Dissemination as part of innovative scholarly communication

The Vienna Principles have been defined by a working group of the Open Access Network Austria (OANA). The collection of 12 principles represents a model for scholarly communication in the 21st century, with the aim of creating a widespread discussion towards a shared vision of the scholarly communication system of the future. As such, they are highly relevant to dissemination of research. 

Full Citation

Kraker, P., Dörler, D., Ferus, A., Gutounig, R., Heigl, F., Kaier, C., Rieck, K., Šimukovič, E., Vignoli, M., Aspöck, E., Dennerlein, S., Enkhbayar, A., McNeill, G., Schmidt, N., Steinrisser-Allex, G., and Wandl-Vogt, E. (2016). The Vienna Principles: A Vision for Scholarly Communication in the 21st Century. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.55597

Summary

The Vienna Principles have been defined by a working group of the Open Access Network Austria (OANA). The collection of 12 principles represents a model for scholarly communication in the 21st century, with the aim of creating a widespread discussion towards a shared vision of the scholarly communication system of the future. As such, they are highly relevant to dissemination of research. 
The principles call for “free and open dissemination of knowledge within the scientific community and beyond, which facilitates exchange, collaboration and the application of research results.” In particular, this means that scholarly communication should be disseminated in a way that they are accessible, discoverable, reusable, and reproducible. Transparency shall ensure that the credibility of a result can be easily assessed. One of the most important points for dissemination is understandability, where the authors call for research findings to be provided in “a clear, concise and understandable way adjusted to different stakeholders.” 
With regards to collaboration, the Vienna Principles conclude that researchers and their stakeholders should work together, either through engagement or by participation. The principles also state that scholarly communication should embrace the possibilities of new technologies - as potential benefits “real-time exchange and dissemination, ubiquitous and simultaneous availability of resources, zero marginal cost for dissemination, new workflows, improved reusability of data and results, the ability to process huge volumes of data and new forms of presenting and visualising results” are named. Finally, the authors emphasize that scientific knowledge should be a public good. They call for a knowledge commons, so that all members of society may benefit from this knowledge. 
The last principle is very close to the idea of the Scholarly Commons, which was brought forward by a working group of FORCE11. The working group has defined an own set of principles, including that “research and knowledge should be freely available to all who wish to use or reuse it”, and that “participation in the production and use of knowledge should be open to all who wish to participate.”

 

Figure: The 12 principles for scholarly communication as defined in the Vienna Principles

Source: Kraker et al. (2016). License: CC BY

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Link

https://zenodo.org/record/55597#.WX8kEIjyiUk

 

Tags: Dissemination theories & models

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