COMM650/Week 1
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Kevin Driscoll COMM 650 Week 1
1. Propose a research question with at least one dependent and one independent variable. Turn the research question into a hypothesis. Which one do you think best fits your research and why?
My overarching goal is to develop an instrument with which the "openness" of various colleges and universities may be measured and compared. Openness should be defined according to the principles laid out by Students for Free Culture in the 2008 "Windsor Declaration":
"An open university is one in which 1. The research the university produces is open access. 2. The course materials are open educational resources. 3. The university embraces free software and open standards. 4. If the university holds patents, it readily licenses them for free software, essential medicines, and the public good. 5. The university network reflects the open nature of the internet. where "university" includes all parts of the community: students, faculty, administration. The Declaration was a joint statement of the community at the [Free Culture 2008 Conference] in Berkeley, CA.
Although each of these questions suggests mere factual inquiry on its face, there are lurking ambiguities that push them into areas of institutional and department attitudes, norms, and expectations.
For the moment, I am focused on the first principle: "The research the university publishes is open access." In July, Avril Cunnigham, the Annenberg librarian, and I searched for discussion of open access among Communication scholars and found surprisingly little as compared to other fields. I hope to better understand this contrast by surveying non-tenured faculty and graduate students from across USC regarding their experience with and attitudes toward open access publishing.
RQ: Do USC researchers in life and materials science departments (Biology, Chemistry, Earth science, Neuroscience, Physics, and Astronomy) who regularly publish in academic journals and have past experience with OA have a more positive attitude toward open access scholarly publishing than researchers in social science and humanities departments (Communication, Sociology, Psychology, Political science, Economics, Law, and History)?
H1: USC researchers without tenure in life and materials science departments have more positive attitude toward open access scholarly publishing than non-tenured researchers in social science and humanities departments.
H2: USC researchers with previous experience with open access scholarly publishing will have more positive attitude toward open access scholarly publishing than researchers with no previous experience.
I prefer to develop many small hypotheses for this survey because I feel that they more clearly expresses the testable relationships among the constructs.
2. Define each construct in your research question or hypothesis.
Discipline (DV)
- A categorical variable that sorts respondents according to their departments within the university. I am hesitant to group respondents into arbitrary groups such as "social science" without also controlling for the norms of their departments.
Career position (DV)
- Another categorical variable that sorts respondents according to their position relative to other researchers in the university. (For example, I need to be sure that I am not comparing grad students and full professors.)
Publishing experience (IV)
- This construct should capture both the frequency with which this scholar publishes articles and his or her history in academic publishing. I did not develop a hypothesis for this construct but it seems like it may turn out to be an important measure.
Previous experience with OA (IV)
Attitude toward open access scholarly publishing (DV)
- This construct is intended to measure the degree to which respondents feel positively or negatively about open access scholarly publishing.
3. Operationalize each construct using one direct and one indirect measure. What is the best level of measurement for each construct? Be sure to provide wording and response options.
Discipline
Q. To which department (or departments) do you belong at USC? (The available responses to this question will correspond to the departments at USC as of the 2010-2011 school year.)
Q. When asked by colleagues, how do you describe your field (e.g. "Memory studies", "Computational biology", "Global economic policy")?
Q. Name three journals, conferences, or publishers that publish work in your field:
(These two open-ended questions are intended to identify distinctions between researchers' job placement and their self-assigned peer community.)
Career Position
Q. Which of the following best describes your current position within USC?
- Graduate student
- Non-tenure track faculty member
- Tenure track faculty member
- Tenured faculty member
Q. How long have you held your current position?
- 20+ years
- 11-20 years
- 6-10 years
- 1-5 years
- Less than 1 year
Q. How important is publishing scholarly articles to your career?
- Very unimportant
- Unimportant
- Neither important nor unimportant
- Important
- Very important
Q. How important is tenure to your career?
- Very unimportant
- Unimportant
- Neither important nor unimportant
- Important
- Very important
Q. How likely is it that you will continue to work in academia for your career?
- Very unlikely
- Unlikely
- Neither likely nor unlikely
- Likely
- Very likely
Publishing experience
Q. Approximately how many scholarly articles have you submitted to academic journals in the past 12 months?
- 0
- 1-2
- 2-5
- 5+
Q. Of the articles you submitted in the last 12 months, how many list you as the first author?
- 0
- 1-2
- 2-5
- 5+
Attitude toward open access publishing
Q. How important is each of the following criteria in your decision to cite an article from a given journal? (5-point scale: "Not very important"..."Very important")
- Editorial focus closely matches my research interests
- I have previously published in this journal
- My colleagues have previously published in this journal
- I regularly read this journal
- I regularly cite this journal
- Impact Factor
- Journal copyright policy
- Perceived reputation of the journal among my colleagues at USC
- Perceived reputation of the journal in my field
- The USC libraries subscribe to this journal
Q. How important is each of the following criteria in your selection of a journal to publish an article? (5-point scale: "Not very important"..."Very important")
- Editorial focus closely matches my research interests
- I have previously published in this journal
- My colleagues have previously published in this journal
- I regularly read this journal
- I regularly cite this journal
- Impact Factor
- Journal copyright policy
- Perceived reputation of the journal among my colleagues at USC
- Perceived reputation of the journal in my field
- The USC libraries subscribe to this journal
Previous experience with OA
Q. Of the articles you submitted during the last 12 months, were any of them sent to journals with an open access (OA) publishing policy?
- Yes
- No
- Don't know
Q. How important is a journal's open access policy to your decision to submit an article?
- Very unimportant
- Unimportant
- Neither important nor unimportant
- Important
- Very important
Q. Where have you heard Open Access publishing being discussed in the last 12 months? (Check all that apply)
- At a department meeting
- In a research group/lab meeting
- In a meeting with my PI, research manager, or mentor
- In a meeting with a colleague from my field
- In an informal conversation with colleagues from my field
- In an informal conversation with colleagues from other fields
- In a scholarly publication such as a journal or conference proceedings
- In a blog, forum, or social-networking site
- In the news media (magazine, radio, TV, internet, etc.)
- I have not heard Open Access discussed in the last 12 months
- Other ______
Q. How important is Open Access publishing to the goals of your field?
- Very unimportant
- Unimportant
- Neither important nor unimportant
- Important
- Very important
Extra question
Q. (Optional) What aspect of your academic publishing experience is not represented in this survey?
4. Using Cappella's and Fishbein's Integrative Model (2000) as a framework, specify some of the variables you may want to include in a model predicting your behavior of interest. In other words, what might some of the background factors you would need to include, social norms, etc.
In this model, I am implying some relationships that are not reflected in my hypotheses. Namely, that Career Position and Department/Field will be predictors of Previous Experience with OA. This is based on the assumption that certain Departments will be engaged in regular discussion about OA publishing while others may not. Additionally, I suggest it is more likely that senior scholars will have come across OA by virtue of their time in the field.
