Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors Regarding Scholarly Communication: Survey Findings from the University of California. UC Office of Scholarly Communication, August 2007.
The Influence of Academic Values on Scholarly Publication and Communication Practices. D. Harley, et al. JEP, Spring 2007.
These two recent research reports illuminate faculty attitudes and behavior with respect to scholarly communication practices. Both studies identify various drivers for change in scholarly publication and communication. These include finding systems that are economically sustainable and that use the capabilities of new technologies to support innovation in scholarship.
The first article reports on 2006 data from 37 interviews and 1,118 surveys from ladder-rank faculty from the 10 campuses of the University of California system. In the second paper, the authors prepared five disciplinary case studies at UC Berkeley. They interviewed faculty, advancement reviewers, librarians and editors in 2005/2006.
The strongest finding of both studies is that the current peer review process for tenure and promotion is highly valued and is the biggest barrier to faculty making changes in their publishing patterns. Faculty are interested in scholarly communication issues and their attitudes are changing; however tenure and promotion policies will have to evolve before faculty will be comfortable with making real changes.
Keep up with the changing scholarly publishing landscape by reviewing the Library's Scholarly Communication pages.