Researchers' perspectives on open access scholarly communication in Tanzanian public universities

Dulle, FW; Minishi-Majanja, Mabel K.

doi:10.4102/sajim.v11i4.413

Cited by 56 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(17 reference statements)

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“…The content created is African content and it is important for us to share this content locally and internationally. Dulle and Minishi-Majanja (2009) note that Africa only generates 0.4% of global content and adding resources to UCT OpenContent will be a first step in redressing this imbalance.…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Researching Resistance to Open Education Resource Contribution: An Activity Theory Approach

Cox

2013

E-Learning and Digital Media

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Higher education and associated institutions are beginning to share teaching materials known as Open Educational Resources (OER) or open courseware across the globe. Their success depends largely on the willingness of academics at these institutions to add their teaching resources. In a survey of the literature on OER there are several articles that discuss reasons why academics should contribute teaching materials. There are fewer articles that refer to academics' concerns or why they choose not to contribute their teaching resources. There have been only a few reported empirical studies thus far, and most of the studies have not been framed within any particular theoretical perspective. Hence there is a need to explore possible theories that might help to conceptualise and explain what enables or constrains the open education movement. This study aims to ascertain whether Engeström's activity theory and its principle of contradictions is a sufficiently versatile and insightful lens to investigate non-participation of OER contribution. Activity theory was found to be useful for framing the literature and three interviews with University of Cape Town (UCT) academics and for surfacing some of the constraints in the system. The key concerns that emerged centred around the rules in the institution concerning promotion and what is valued by the institution. At present this institution places value on research and until value is placed on sharing teaching materials as OER, it is unlikely that there will be large-scale voluntary contribution to the UCT OpenContent directory.

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Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Researching Resistance to Open Education Resource Contribution: An Activity Theory Approach

Cox

2013

E-Learning and Digital Media

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“…In terms of content, 50% are interested in website updates, 25% accessing the e-library resources and about 23% read emails with very few (2%) visiting the website for monitoring students' progress reports. While poor research conditions have been reported to slow down open access usage [13], the results reveals high usage among scholars. Low content recruitment demotivates users because many institutional web pages are frequently out of date or incomplete [16].…”

Section: Web Usage Behaviormentioning

confidence: 89%

“…Adoption and awareness have been identified by various scholars around the world as the main factors that affect open access adoption and usage among institutions and scholars [13,15]. The other factor that has not received considerable attention is web usage behavior among scholars.…”

Section: Web Usage Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards a Web-based Digital Repository: Identification of Needs and Behavior of Users

Mgonzo¹,

Yonah²

2014

IJCA

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Web usage behavior of users have an impact on the development of a web-based application. Web usage analysis is therefore necessary so as to better serve the needs of a webbased application. The process involves analyzing interaction of a user with a web application. Web usage analysis provides useful information that can help improve the service delivery and functioning of a web-based system. The aim of the study reported in this paper is to elicit and study users' needs and requirements towards establishment of an institutional webbased repository for scholarly communication. Questionnaires were used to collect data that reflected web usage behavior and the underlying technical, legal and financial requirements. Analysis results show that there is high usage of the internet as a source of scholarly information and users access their institution websites regularly. Although there is no proper resource management system, the legal requirement for publishing guarantees high research throughput. Results also show that majority of researchers consulted support repository establishment as alternative publishing platform to remove subscription and distribution barriers imposed by journals. In addition, most web usage studies have been system focused. Statistics extracted from web log files and web usage behavior from the users' perspective revealed useful information from which a requirements specification model is developed for the proposed repository system. General TermsRequirements, repository, user needs, user-centered approach.

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“…Studies by Dulle (2010) and Msonge (2013) observed that, library users in academic libraries in Tanzania complained of poor access to current library resources and difficulties for subscription to online scholarly content. This affected negatively teaching and learning process, research and consultation services.…”

Section: Relationship Of Academic Libraries and Its Users In Collectimentioning

confidence: 99%

Involvement of library users in collection development of hybrid academic libraries in Tanzania

Mwilongo¹

2018

Int. J. Lib. Inf. Sci.

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Collection development in any academic library is an on-going process. It is undertaken by librarians and library services staff with inputs from different stakeholders, including the academic and nonacademic staff, administrators, and students. The main objective of this paper is to assess the involvement of library users in collection development of hybrid academic libraries in Tanzania. A triangulation approach for data gathering was adopted. Structured and standardized self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data from 82 respondents who were randomly selected from a population of 301 library professionals and academic staff. Key informant interviews were conducted with four library directors and four ministers of education for students' organisations to complement the data obtained through the questionnaires. The findings of this study indicate that library users lack information literacy skills and they are rarely involved in selection, evaluation and weeding of library information resources. Based on this ground, it is recommended that academic libraries should establish an academia forum within a library website for sharing information with the academic departments and information users in general in respect to library collection development. Additionally, users should be provided with annual evaluation and weeding forms to comment on quality and usefulness of the resources and data sources available in their respective areas of study and suggest for amendments where necessary.

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Researchers' perspectives on open access scholarly communication in Tanzanian public universities

Cited by 56 publications

References 23 publications

Researching Resistance to Open Education Resource Contribution: An Activity Theory Approach

Researching Resistance to Open Education Resource Contribution: An Activity Theory Approach

Towards a Web-based Digital Repository: Identification of Needs and Behavior of Users

Involvement of library users in collection development of hybrid academic libraries in Tanzania

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