Since 2005, the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), has been conducting research to understand the needs and practices of faculty for in-progress scholarly communication (i.e., forms of communication employed as research is being executed) as well as archival publication. This report brings together the responses of 160 interviewees across 45, mostly elite, research institutions in seven selected academic fields: archaeology, astrophysics, biology, economics, history, music, and political science. The overview document summarizes the main practices explored across all seven disciplines: tenure and promotion, dissemination, sharing, collaboration, resource creation and consumption, and public engagement. In this report, readers can search various topics within and across case studies. The report identifies five key topics, addressed in detail in the case studies, that require real attention:
Wilson et al. performed an extensive survey of conceptual dissemination frameworks in health sciences and social sciences. Of the 33 included frameworks that were deemed detailed enough to be actually used in practice, 28 were either implicitly or explicitly based on one or more of three theories: persuasive communication, diffusion of innovation and social marketing.
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.
According to Beaufort, there are three levels of disseminating research results to the public.
Read more: Dissemination beyond academia: from one-way to...
The studies presented in this section investigated dissemination to the public from the researchers’ and public engagement enablers’ point of view. The first, “Factors affecting public engagement by researchers” came out of a project by the UK consortium TNS-BMRB & PSI, and represents an update to an earlier project by the Royal Society in 2006.
Read more: Factors affecting public engagement by researchers