 39 production and distribution being adopted, ways of ICTs appropriation in different subject areas and individual researchers' motivations with respect to their own career and their type of online engagement. 3.10 VALIDITY Given the qualitative nature of this study I consider as compliant a notion of validity referring to confidence in the achieved results rather than to certainty in them (Hammersley, 1992). This perspective implies an holistic concept of validity intended as credibility and authenticity, and based on “honesty, depth, richness and scope of data achieved” (Cohen et al., 2007: 133), which matches the goals and approach undertaken in the study. Within this frame, the study makes use of tecniques such as persistent observation (e.g. participation in conferences and in informal conversations) (Lincoln and Guba, 1985), audit (organization of a workshop) and peer debriefing (Erlandson et al., 1993). Moreover, among trustworthiness criteria, member checking is being utilized taking into account what matters specific to the problem/research as framed by the identified research questions. 3.11 RELIABILITY The research context above described requires to refer to a notion of reliability as transparency of the research process more than as replicability and consistency of measurement, since the respondents are not expected to give the same answers at two different times of interaction. In this sense, great attention was intended to be given to detailed account of strategies and methods used in gathering data, process of coding and interpretation, contingencies of the research context. Moreover, referring to a notion of 'replicability' in qualitative research (LeCompte and Preissle, 1992), this study adopted consistency of selection of informants, analytic constructs and data 40 gathering methods across the whole set of interviews to be undertaken. However, it was considered that the nature of informants might strongly affect the conduct of the interviews (Harley et al., 2010), by changing wording and sequence of questions. Following Silverman (1993), this possible trend towards more open-ended interviews was seen as increasing validity, by enabling respondents to better illustrate their unique view of the world. 3.12 GENERALIZABILITY The exploratory aims of this research address university researchers in order to start discussion about the theme and any implications for practice (e.g. academic literacies of new researchers). In this sense, generalizability of findings in this study can be referred to the notion of “naturalistic generalization” (Stake, 1978: 7), in which the illustrated cases “may be epistemologically in harmony with the reader's experience and thus to that person a natural basis for generalization” (Stake, 1978: 5). Moreover, given the nature of the project, focusing on qualitative interviews, the intent of "enhancing the generalization potential by maximizing variation" Larsson (2009: 31) is pursued through an adequate sampling strategy and approach in data analysis, in order to give equal importance both to common and uncommon cases. 41 4. FINDINGS 4.1. PRESENTATION OF FINDINGS The presentation of findings is framed by the two main questions that have informed this study, aiming to investigate any relation between digital scholarship and open scholarship: 1. What is the impact of digital environments on current research practices in academia? 2. What do researchers think of a likely impact of digital tools and environments on changing research practices towards an 'open scholarship' approach? So, in the first part an account of typologies of tools and patterns of use is reported, whilst the second part particularly focuses on beliefs and expectations related to problematic areas of digital environments and open research practices. To a degree paragraphs' titles follow the same sequence of the Interview Schedule (see Appendix 2), grouping recurrent themes arisen from interviews. 1.What is the impact of digital environments on current research practices in academia? Common and emergent tools for research work Email and digital library result to be the most utilized tools (beyond basic desktop software) across the totality of interviewees, irrespective of subject areas, age groups, personal attitudes and specific work context. In addition, a variety of technological devices and software applications are named, as emergent tools in everyday life and for specific research activities. Skype is being used by 12 out of 14 interviewees, whilst 5 researchers have a profile in Facebook (but 1 only for private purposes), 3 in Twitter and/or Linkedin, and 2 42 in Academia.Edu. Social citation tools such as Zotero and CiteULike are respectively mentioned 3 and 2 times, as well as Dropbox among document sharing tools and Google Docs as a co-writing instrument. Two interviewees run a Blog for research purposes (one is a contributor in a multi-authored blog). Applications such as Basecamp, Quora, Endnote and Doodle were named only once and by the same researcher. Devices such as smart phones are named 3 times, tablet/e-readers (IPad) in 2 cases and e-readers-only (Kindle) only in one case. The diagram below - namely a ‘word cloud’ – was created using a free application (Wordle, 2011) by weighting named tools: it provides a visual idea of the distribution of (not discipline-specific) technologies across the sample of researchers being interviewed. Figure 1 – ‘Word cloud’ of typologies and use frequency of ICTs among interviewees. Email has become over time a manifold instrument that goes far beyond the original function of one-to-one communication tool (Physics, #1): most 43 researchers explicitly still prefer to rely on this 'old' technology to networking and to co-edit a multi-authored paper. Moreover digital library, enabling an immediate access to a plenty of published research, actually makes researchers more aware of "how much we have not read yet on a defined topics" (Humanities, #1) and "boost interdisciplinary argumentation, just through the cross-reading of papers" (Physics, #1). However, the landscape becomes more nuanced when choices of further devices occur and any relationship between everyday life and technological needs at work is considered. So, certain types of common instruments, such as an audio/video recorder, may be an integral part of everyday life of a Social Science researcher (#2), whilst a number of 'general purpose' devices may serve a range of specialized functions for another investigator: “Currently I use a Kindle to read e-books; an IPad, that supports Unicode, to read classic texts in Greek language; a smartphone to syncronize home and work activities, including time spent in digital library and to keep in contact with students, if needed” (Humanities, #3). In three cases researchers explain that they are non-users of social networking sites because they do not feel any need to manage their private contacts through digital networks (e.g. Facebook): likewise, in three cases interviewees maintain that there is no necessity in their professional life to use the latest mobile phones, and that there is too much commercial pressure on this. Among new generation tools, undoubtedly Skype results to be as the most favorite one, since it is commonly used to multiply opportunities to meet distant peers and/or faculty/doctoral students (Social Sciences, #1, #2; Medicine #4), whilst others (Humanities #2; Medicine #3; Physics, #2, #3) especially find it very useful to quickly solve problems whereas collaborative projects are at 44 stuck or to re-negotiate collective decisions at the beginning of a new task in the work plan. Blogging activity is scarcely spread and is not acknowledged at all as a rewarding and/or recommended activity, sometimes even as a means for postgraduate students to practice their scholarly writing: “I would be cautious about blogging for post-graduate students, especially in scientific areas: they first need to listen to experts, for a long time, then they will be able to express their opinions. The scientific method embeds specific constraints and instruments that you must acquire, before being able to build on. You cannot overlook such prerequisites. It might be a danger for students to expose themselves too early. The danger is just to make it public a loosely-scaffolded approach, a little scientific one” (Medicine, #3). Another faculty, within the same area (Medicine, #1), runs a blog on health care as an extra work, because he was asked by the scientific society which he belongs to. However, in a Social Sciences context one researcher runs a blog for musing in informal way on his own research agenda (#3), whilst another one is used to contribute to a multi-authored blog: “This collective blog can be considered as the ‘showcase’ of some research threads being undertaken within my department. It hosts posts that are indeed structured as many papers, and includes comments on these works and sometimes guest posts. Therefore to a degree it is also a means for networking, to extend the boundaries of our research community” (Social Sciences, #1). 45 Making sense of technologies Among the interviewed researchers the most common approach in the adoption of technologies to support inquiry work generally appears to be quite pragmatic and efficiency-driven: “The use and choice of a digital tool is definitely functional to my research needs, questions and to the specific sample being researched: it doesn’t matter how difficult a new tool is, if it can help and suits the research situation, I am willing to spend the needed time… this is the key”. (Medicine, #3) Attributes such as “speed”, “completeness of information” (Humanities, #3), “facilitation of existing practices” (Social Sciences, #2; Medicine, #4) characterize the way of intending technologies as means to solve practical issues. This attitude easily becomes adaptability to a new tool (e.g. DropBox for Medicine #2, #4, Humanities #2 for a transdisciplinary project) when this provides the appropriate facility at no cost in terms of time demand. However, a subgroup of researchers (Social Sciences, #3; Humanities, #3; Humanities, #4) seems to be more inclined to experiment new tools as well as is interested in building an academic digital identity: “I use a range of tools and environments, that I am used to classify as frequent, academic, personal tools, often being used in mobile mode (IPad, BlackBerry) and for a variety of objectives, such as to manage projects, online surveys, blogging, microblogging, bookmarking, scheduling of meetings, etc. Above all I use Twitter as a 'knowledge feeder' drawing from an international network: it works better for me in this function than other social networking tools. Instead, in Facebook I usually discuss 46 research topics, studies, personal opinions, ‘views of the world’, with people I am familiar with, including my students. On these themes my blog hosts more personal reflections: a ‘readership’ is being created by linking posts to Twitter. Finally I use Linkedin to attract new contacts around my professional extra-academia commitments” (Social Sciences, #3). In other cases, interviewees generally prefer to keep their private networks separated from the research ones: “It happens that someone asks me to join my network in Facebook: however, whereas an informal information exchange is likely to become a research collaboration I prefer to move to other means, such as email or Skype, to go in depth with discussion in a more private setting” (Humanities, #2). However, the exploratory attitude undertaken by the individual researcher does not seem to be so rewarding in certain disciplinary fields: “I have a profile on a number of popular technologies, such as sites for social networking, social bookmarking, social citation… but so far I have not be able to identify any real benefits for my research work…for instance, I used CiteULike for a while, to exchange references. But I realized that a few Classicists are used to feed references, so my permanence there was worthless and I was not able to draw anything significant for my research.” (Humanities, #3). It is worth noting that such contextual hindrances do not prevent this researcher from originally curating a digital identity in literature-focused networks “in which I can play a different role that does not affect my responsibility as a university researcher” (Humanities, #3). 47 Otherwise, the emergent state-of-the-art of her own disciplinary context fosters collaboration via digital networks for a (doctoral) researcher in ‘digital archeology’: “First of all at the National Research Council - where I am based - there is an intense team working activity, that is for instance highlighted in the use of Google Docs for co-writing any documents. But, more importantly, in our field it is vital to search for new contacts and closely collaborate at a distance with the international community of open source software developers, for co-programming graphics and modeling tools that enable us to build virtual museums of archeological sites. As ‘digital archeologists’ we are still a relatively small number of researchers and so we are open to look for other experiences, solutions, outputs, browsing any kind of sites, mailing lists and communities on the Web” (Humanities, #4). For two doctoral researchers social networking environments represent the informal bridge between professional and academic experiences (Social Sciences, #1; Humanities, #4) and to share their engagement between different research institutions they are dealing with. More interestingly, these doctoral researchers state to find in the online networking activity even a way to somewhat compensate for the methodological training that the university seems not to properly provide (Social Sciences, #1; Humanities, #4). Otherwise, online activities undertaken by a doctoral student in Physics (#2), being involved in a prestigious international project, are totally absorbed and structured by formal and informal interactions within a large but project-bounded community of about 500 researchers scattered all over the world. On the other hand, among older researchers it is possible to identify a more disenchanted attitude towards emergent social technologies, that are seen to a 48 degree as redundant with respect to means being developed in the previous decades. “In hard sciences we researchers faced the emotional impact of ICTs many years ago, in early 90s. Now many practical, technical and communication needs are mostly fulfilled. So, we are not particularly impressed by these emergent tools, or even, feel somewhat indifferent to social media” (Physics, #1). Likewise, the celebrated affordances for networking and collaborative working of new social tools are seen as already experienced and fulfilled by using email and Web 1.0 facilities: “No doubt that without Internet at least two important initiatives in my early academic career would have not occurred: a collective book on qualitative social research, in which most contributors I firstly contacted by email, after sifting names from a publisher’s catalogue. I did not meet them in person while structuring and writing chapters. Likewise, a small network of research in qualitative methods was set up fifteen years ago and is still currently and effectively managed only via email, including the organization of one yearly conference and the editing process of our journal’s issues” (Social Sciences, #2). In places, the emerging social spaces are considered as “quite distracting, definitely a waste of time” (Social Sciences, #2) and “playful...there are more efficient means to communicate and have impact” (Medicine, #4). More importantly, one senior researcher highlights how the level of awareness of the underlying logic of tools is in danger of being overlooked by students adopting ultimate ‘plug and play’ technologies: 49 “I have been working with a classification system that I have been built over time, along with my own method to analyze texts. It is a tool that perfectly suits my kind of research, but I don’t believe it could be useful to share it with my students. I mean, such instruments are useful if you build them on your own specific needs. They work well only if you design them. I realize I belong to a privileged generation of researchers, firstly because we have the critical awareness of how much ideology is embedded in the mainstream tools; secondly, since we have our hands made dirty by building those tools really necessary for the specific research activity to be undertaken. Personally it takes more time to learn the logic underpinning a commercial software” (Humanities, #1). Boundaries of own research community The question whether the boundaries of one's own research community is being challenged by networked environments was the most difficult one to reflect on for interviewees. Traditional channels appear to be paramount across all disciplines: “The most important communication channels to create new contacts are still definitely seminars and conferences: in such contexts you are likely to start professional relationships that you might want to furtherly cultivate via Skype or email. Anyway, at the very beginning you need to encounter in person researchers whose work you know ‘via papers’…you need to exchange information about their research methods, work approach...in other words, you need to get acquainted with people before collaborating with them in a project”. (Medicine, #3). 50 This view is particularly shared among interviewees in soft sciences (Humanities, #1, #3; Social Sciences, #2), in which the model of the “isolated scholar” is said to be prevailing. The occasional use of subject-focused mailing lists in Humanities (#3) merely addresses a scope to exchange information. It is also true that for some in these areas (Humanities, #2; Social Sciences #1; #3), participation in social media is thought as enabling researchers to get in contact with new audiences, and even to discover new kinds of expertise among nonacademic thinkers. However, whereas the research context becomes cross-disciplinary, the practice and perception of one's 'community of research' is differently being inflected and digital networks play a role: “It comes to mind a series of concentric circles: at the core there is a local community, within the Computer Science Department, consisting of a small research group that is used to schedule regular in person meetings; then there is the circle of a “competence-based” community, in which my specialist interests can be extended at a national and international level; and finally a cross-disciplinary community, that consists in my engagement in Informatics for Humanities’ projects. The second and third level heavily rely on digital networks, except from the traditional channels of conferences and seminars” (Humanities, #2). Anyway, means and modes to create and expand one's own research community appears as substantially unchanged also in researchers who make an intensive use of communication technologies: 51 “I don’t believe that digital environments really challenge the boundaries of my research community, that it is mainly based on a direct acquaintance of peers. My research community consists in an international network of colleagues and collaborators that I have being get to know over years. Indeed my daily use of social media aims to gain insights on a number of perspectives on reality, to receive hints and suggestions to further reflect on reality” (Social Sciences, #3). For doctoral students the notion of 'community of research' assumes a sense of 'community of practice' (Wenger, 1998), in which building their own 'being scholar', by interacting with senior researchers. The continuing face-to-face relation apprentice/mentor is perceived as paramount in areas such as Medicine (#3) and Physics (#2). However, the doctoral researcher in Physics (#2) reports to additionally experience a significant permanence in a projectbased online network that in fact represents an extension of the traditional instance of a community of practice. Otherwise, above it was reported that to a degree doctoral students interviewed in Humanities (#4) and Social Sciences (#1) autonomously rely on digital networks to significantly integrate their in situ research training. 2. What do researchers think of a likely impact of digital tools and environments on changing research practices towards an 'open scholarship' approach? The ‘digital researcher’ When being asked if any meaning and sense is attributable to the definition of ‘digital researcher’, almost every interviewees smiled, being inclined to reject any label. Indeed, a group of them justify their own rejection of this label for opposite reasons: because ‘being digital’ 52 “is not directly inherent to the ordinary practice of Humanities research, even if some fields of study have been developed a systematic reflection on technology and its impact on ways of thinking about inquiry work“ (Humanities, #1). Others confirm that in certain disciplines the label has an obvious meaning, since typically hard sciences cannot be conceived without digital instruments, that are integral part of the research environment and practice (Physics, #1; #2; #3; Medicine, #1; #2; #4). On the contrary, one researcher in Humanities (#3) comes to terms with the 'digital researcher' label relating it to the availability of a great deal of digital resources that constitute her ordinary work environment. However, her own attitude towards technology issues contrasts her own disciplinary context, that is still scarcely inclined to utilize technologies to support research: “I am not be able to see among my colleagues, also in international contexts, a predisposition, an interest in making use of any tech applications, even if the use of these ones can apparently facilitate a certain phase of the research process. However, personally I feel a ‘digital researcher’, because I actually make an intensive use of digital services to conduct my research, from the access to databases of classic texts to thesaurus to bibliography search engines. Moreover, I have been undertaking a constant relation with computer science colleagues or software developers, discussing technical solutions and future projects” (Humanities, #3). Among interviewees from Social Sciences there is who confirms that “it's commonplace that social scientists are digital scholars, since they use computational power to collect and analyze data” (#2). Another researcher feels 53 this label as directly aligned with his own thread of “study of phenomena related to uses of social networking environments” (Social Sciences, #1). However, there is also awareness that the networked environment is becoming a condition that significantly informs one's own approach to social inquiry: “First of all it comes to mind the ‘digital ethnographer’, for instance Michael Wesch. But there is also a way of thinking of a ‘digital researcher’ dealing with our views of the world. Indeed the world of my research ideas is strongly affected and is continuously fed with all that is being shared on the Web, through digital mechanisms” (Social Sciences, #3). This latter interviewee (an associate professor) claims that his interest and attendance in social media are perceived as an “odd thing” by his colleagues and that such a behaviour is 'tolerated' only because he has already gained a solid reputation in his field and is well acquainted with the internal dynamics of the university. Another researcher in Humanities highlights how the label 'digital researcher' can also make sense “considering reflection effort on both instrumental and epistemic impact of technology on research process” (Humanities, #2). Finally, the research student in Archeology advances an idea of ‘digital researcher’ as a bearer of innovation, under different aspects: “Indeed in my field the idea of a ‘digital archeologist’ could make sense, because there are still a few investigators attempting to 'renew' archeology’s study. On the one hand a digital researcher utilizes new tools to collaboratively model new methods that broaden the knowledge of archeological sites and finds. On the other hand, this approach also enables researcher to think of very new and effective ways to make a large lay audience aware of an extraordinary cultural heritage. So, I think that the commitment of a digital researcher should encompass a focus on 54 popularizing archeology and dealing with a wider community” (Humanities, #4). Digital reputation Most interviewees appear to be very cautious in attributing any value to the expression of ‘digital reputation’, especially if it is linked to the individual researcher’s evaluation procedure. Some hold that “digital reputation might be a component in the resume of a researcher in Communication Science, Humanities or Social Sciences, but it is of null importance in hard sciences” (Medicine, #1). In the same subject area, it is underlined that “sometimes it was even argued whether an online publication was to be considered as valid in a researcher’s evaluation process. Indeed I can’t imagine how informal sharing, like blogs, could have a role in this” (Medicine, #2). Others state that “indeed digital reputation might be an additional element to be evaluated when selecting a doctoral student as well his/her predisposition for teaching activity” (Physics, #1). But concerns are also highlighted as regards to a likely discriminatory character of the 'digital reputation', that is perceived as "other with respect to the core competencies of a researcher" (Physics, #3) and as "an additional burden, that could be accepted only as a substitute of, say, some administrative commitment" (Social Sciences, #2). More generally, there is awareness that "digital reputation can be an important indicator for scholarly reputation, even if it is difficult to identify criteria through which to assess this indicator in an evaluation process. Certainly the current formal evaluation approach 55 is far from accepting indicators different than traditional ones" (Social sciences, #1). In one single case, the notion of digital reputation is explicitly linked to the idea that “the democratization of knowledge is being enacted in the democratization of researchers” (Social Sciences, #3): “I would be willing to evaluate the capacity to ‘move ideas around’. It is our responsibility to play a role as researchers in a wider context. The institutional impact of faculty's ability to communicate to a larger audience than the academic one…this has a key value. Sometimes it has a greater value than an Impact Factor has, this latter embeds a very ‘selfish’ (sic) value” (Social Sciences, #3). Indeed, the general idea that a researcher is able to express his/her public persona in many web-based informal modes is positively shared in Humanities, but caution is reported against “the risk to radicalize this trend on relying on crowdsourcing to define expert’s reputation and misrepresent digital reputation with quality of research outputs: I still believe in the validity of higher education’s mechanisms to filter access to inquiry work. It is neither possible or desirable to lower such a threshold” (Humanities, #2). Otherwise, ‘digital reputation’ is even interpreted as “presence in international subject-based rankings on the Web” (Medicine, #4) and is hoped for being a means of greater transparency of research, teaching and professional activities' results, in a highly competitive research system. Cultures of sharing 56 Sharing work in progress definitely does not belong to the common conventions of the interviewed researchers, across different subject areas: "There is too much fear that your ideas can be stolen" (Humanities, #1, also shared by #3 and Social Sciences, #2) "Competition is too strong and often the nature of your research does not allow a partial disclosure of your underway study without missing the opportunity to be published as first" (Medicine, #1; also #4). Provided with examples of sharing drafts of book chapters, some state that "it deals with 'star researchers' who are so famous that their original work will be surely preserved" (Social Sciences, #2). However, for all the interviewees in Medicine and Physics the use of 'open access' repositories such as PubMed and arXiv constitutes a well-established mode to share unpublished works among peers, in order to activate “a peer critiquing process and quickly disseminate scientific results through the Web” (Medicine, #2). But also in this case the disseminated papers are always to be intended as “refined studies being exposed to peers' judgement and not mere drafts of any piece of research underway” (Physics, #1). Trends towards openness The answers to the final question about trends of openness in the respective research fields reveal that most respondents formulated an early opinion on the theme just while being interviewed. Sometimes there was a need to produce some examples related to the proposed trends (open publishing, open data, open boundary between academia and society, open education). In places (Humanities, #1; Physics, #1; Medicine, #3; Social Sciences, #2) responses let show a sense of 'not invented here', referring to open practices in 57 research and teaching that are currently reported elsewhere. One recalls that “practices and not values are to be investigated among researchers” (Social Sciences, #2). As expected, 'open publishing' results the most familiar trend, since it is now acknowledged to be a real alternative in the dissemination process. In Medicine (#1, #2, #3) open publishing counts prestigious journals like PlosOne (with Impact Factor), but some observe that the economic model requiring a fee to authors has created a group of “open journals that have little to do with the quality of scientific peer review” (Medicine #4; also Physics, #3). In Physics, the role of arXiv is even more valued than the diffusion of open e-journals (#2, #3), that need time to gain credibility in international contexts. However not all disciplinary sectors within hard sciences (Medicine #3 for Psychology; Physics #3 for Optics) are used to publish on renowned open access e-journals. Otherwise, in soft sciences open publishing is intended as a sustainable alternative to create spaces to disseminate new topics and arguments: “A great deal of publishing activity has more to do with an hand-crafted activity than with a real scientific approach: the research sector which the editor comes from is largely influential in the selection of papers and produces a sort of repetitive stylistic patterns. So, a really ‘new’ paper might not be ever published in these mainstream journals. Open access journals provide opportunities for new views to emerge, even if also within OA journals the same conservative dynamics might be developed in the next future” (Social Sciences, #1). Open e-journals are also seen as an opportunity to create original monographs, in which the editor uptakes the responsibility to structure contents plan and to involve selected experts, without applying traditional peer review (Humanities, 58 #1). The sustainability factor – the local Library Department set up a devoted (free of charge) OA e-journal service – is reported to be a key issue in the endorsement of e-journals among Humanities (#1, #2, #3) researchers. Elsewhere, open publishing is also discussed together with current peer review's mechanisms, with some skepticism towards open peer review, that is likely to embed the same types of social dynamics and power relations occurring in traditional peer review (Social Sciences, #2; Medicine, #1). A general interest about open education initiatives - MIT OpenCourseware is the most quoted example - goes together with concerns related to costs to adapt and update suitable content (Medicine, #1) and the lack of institutional rules protecting and acknowledging authors' work (Humanities, #3). Only one researcher grounds his own open approach in a changing view of knowledge production's conditions in his specific disciplinary sector: "Open education, linked to open boundary: in the next future - at least in Human Resources Management inquiry - the flows of issues in which a researcher will be involved as an advisor will be paramount in the exercise of scholarship, rather than lab abstractions" (Social Sciences, #3). It is worth noting that the two researchers (Humanities, #3; Social Sciences, #3) that appear as the strongest users of networked technologies, also endorse open education as an institutional moral responsibility and in fact state to adopt a participatory approach in their teaching activity. The former (Humanities, #3), even if is convinced that “digital natives do not exist” but strives to involve freshmen in activities within the institutional e-learning platform. The latter (Social Sciences, #3), dealing with senior students, pilots debates and collaborative projects though social media. 59 As regards to 'open data' no researcher reports any pilots in the respective disciplinary area or to date has been required to publish own research data by any e-journal. This issue is closely inherent to the nature of data in the different areas: for instance in Medicine (e.g. #1) there might be insuperable privacy problems, even if the construction of datasets is often planned to be available within inter-institutional agreements. An interviewee in Social Sciences (#2) states that the utilization of quantitative data for re-use in further inquiry is more likely than in case of qualitative data, due to predictable ethical issues but also for a self-protection attitude by qualitative researchers, who might feel over-exposed to peers' evaluation. The question is even more complex whereas it is the case of a funded international project (Physics, #2), in which there are complex copyright issues: however, a re-use of a subset of such data for teaching is thought as a 'doable' way to deal with open data. As regards to issues related to the 'open boundary' between academia and society, many refer to 'analog' instances such as face-to-face popular seminars, conferences and demo lectures (Medicine, #2, #3; Physics #1; #3) that constitute a common and effective means to involve large non-specialist audiences as well as prospective students. Moreover, there is some skepticism that specific, highly specialized fields of study may meet cultural interests of a general audience used to be engaged in digital networks: “On the one hand I can't imagine myself writing a blog about, say, Patrologia Latina after a day long devoted to intensive research work; on the other hand, I am experiencing how it is difficult to attract an 'audience' for an academic e-journal: this does not deal with, say, media studies or communication issues” (Humanities #1). 60 Otherwise in Physics (#2) - in the field of High Energies - it is highlighted as an issue the need to popularize highly specialized scientific research, also to justify huge investment on fields of study that have no recognizable and direct impact on society. On the contrary, in Social Sciences (#1; #2) the threshold between academics' knowledge and expertise and layman's tends to blur, increasingly in digital environments: this on the one hand often constitutes “a fantastic opportunity to social inquiry, but on the other hand it makes it hard to preserve integrity of research and to get acknowledgment for our 'expert' analysis by large audience” (Social Sciences, #2). Nonetheless, some claim that “weaving discourses in open networked environments can draw real advantages to better respond to real-life problems” (Social Sciences, #3). Finally, a doctoral researcher (Humanities, #4) makes a case of a specific research output (a virtual museum) that constitutes per se an “outreach product”, being designed to blur boundaries between the specialist archeology domain and society that funds this body of inquiry. 61 4.2 DISCUSSION The above section attempted to provide a detailed account of personal experiences and opinions of researchers, coming from four different subject areas, about their use of technologies for inquiry purposes and any informed predisposition towards open research practices. However it is worth reminding that these findings are narratives of 14 varied individuals rather than a representative sample of researchers adopting old and new technologies in four broad subject areas. In fact the sampling strategy relies on convenience and snowball sampling, orienting firstly the selection of the informants towards faculty that the researcher had already known and, as next step, towards additional interviewees as pointed out by this first group of informants. Yet these limitations notwithstanding, it is possible to identify recurrent themes, shared experiences among participants and extreme cases that allow to provide some informed considerations on the relationship between digital scholarship and open scholarship's practices. My findings show a general picture of research practices in which the uptake of technologies by researchers underlies a functional and efficiency-driven approach to digital tools and environments and gives some evidence of a poor diffusion of and a cautious interest in Web 2.0 tools to support inquiry activities, in line with findings from large-scale empirical studies. However, among Humanities and Social Sciences' researchers in the sample there are a few champions of an eclectic and self-legitimating approach to new technologies of communication, despite the respective disciplinary contexts are fairly indifferent to the potential of new digital tools/environments. Even if acceptance of openness is loosely spread across disciplines, only these champions hold an idea of 'digital researcher' endorsing the moral responsibility of a more extended 62 culture of sharing in academia and is engaged in undertaking tentative open practices such as blogging, social networking and a participatory attitude in teaching. Apart from these rare exceptions, however, the general impression gained from the responses is that a 'rhetoric of openness' (White, 2011) is far from being defined and show doubts and uncertainties among researchers arising from tensions such as contrast between disciplinary conventions and individual researcher's autonomy, and between analog and digital forms of openness. Common and uncommon cases of digital research practices undertaken by individual researchers can be interpreted more in details – from general to specific - whether considering analytical approaches such as prevalent mode of knowledge production and distribution, type of ICTs appropriation in different disciplines and individual attitudes and motivations of researchers towards research use of technologies. As reported in the literature review, Mode 2 of knowledge production and distribution by Gibbons et al. (1994) can be intended as a frame enabling open research practices. Drawing from the interviews, researchers' work practices seem to be embedded in a prevalent Mode 1 of knowledge production and distribution, referring to an inquiry approach in which work practices are mainly driven by disciplinary and communities conventions. The model of the 'isolated scholar' – typical in this traditional mode of knowledge - results to be still popular in well-established disciplines within soft sciences and is occasionally present in hard sciences informants' statements. Whether it is mentioned, the idea of one's own community of research mainly refers to temporary work groups that are activated on demand, according to the specific paper to be written or project to be carried out, rather than to an inherent approach in which 63 the collaborative work informs all research priorities and work phases. Otherwise, a trend towards Mode 2 of knowledge production and distribution is particularly evident from interviews both to one researcher in a core discipline within hard sciences (High Energies - Physics) and to another one in an emergent discipline within soft sciences (Digital Archeology – Humanities). These two researchers have in common the fact to strongly rely on digital environments and to adopt a problem-driven and collaborative approach, but differ for the boundaries of their research 'fieldwork' and for the typologies of personal technologies being utilized. In the former case the researcher works in a large but project-bounded online environment, in which 'traditional' digital means such as email and forums allow continuing document sharing and peer critiquing activities. In the latter case the researcher works in a more fluid environment, being defined by the networks that are established over time, and is inclined to adopt a variety of both old and new tools for authoring and networking purposes. The first case can be intended as an example of eresearch funded project in which culture of sharing is actually embedded in the specific subject area (Physics) and allows a strong collaborative approach, but means for collaboration do not belong to open source 'philosophy' and activities are undertaken in a 'closed' circle (David et al., 2009). The second one instead represents an instance of that transition to digital age of humanistic disciplines that makes them closer to hard sciences' approach and work practices (Borgman, 2007). It is also worth noting that in this case such a transition of the traditional archeology domain towards the Mode 2 of knowledge production and distribution is driven and supported by a research institution external to university (the National Research Council) in which the doctoral researcher currently happens to work. 64 However, as well as Houghton et al. observed in their study (2003), in general in the interviewees' words features of Mode 1 and 2 co-exist: the presence of commercial publishers are usually accepted together with open access solutions (e-journals and/or online open repositories); a rigid defense of traditional rules for scholars recruitment co-exists together with the need to somewhat make sense of 'digital reputation'; a need to pursue tenure and promotion beside an aspiration to involve new kinds of audiences; a confidence in traditional modes of knowledge production in well-established disciplines beside an early interrogation of the epistemological challenge coming from emergent networked environments. Moreover, findings reveal that there are differences in the uptake of digital scholarship's practices according to diverse modality of ICTs appropriation inherent to diverse disciplinary areas, as interpreted by Fry's (2006) framework. So, on the one hand, researchers working in subject areas in which a systematic approach to ICTs use (e.g. Physics, Medicine) is prevalent, are more likely to assume stable, structured and shared digital behaviors, within a collaborative work asset. Under such a condition of ICTs appropriation, community and scholarly rules are stronger factors than individual subjects to determine adoption of new tools and new practices. Although this attitude is shared among interviewees in hard sciences, once again the current experience of a doctoral student in Physics is the clearest instantiation of such systematic approach to ICTs use: he mostly relies on means and practices shared in a large online community to learn and practice research methods and to actively contribute to a collective project. However, I argue that whereas this kind of digital frame easily supports new and well-established researchers and make them 'digital scholars' as default, at the same time it is less enabling in the 65 case of exploiting individual researchers' technological attitudes and initiatives addressing communication and informal publishing activities. This is likely to weaken any influence by individual 'early adopters' of new technologies on a thorough scholarly system that effectively works. On the other hand, interviewees in subject areas in which work practices tend to be more individualistic and approach to ICTs is generally molded in an "ad-hoc localized manner" (e.g. Humanities, Social Sciences), are more likely to occasionally assume highly autonomous digital behaviors and to pilot new tools and networking practices, at an individual level. However, such new practices have more difficulty to become mainstream, because they are not grounded in a collaborative division of labour (Borgman, 2007). Moreover, the individualistic approach to inquiry work could partly explain either the preference for open ejournals as new formal spaces of visibility of research findings or the lack of subject-based online repositories: for these latter humanistic researchers do not feel the competitive pressures to quickly disseminate works as their peers in hard sciences have, in their subject-based archives. However, some niches of co-evolution of digital environments and emerging research practices may be identified whereas (e.g. in digital archaeology) there is a methodological and instrumental gap to be fulfilled and work practices in humanistic and scientific domains tend to converge. In the interviewee's words, open collaboration demonstrates to be an efficient means to respond to a need of producing a more fine-tuned definition and advancement of methods in a 'born-digital' field. Focusing instead on individual appropriation of ICTs, selection and patterns of use of technologies among informants reveal an approach that mostly matches the Visitor's attitude rather then the Resident's one (White and Le Cornu, 2011): the majority of researchers across the disciplines considered fit the 'Visitors' 66 approach, because they seem to mainly conceive technologies as tools to be used, if needed, in specific situations and for defined purposes. Their conception of the Web refers to the metaphor of a shed rather than to that of a social space. Introduction of new digital tools and environments mainly occurs whereas these are able to improve efficiency in existing practices and have a clear utilization: this is the case of the diffusion of an online conferencing tool such as Skype, supporting typical interaction of meetings. However, there are a few researchers that show a more exploratory approach towards emergent tools and in fact attempt to combine both Visitor and Resident type of online engagement, by building their own digital identity in various social media. However, a tension may occur between subject's attitudes towards a Resident approach and current prevalent digital practices within a defined research discipline. About that, two different behaviours emerge: on one side the case of a well-established social scientist that states to draw advantage from making his scholarly discourse networked and that chooses to self-legitimate his digital engagement within his discipline, by combining 'authoring' and 'networking' activity with the construction of his role as a public intellectual. On the other side the case of a young researcher in Humanities that realizes to be a pioneer (referring to digital engagement) in her classicist discipline and prefers to play her own digital identity focusing on her 'professional expertise' (as literature expert), keeping it separated by the online 'traces' of her academic profile. In Weller's (2011) terminology, in these 'digital scholars' their being 'digital' is inherently connected with their being 'networked', since in fact they create and manage online a defined profile and a range of scholarly activities. However, only the social scientist – due to the character of his discipline and the strength of his mid-career position – really succeeds in playing a (parallel) role as a 67 'digital scholar' that is “less defined by the institution which he belongs to than by networks and online identity” (Weller, 2011: ‘Digital, networked, open’). Nonetheless, both these researchers seem to find in the teaching dimension – supported by technology-mediated environments - an opportunity to exploit a participatory attitude towards students that approaches a sense of 'open scholarship' as 'co-creating' mode of knowledge production and distribution (Garnett and Ecclesfield, 2011). Otherwise, the doctoral researcher (Archeology) embodies a more integrated mode to be “digital, networked and open”, in her commitment as an apprentice scholar focusing on 'research' (learn and scaffold research methods), 'networking' and to a degree 'authoring' activities, whereas 'authoring' means both writing reports and co-modeling inquiry work instruments within the community of software developers. In fact her online engagement as 'Resident' is enabled by an emergent disciplinary field in which there is alignment among the personal uptake of old and new technologies, the methodological challenges to be faced, the work condition across two different institutions, the inherent transdisciplinarity of the original field and even the production of the final research output (a virtual museum). 68 5. CONCLUSIONS: LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH The interview project here presented provided a 'snapshot' of the digital research practices and related uptake of 'openness' of a small sample of researchers working in an Italian university and belonging to four different subject areas. Although it is not possible to generalize these findings, prevalent behaviours and beliefs and peculiar cases can be accounted. Using the tentative definition of 'digital scholar' by Weller (2011) as a synthesis tool, it can be said - on the basis of the collected data - that the majority of the interviewed researchers results to be traditionally 'digital', moderately 'networked' and occasionally 'open'. Researchers generally make a consistent and efficient use of 'old' technologies that seem to fit well all communication and distribution needs, within the formal constraints of the scholarly system. Likewise, the most popular current forms of openness are related to those forms of open publishing (open e-journals, subject-based online repositories) that better respond either to the need of sustainable publishing venues for humanists or to the competitive nature of some subject areas in hard sciences. Most interviewees seem not to see any clear benefit to move to further technological means or new open practices, especially lacking information, institutional support, new rules within their own disciplines and any acknowledgement by peers. However, it can be also noted an emergent 'digital-as-networked' behaviour undertaken from a small minority of researchers in soft sciences. Their intensive attendance of social Web is peculiarly linked to a particular sensitiveness towards values and perspectives driven by 'openness' in digital networks. Nonetheless their digital identities and online activities constitute a sort of 'parallel' academic life that develops as a self-legitimating approach within a 69 traditional mode of knowledge production and distribution. In fact these tentative efforts are not acknowledged in the respective communities and struggle to become identifiable open research practices. Indeed, some interviewees call for clear institutional rules enabling sharing practices – especially in teaching and learning activity area - that might slowly produce a general change of attitude and overcome current isolated initiatives by a few pioneers of open scholarship. Otherwise, the case that better approaches the multi-label of 'digital, networked and open' scholar seems to be that of an apprentice researcher in an emergent disciplinary context matching the features of the 'new knowledge production' mode. Currently she is engaged in a sort of 'limbo' related to her doctoral work, to her activities shared between two institutions, between study and work and to her own discipline in transition from traditional to digital asset and form of scholarship. Whereas the previous cases spark reflection on the possibility to value and let converge digital and conventional academic profile, the last case is emblematic of the need for a research training not anymore forced within the boundaries of a single institution and that succeeds on becoming systematic and effective co-creation. There are apparent limitations in this study: lacking previous inquiries on this topic within the national context, the analysis is founded on studies carried out in other higher education settings and might be somewhat misleading; the focus on four broad subject areas is not able to provide some evidence for all typologies of disciplines; exclusively relying on individual researchers' accounts does not allow to gain understanding on contextual factors and therefore to investigate scholarly practices as situated practices. Indeed, the implication of this study refers to a need to excite early interest and spark discussion in my university context on issues related to hype on social media potentialities and 70 current digital and open research practices being undertaken by research staff in higher education. In this line, further research is needed in order to sample and investigate champions of digital and open practices in a range of disciplines, to gain in-depth understanding on motivations and patterns of practices. Moreover, a focus on doctoral students could be of interest from an institutional perspective, to outline prospective actions of academic literacies and design projects of innovative online communities of practices, that already seem to be envisioned in the doctoral researchers' accounts in this exploratory study. 71 6. REFERENCES Andersen, D. L. (ed.) (2004) Digital Scholarship in the Tenure, Promotion, and Review Process. Armoni: New York. Andersen, M. H. (2010) 'To Share or Not to Share: Is That the Question?’, EDUCAUSE Review [online], vol. 45, no. 4 (July/August 2010), pp. 40-49. Retrieved the 30th May 2011 at: http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineV olume45/ToShareorNottoShareIsThattheQu/209321 Anderson, P. (2007) What is Web 2.0? 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(2010) ‘Digital scholarship considered: how new technologies could transform academic work’, In Education [online], vol.16, n. 1, May 2010, USA: University of Regina. Retrieved the 15th May 2011 at: http://www.ineducation.ca/article/digital-scholarshipconsidered-how-new-technologies-could-transform-academic-work Procter R., Williams R. and Stewart J. (2010) "If You Build It, Will They Come? How Researchers Perceive and Use Web 2.0, Research Information Network. Retrieved the 20th February 2011 at: http://www.rin.ac.uk/system/files/attachments/web_2.0_screen.pdf 79 Schonfeld, Roger C. and Housewright, R. (2010) Faculty Survey 2009: Key Strategic Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies, Ithaka Report. Retrieved the 25th July 2010 at: http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-sr/research/faculty-surveys-2000-2009/faculty-survey-2009 Selwyn, N. (2010) 'The educational significance of social media: a critical perspective', Key note at ED-MEDIA 2010 Conference, Toronto. 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(2009) ‘Web 2.0 and scholarly communication’, online article in Scholarship 2.0: an idea whose time has come, 14th May 2009. Retrieved the 80 5th July 2011 at: http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2009/05/web-20-andscholarly-communication.html Weller, M. (2011) The Digital Scholar, Bloomsbury Academic [open access version]. Retrieved the 16th September 2011 at: http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/DigitalScholar_9781849666275/boo k-ba-9781849666275.xml Weller, M. (2011) 'Digital, networked and open’. In The Digital Scholar, Bloomsbury Academic [open access version]. Retrieved the 16th September 2011 at: http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/DigitalScholar_9781849666275/cha pter-ba-9781849666275-chapter001.xml;jsessionid=466C69AA7FAE21941D713D8324F68744 Weller, M. (2011) 'The Nature of Scholarship'. In The Digital Scholar, Bloomsbury Academic [open access version]. 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Retrieved the 20th May 2011 at: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/768/1414 Wilks, L. (2009) «It’s like a permanent corridor conversation»: an exploration of technology-enabled scholarly networking at the Open University, Project Bamboo report, Milton Keynes: The Open University. Retrieved the 20th June 2011 at : https://wiki.projectbamboo.org/display/BPUB/Open+University+Scholarly+Netw orking+Report Wordle (2009) Wordle cloud generator. Retrieved the 15th September 2011 at: http://www.wordle.net/ WordPress (2011) ‘Antoesp’s Blog’, available at: http://antoesp.wordpress.com/ 82 APPENDIX 1 – INFORMED CONSENT INFORMED CONSENT Dissertation project: “Research practices in transition: investigating the relationship between emerging digital scholarship and open scholarship in higher education settings” Why is the study being done? This study is being undertaken as a dissertation work due to be awarded the MRes degree in Educational and Social Research by the Institute of Education, University of London. The dissertation intends to investigate changing research practices in higher education, analyzing digital scholarship as an enabling factor in the adoption of open approaches and practices in inquiry process. The study aims to: 1) identify emergent practices from digital scholarship’s champions in an higher education setting, considering different subject areas; 2) explore whether, in which ways and to what extent such new practices in digital environment constitute a ‘break’ against the tradition, and how open approaches in research are emerging. What will you be asked to do? You will be asked to take part in a semi-structured interview of at most 90 minutes. The interview will take place in Italian language and will be audiorecorded. As individual debriefing, an English translation of the interview will be emailed to you in order to amend, refine or integrate information you provided, if needed. Potential harms and benefits 83 There are no known harms associated with your participation in this research. If potential harms are discovered, you will be informed as soon as possible. You will not benefit directly from your participation in this study. Privacy and confidentiality Your personal data and opinions you will convey in the interview will be anonymised, as underlined in the release form below. Your anonymity will be safeguarded at all times and your identity will not be made available to anyone. All data from interviews (audio recording/ transcription/ written notes) will be coded and stored in a secure place. You have the right to change your mind Your participation is entirely voluntary. You can refuse to take part in the interview at this point or withdraw from research participation at any time during the study. Researcher’s contact Antonella Esposito Telephone: +39 335 6838935 Email: aesposito47@gmail.com New information during the study Additional information about the dissertation work will be communicated on the devoted web space in the social network Cloudworks (http://cloudworks.ac.uk/), referring to general issues of digital scholarship. Furthemore, a blog (http://wordpress.com/antoesp) will treat methodological issues emerging during the study. You will be welcome to join discussion in both environments, but it worth noting that any interview material will be directly quoted neither in Cloudworks or in my blog while the study is underway. Dissemination of findings 84 A summary of research findings will be emailed to you for further assessment before any wider dissemination activity. Secondly, a workshop will be organized with all research participants and senior management as further debriefing and to share findings with the whole community of researchers of the University of Milan. A comprehensive version of research findings will be included in the dissertation’s file: after submitted and graded, the dissertation in digital format might be disseminated by the web site of the Institute of Education, whetherby I will release the due consent. Moreover, occasional research papers will be drawn from the dissertation work. Release form Interview for the Institute of Education - MRes Educational and Social Research. Dissertation Research practices in transition: investigating the relationship between emerging digital scholarship and open scholarship in higher education settings PART 1: For the interviewer to complete Name of person being interviewed This form relates to material collected by (name of interviewer) in an interview on (date) ………………………………… The name of the interviewer’s IOE supervisor is: …………………… PART 2: To the person being interviewed – Please read, sign and date the statements below. The interviewer will ask you to sign and date two copies of this form, and will hand you back one to keep. 85 • AUDIO RECORDING I give my permission for my interview to be audiorecorded and for written notes to be taken, provided that the produced recording, transcription and written notes will be anonymised and will be used exclusively to carry out the dissertation study above pointed out. I understand that if any issues arise (before, during or after the interview) that can affect my choice, I am welcome to withdraw my consent by informing the interviewer via email. Signature: ………………………………………Date: …………………. ANONIMITY • I give my permission for quotations from the interview material to be used in any written research report or presentation, provided that my words are used anonymously and all details that might identify me are removed. I understand that if any issues arise (before, during or after the interview) that can affect my choice, I am welcome to withdraw my consent by informing the interviewer via email. Signature: ………………………………………… Date: …………………. Many thanks for your kind participation 86 Appendix 2 – Interview schedule Interview questions 1. Which tools constitute your ‘digital toolkit’ in your everyday life? What is your attitude towards social media? 2. What do you need to conduct your research? At what stage of the research process do you use digital tools/environments? Which ones? Any advantages and disadvantages? 3. What are the boundaries of your ‘research community’? To what extent do digital environments challenge the boundaries of your research community? 4. Could you identify any new digital scholarly resources that are being created and/or used in your subject area (i.e. e-journal, blogs, reviews, data resources, pre-print and working papers, professional and scholarly hubs, etc)? 5. Would you define yourself as a ‘digital researcher’? Or do you think the ‘digital’ factor is already an integral part of current research practices in your subject area/research community? 6. To what extent and in which ways do you share your work in progress with your colleagues, within and beyond your research community? 7. What are your criteria for choosing a medium for publishing research findings? What is the value of open access journals and repositories in your subject areas? 8. Do you think that digital environments increase exchange of information rather than collaboration among researchers? 9. Do you think there is a relationship between digital environments and increasing interdisciplinarity of research? 10. Do you think there is a relationship between a wide use of digital 87 communication tools in the research process and an increasing engagement with the public? What about the involvement of postgraduate students? 11. How should the digital reputation of a researcher be evaluated? For instance, do you think that an activity such as blogging should count for tenure and promotion? 12. Consider the following facets of ‘openness’ (Pearce et al., 2010): open publishing, open data, open boundary between the academia and the public, open education. Which trend is more likely to be increasingly spread in your subject area?