AN ANALYSIS OF OPEN ACCESS SCHOLARLY …

[Pages:325]AN ANALYSIS OF OPEN ACCESS SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION IN TANZANIAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES

By FRANKWELL WILSON DULLE

Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY in the subject of

INFORMATION SCIENCE at the

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA PROMOTER: PROF MK MINISHI-MAJANJA

CO-PROMOTER: DR LM CLOETE AUGUST 2010

DECLARATION I, the undersigned, hereby declare that the work contained in this PhD thesis entitled "An analysis of open access scholarly communication in Tanzanian public universities" is my own. This thesis contains no material that has been submitted previously, in whole or part, for the award of academic degree or diploma. All the sources that I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references. Signed: Frankwell Wilson Dulle................................. Date: ......................

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ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to investigate factors affecting the adoption of open access in research activities within Tanzanian public universities in order to device mechanisms of enhancing the use of this mode of scholarly communication. The study adopted the UTAUT model to formulate an open access research model comprising of six constructs and five moderators for guidance of this investigation. A triangulation approach for data gathering was adopted. In the first instance, a semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 398 respondents selected using the stratified random sampling from a population of 1088 university researchers from six public universities in Tanzania. The interview involving 63 policy makers and structured records review were also conducted to complement the questionnaire survey. The descriptive and binary logistic regression statistics of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) were used for data analysis.

The study established that majority of the policy makers (90.5%) and researchers (72.1%) were aware of open access. Attitude, awareness, effort expectancy, and performance expectancy were established as the key determinants for researchers' behavioural intention of open access usage while age, awareness, behavioural intention, facilitating conditions and social influence were found to significantly affect researchers' actual usage of open access. It was concluded that researchers' and policy makers' general perceptions about open access were very positive signifying the acceptance of this mode of scholarly communication in the study area. Current poor research conditions and researchers' low Internet self-efficacy such as inadequate information search and online publishing skills were cited as the main hindrances for researchers to use open access in scholarly communication. The study recommends institutionalisation of open access publishing in Tanzanian public universities and other similar research institutions so as to improve the dissemination of research output emanating from such institutions. Six areas for further research to establish more insights regarding the feasibility for open access development in the country are also recommended.

Key Words: Institutional repositories, open access publishing, public universities, scholarly communication, Tanzania, UTAUT model.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This PhD work came into reality due to enabling roles played by various individuals and/or organisations. Without their support it would have been extremely impossible to accomplish this task. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to pass my sincere thanks to those who in one way or another contributed to the successful completion of this work.

First and foremost, I would like to thank God for keeping me alive and enabling me to complete this work successfully. I believe my courage and energy for undertaking as well as completing my PhD successfully was only possible due to the Glory of God.

I am also very grateful to my father Mzee Wilson Dulle and mother Mama Jesinala Dulle for their care and encouragements that made my rise on the education ladder from primary school to PhD level possible. Despite their low earnings from agricultural activities, they made sure of saving part of the income to finance my primary and secondary education without which it would not have been possible to attain the current qualification. May God bless both of them to live longer so that they witness the fruits from my PhD.

I would also like to thank Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA), a NonGovernmental Organisation (NGO) based in Dar es Salaam, for funding the data collection part of this study. It would have not been possible to conduct this research without such a support bearing in mind that I had no other sources of funding for my PhD study.

I had the privilege of getting a study leave from my employer in order to concentrate with the doctoral assignment during the last two years of my study. I wish to register my sincere thanks to the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) for granting me a paid study leave without which it would have been difficult to complete my study on time.

I was blessed of having two promoters for this study who also deserve my sincere acknowledgements. I would therefore like to thank Professor M.K. Minishi-Majanja

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as the main promoter and Dr L.M. Cloete (the Co-promoter) for their constructive criticisms and suggestions. The success of this study is partly due to their tireless guidance from the proposal development to the current state of the thesis. I say thank you "Asanteni sana" to both of you for your valuable advice in shaping my PhD work throughout the study period. My special thanks should also go to my wife, Lusina Dulle, for her patience and care of our family throughout my study period. The nature of this work demanded me to spend late nights and weekends, sometimes outside our home. This, in one way or another, might have made me pay less attention to some of my family responsibilities. As a result, some of my family responsibilities had to be taken over by my wife due to my concentration on the study. Furthermore, I am indebted to research assistants from all the universities in the study area for devoting their valuable time in assisting me in gathering the survey data. I also thank the respondents for self-administered questionnaire as well as the interviewees for their participation in this study. Without their willingness to participate and provide the sought information, this study would have been impossible. Finally, since it is not possible to mention every person who contributed to the success of this work using this limited space, I would like to thank all other people who are not listed above but in one way or another enabled the success of this study.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION........................................................................................................... i ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................... xiii LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................xv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ..................................................................................xvi

Chapter One: Background to the study.....................................................................1 1.0 Introduction..........................................................................................................1 1.1 Scholarly communication ....................................................................................1 1.1.1 Role of scholarly communication in the research process............................3 1.1.2 Scholarly communication problems in developing countries.......................5 1.2 Open access scholarly communication ..............................................................10 1.2.1 Open Access Journals .................................................................................12 1.2.2 Self-archiving..............................................................................................12 1.2.3 Open access development trend..................................................................14 1.2.4 Open access and its potential to developing countries................................15 1.3 Public universities in Tanzania ..........................................................................16 1.3.1 University of Dar es Salaam .......................................................................17 1.3.2 Sokoine University of Agriculture..............................................................17 1.3.3 Open University of Tanzania ......................................................................17 1.3.4 Mzumbe University ....................................................................................17 1.3.5 Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences.................................18 1.3.6 Ardhi University .........................................................................................18 1.3.7 State University of Zanzibar .......................................................................18 1.3.8 University of Dodoma.................................................................................18 1.4 Problem statement..............................................................................................20 1.5 Aim and objectives of the study ........................................................................21 1.5.1 Specific objectives of the study ..................................................................21 1.5.2 Research questions......................................................................................22 1.6 Scope and limitations of the study.....................................................................23 1.7 Significance of the study....................................................................................24 1.8 Definition of key concepts .................................................................................25

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1.9 Overview of the research methodology .............................................................27 1.10 Thesis structure ................................................................................................29 1.11 Chapter summary .............................................................................................30

Chapter Two: Review of scholarly communication focusing on open access.......32 2.0 Introduction........................................................................................................32 2.1 Developments in scholarly communication and open access adoption .............33 2.1.1 The serial crisis ...........................................................................................33 2.1.2 Impact of ICTs on scholarly communication..............................................35 2.1.3 The "Big Deals"..........................................................................................37 2.1.4 Emergence of open access ..........................................................................38 2.1.5 Open access development initiatives ..........................................................41 2.1.6 Open access adoption disparities among continents...................................45 2.2 The global awareness and usage of open access................................................47 2.2.1 General awareness of open access ..............................................................48 2.2.2 General usage of open access .....................................................................50 2.2.3 Open access awareness and usage in African countries .............................52 2.3 Factors facilitating open access adoption ..........................................................58 2.3.1 Free and improved access to scholarly information ...................................58 2.3.2 Increased research impact ...........................................................................59 2.3.3 Increased speed of research content dissemination ....................................60 2.3.4 Social influence related factors...................................................................61 2.3.5 Promotion of institutional research output..................................................62 2.4 Factors hindering the adoption of open access in research activities ................62 2.4.1 Low awareness............................................................................................63 2.4.2 Quality of open access publications............................................................63 2.4.3 Copyright concerns .....................................................................................65 2.4.4 Limited recognition and policies for open access publishing.....................67 2.4.5 Inadequate technological supportive conditions.........................................68 2.4.6 Open access publishing costs......................................................................68 2.4.7 Cultural issues.............................................................................................70 2.4.8 Long-term preservation of open access materials.......................................70 2.5 Scholars' perceptions on open access repositories ............................................71 2.5.1 Permissions and restrictions on the use of open access content .................72

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2.5.2 Willingness to participate in an institutional open access initiative ...........73 2.5.3 Mandating scholars' publishing in institutional repositories ......................74 2.5.4 Acceptable institutional repository content ................................................75 2.5.5 Preferred repository type.............................................................................76 2.5.6 Responsibility for institutional repository management .............................76 2.5.7 Copyright retention .....................................................................................78 2.6 Chapter summary ...............................................................................................79

Chapter Three: Technology acceptance and usage theories/models: their applicability to open access adoption context..........................................................81

3.0 Introduction........................................................................................................81 3.1 Models defined ..................................................................................................81 3.2 Theories defined ................................................................................................82 3.3 Similarities and differences between models and theories ................................82 3.4 Theories and their role in the research process..................................................83

3.4.1 Theory direction..........................................................................................83 3.4.2 Levels of analysis........................................................................................84 3.4.3 Focus of theory ...........................................................................................84 3.4.4 Forms of explanation ..................................................................................85 3.5 Technology acceptance theories and models.....................................................86 3.6 The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology .............................90 3.6.1 Indirect determinants of technology usage .................................................91 3.6.2 Direct determinants of technology usage....................................................93 3.7 The UTAUT model adoption by technology acceptance studies ......................94 3.8 Fitness of the UTAUT model in gender and IT theoretical perspectives ..........96 3.9 The proposed research model ............................................................................97 3.9.1 Conceptualisation on the role of attitude ..................................................100 3.9.2 Conceptualisation on the role of performance expectancy .......................100 3.9.3 Conceptualisation on the role of effort expectancy ..................................100 3.9.4 Conceptualisation on the role of social influence .....................................101 3.9.5 Conceptualisation on the role of Internet self-efficacy.............................102 3.9.6 Conceptualisation on the role of facilitating conditions ...........................102 3.9.7 Conceptualisation on the role of behavioural intention in technology usage ............................................................................................................................ 103

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