The Second Wave: The Impact of Digital and Open Practices on Faculty Scholarship in Higher Education
Date
2024
Authors
Kehoe, Inba
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Abstract
One of the noblest duties of the university is to enable and encourage “intellectual endeavour, valuing scholarship for its own worth and fostering a collaborative spirit in the furtherance of society” (Enabling Open Scholarship, 2016). The advent of the World Wide Web and ancillary advancements in technology have not only opened up scholarship for greater access, but created a transformation in the scholarly practice. The challenges faculty experienced in adopting new practices were examined and whether they straddled all domains of scholarly practice (e.g., research, teaching, and service), how universities measured impact and quality in this new publishing landscape, and what benchmarks existed for evaluating these forms of non-traditional scholarship.
In this study, a phenomenographical approach was employed to understand the impact open scholarship practices have had on academic scholars employed at a university in Western Canada. An embedded triangulation mixed methods design approach was used for this multiphase study to obtain different but complementary data on the lived realities of scholars at the University. Phase 1 included a survey using an explanatory sequential design. After the data collection and analysis were completed, individual in-person semi-structured interviews were conducted. Phase 2 of the study included the analysis of a selection of primary university documents related to tenure and promotion. Finally, a joint analysis approach was used to present the findings from the mixed methods study (i.e., quantitative and qualitative studies). Six themes emerged from the study that highlighted ways participants conducted research (access to research and tools used), their adoption of open intentions and initiatives and use of social media platforms and social networks, accountability and transparency of university policies and guidelines, types of research outputs produced, and criteria for faculty evaluation.
Based on the implications from these findings, five recommendations were offered for enacting change: establish administrative accountability, make all tenure and promotion documents openly accessible, broadly define scholarship, broaden the scope of impact, and develop a values-based framework model for assessment.
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Keywords
open scholarship, digital scholarship, higher education, scholarly outputs, research dissemination, scholarly communication, evaluation policies, tenure and promotion, university policy and practice, open access, open education