Abstract

Links to: Ideas; My Dissertation; Abstract; Table of contents; Lists; References; Bibliography; Appendices; Interviews; Coding; Memos; Notes; Categories; Chapter One; Chapter Two; Chapter Three; Chapter Four; Chapter Five; Chapter Six

“The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value.” (Roosevelt 2015 p. 47). Counting the fruit of human mind as such resource, the rising of the global Open Access (OA) movement at the dawn of the new millennium heralds a hopeful tipping point, where the compound banking of freely shared knowledge for all indiscriminately contends past wisdom pillage bestowing a greedy minority.

Zooming in, onto the UK arena, funding agencies, research regulators, RCUK and HEIs impose unrestricted access to scholarly resources, thus universities are establishing institutional repositories (IRs), for free dissemination  of research output (green OA), and for inspection by the regulatory bodies, such as REF (Research Excellence Framework).

This study performs a theoretical analysis of the current green OA practices at Robert Gordon University, by investigating researchers’ perceptions, attitudes and behaviour toward OA practices through the OpenAIR @ RGU repository, ultimately aiming to generate an emerging theory on the status-quo of the local scholarly communications.

An inductive qualitative approach was selected, using the Constructivist Grounded Theory (GT) as a research method. Initial sampling, theoretical sampling and purposeful sampling were the means to recruit participants from faculty researchers, for in-depth semi-structured interviews employed for data collection. Charmaz's GT initial, open and focused coding method was used to analyse the data.

The result was the model of perceptions on the process of scholarly communications through the IR at RGU on the basis of which, effective arrangements could be designed to increase the level of engagement in OA publishing. By unveiling clearly identified barriers to OA publishing, the study is intended to inform the institution's fact-finding effort in their strategic endeavours with regard to OA practices and increasing visibility of the university’s research output through its institutional repository. Achieving this, may lead to an increased ranking for RGU in the next REF and it may also help researchers and librarians build a more collaborative creative platform at RGU.