WHAT IS YOUR CULTURE OF SCHOLARSHIP? OPEN-ACCESS PUBLISHING, TRADITIONAL JOURNALS, SELF-ARCHIVING?

This innovative discovery session for professional development and support addresses an audience of leadership, administrators, faculty, practitioners, doctoral students, publishers, and legal professionals in higher education.  Focusing on scholarship in the Digital Age, presenters engage audience members in dialogue exploring the nexus of intellectual inquiry, faculty scholarship, and intellectual property. The workshop will provide a forum for conversation between educators and professionals working in or for higher education regarding the culture of scholarship in the Digital Age. 

The project is founded on Boyer’s suggestion that it is the duty of a university to develop “solutions to the nation’s most pressing civic, social, economic, and moral problems”, rather than “[be] viewed as a place where students get credentialed and faculty get tenured” (p.14).  Beyond Boyer’s perspective, colleges and universities need to demonstrate intellectual inquiry as a standard for accreditation. As explained in the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) Criterion 3.B.5, “the faculty and students [must] contribute to scholarship . . . and the discovery of knowledge to the extent appropriate to their programs and institution’s mission.”  Both Boyer and the HLC encourage “engaged scholarship” a new paradigm in non-traditional institutions of higher education.

In a recent scoping literature review, Beaulieu, Breton, and Brousselle (2018) noted that “Boyer described the emergence of a “new” stream in the academic world, engaged scholarship (e.g. engaged teaching, engaged research, engaged service), still perceived today as a promising avenue both for increasing the university’s legitimacy and for addressing the knowledge-to-action gap” (p.1). In turn, engaged scholarship prompts conversations about intellectual property.

In a review of modern scholarship, Professor of Law, Rooksby (2016) notes that “copyright relates directly to perhaps the most prominent of higher education goals . . . to produce scholarship and research that benefit mankind” (p.197).  In contrast, Professor of Law and Economics, Shavell (2010) offers that “. . . in a world without copyright of academic writing, academics would still benefit from publishing in the major way that they do now, namely, from gaining scholarly esteem” and to advance themselves professionally (p. 301). 

Conversations about access placement (open versus closed), intellectual property, copyright, and even the legitimacy of practitioner research has sprouted over the last ten (10) years. Therefore, this collaboration is significant because it will provide a reference that supports faculty scholarly identity and activity by bridging the knowledge-to-action gap.  The results from this workshop may be used in faculty development and training for further alignment with university accreditation requirements.  Results from this study may also be used in discussions concerning open-access versus closed-access publishing, and self-archiving. 

Important to research scholars is a recent discussion of the featured topic concerning intellectual property as applied in the context of ResearchGate, the American Chemical Society, and the Coalition for Responsible Sharing (hereafter, “CRS”).  More specifically, in November 2017, the CSR issued ‘take-down’ notices on behalf of publishers, including the American Chemical Society, who own copyrights in journal articles that were made publicly accessible though the scholarship networking site, ResearchGate.  Of concern to scholars is that just prior to the issuance of the ‘takedown notices’, in October 2017, ResearchGate removed public access to 1.7 million journal articles; though, ResearchGate continues to facilitate access to those journal articles by connecting researchers to authors to gain individual as compared to public access to the article.

In the interest of having a "social" research communication ecosystem, and quality scholarship, scholars, publishers, and networking platforms continue to explore alternatives which also protect intellectual properties.  For example, another scholarly networking and publishing platform, ScholarlyHub, is looking to provide a solution that addresses the copyright concerns of publishers and the networking interests of scholars.  At the crux of the issue is whether scholars should enter into assignment agreements with publishers without knowing the lay of the land twenty (20) years from now?  

Today, scholars have publishing choices which raise questions such as does open-access or closed-access publishing better serve the needs of the scholar?  What about the option of self-archiving scholarly work in repositories? How do these options fit within university intellectual property policies?  Circling back to the concept of engaged scholarship, what is the scholar’s purpose and his/her culture of scholarship?

The nexus or overlapping of these conversations are the focus of this multi-disciplinary integrated review of the topic across the fields of business, law, and academia. As requirements for faculty engaged scholarship continue to heighten, faculty including practitioners will continue to seek to publish scholarship. The problem is that current literature on the topics of engaged scholarship, intellectual inquiry, and intellectual property, and the nexus thereof, are widespread across academic, business, and legal publications.

Therefore, presenters conduct this workshop as part of their more in-depth conversation in the form of an integrated literature review involving a structured and systematically organized examination of peer-reviewed knowledge that has been synthesized around the specific topic of inquiry (Cooper, 1988).  The purpose of that in-depth study is to organize peer-reviewed publications, to offer a summary of the same, and to highlight gaps in the published knowledge. The study is designed to produce a centralized repository of current literature on these topics to further understand the nexus.

An integrated literature review research study requires a dedicated process. It contains design elements consistent with empirical research, as follows:

Begin with formation of the problem;

Establish the research question(s);

Define the sample criterion (effect sizes, inclusion and exclusion);

Establish process to extract the data (literature);

Study literature (data) that meets the criteria;

Offer a synthesized summation;

Report results.

Cooper (1988) offers a taxonomy of characteristics to provide structure and scientific value to this research process. Those characteristics include: focus, goals, perspective, coverage, organization, and audience.

Focus This study will focus on peer-reviewed articles found across the literature on intellectual inquiry and intellectual property law that include a theoretical grounding to Boyer’s Model of Scholarship.

Goals for the study are to integrate generalizations and conflicting information by mapping key concepts found in the literature.

Perspectives of the researchers are neutral.

Coverage will initially be limited to relevant studies published in the last ten (10) years. The intended databases for the search include University Libraries, Google Scholar, and peer-reviewed, open-access articles. This review of accessible databases will be conducted using key subject and search terms.

Organization will involve categorizing the most current and relevant literature.

As explained by Cooper (1988), the integrative review is to formulate general statements, and resolve conflicts as follows:

1. by proposing bridges for inconsistencies;
2. by creating common linguistic frameworks to bridge gaps between theories;
3. by providing a critical analysis/synthesis of existing literature;
4. by identifying central issues.

Similarly, in this discovery workshop, presenters will facilitate sharing and collaboration through small group moments, interactive question and answers, and interactive handouts fostering continuous learning and improvement at all levels of operations committed to academic quality and service. Presenters will share their work-in-progress and research ideas with attendees. Over the course of the discovery workshop sessions, presenters will track and share real-time findings with conference attendees regarding the existing culture of scholarship and the current rigor and effectiveness of faculty development programs. Participants will learn from surveys, slides, handouts, and web links which will be offered as part of the conference materials.  

Beaulieu, M., Breton, M., & Brousselle, A. (2018). Conceptualizing 20 years of engaged scholarship: A scoping review. PLOS ONE 13(2), 1-17. doi:10.1371/0193201.

Boyer, E. L. (1996). The Scholarship of Engagement. Journal of Public Service & Outreach 1(1), 11-20. 

Boyer, E.L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Cooper, H. (1985). Organizing knowledge synthesis: A taxonomy of literature reviews. Paper Presented at the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.

Higher Learning Commission Criterion 3.B.5 https://www.hlcommission.org/Policies/criteria-and-core-components.html

Rooksby, J. H. (2016). Copyright in Higher Education: A Review of Modern Scholarship.  Duquesne Law Review 54(Winter), 197-221.

Shavell, S. (2010). Should Copyright of Academic Works be Abolished? Journal of Legal Analysis (1), 301–358. doi: 10.1093/2.1.301.