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As neoliberal reforms take hold in the vocational education and training (VET) sector in Australia, there is renewed interest in the quality of teaching practice. However, despite the value of practitioner inquiry to the quality of teaching in schools, scholarly practice in higher education, and established links between the quality of teaching and outcomes for learners and between practice-based inquiry and pedagogic innovation in VET, the practices has received little attention. The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of a college-wide culture of scholarly activity to learners, enterprises, VET institutions, educators and the national productivity agenda.

Drawing on the education literature, empirical examples of scholarly activity drawn from the authors’ experiences of working with VET practitioners, this paper asks what constitutes research and inquiry in VET, why should these practices be integral to educative practice and what value do they bring to the sector? In addressing the questions, the authors explore how research and inquiry is defined in the literature and draw on three empirical examples of scholarly activities to provide a national, institutional and individual view. A discussion about the value of scholarly activities to VET stakeholders and how the practices might be fostered and sustained concludes the paper.

The paper concludes that practice-based scholarly activities in VET cultivate rich potential for renewed and innovative pedagogies that improve outcomes for learners, respond to industry demands for innovative skills, build “pedagogic capital” for VET institutions, enrich the knowledge base of policy makers and build resilience and professionalism. The authors conclude by positioning VET educators as scholars in their own right along a continuum of scholarly activity and posing the proposition that when valued, scholarly activities are practices for new times that will build a strong and vibrant profession for the future.

This paper brings together the authors’ experiences of working with VET practitioners as the authors engage in scholarly activities. While each vignette was drawn from a formal research project in each case, the paper itself was not structured around a formal research activity, although a small survey was undertaken for vignette 1. This poses limitations to the findings of the study. However, the purpose of the paper is not to be conclusive but to forward an argument for more scholarly activity in VET in order to promote further research and debate.

This paper contributes to the current debate in Australia about the quality of teaching in VET and the sectors’ capability to produce “work-ready” graduates. It brings to the fore the value of scholarly activity for educators, learners, industry and communities, VET institutions and the broader national innovation agenda. As such, it has relevance to all VET stakeholders, most particularly policy makers, leaders and practitioners in VET.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study to investigate the changes in scholarly communication practices among a group of scholars in the UK and build upon the results that were published in a previous paper.

The study deployed a naturalistic inquiry approach using semi-structured interviews as a qualitative research tool. A sample of 40 participants from four UK universities was interviewed to explore the changes in informal scholarly communication behaviour.

The analysis of the interviews revealed that there are three ideal types of behaviour: the “orthodox” uses formal and traditional scholarly communication approaches; the “moderate” prioritises formal communication approaches, but at the same time is trying to get benefits from informal channels; and, the “Heterodox” uses all channels available in the scholarly communication.

The value of the current study lies in using a naturalistic inquiry approach to investigate the changes in scholarly communication practices, and to explore the different scholarly communication styles. In the context of this study, the use of a naturalistic approach and grounded theory principles in connection with coding provided a stance that allows for the gathering of rich information to enable understanding and explanation of scholarly communication activities in addition to uncovering themes that related to scholarly behaviour.

This study aims to develop a framework for applying performance management principles to implementing a pluralistic model of scholarly impact in business schools to increase the value and relevance scholarly research to multiple stakeholder groups.

Performance management principles were studied with case study data of scholarly impact that included bibliographic measures and altmetrics. An analytical model was built for a focal business school that provided benchmarks for managing scholarly impact by using data from three peer schools.

Bibliographic, scholarly output measures and altmetrics were consistent across the focal school and peer schools, thereby providing a solid foundation for establishing performance benchmarks for annual performance reviews, promotion and tenure decisions and organizational impact goals.

This paper provides guidance for designing, building and implementing performance management systems to foster scholarly impact.

This paper integrates pluralistic impact models and performance management systems to build faculty expertise and align it with multiple impact domains.

The purpose of this study is to investigate social science academics’ use of social media for scholarly communication at Kuwait University.

Phase One data were collected through web-based and paper responses to questionnaires. Faculty members, teachers and teaching assistants in the social science faculty were invited to participate. Forty-six of the 100 invited participants responded. Phase Two comprised interviews with 10 respondents.

Social connection platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, received the highest mean score for use (M = 4.35), followed by mobile apps, such as WhatsApp (M = 4.24), and multimedia platforms such as Instagram and YouTube (M = 3.59). Moderate to low use was recorded for academic social media. ResearchGate recorded the highest use (M = 3.09), followed by academia.edu (M = 2.93). “Keeping in touch” was the most frequently reported activity (M = 4.04). Two-thirds of respondents used social media for informal scholarly communication with people they knew. “Lack of university encouragement” received the highest score (M = 3.54) as a factor inhibiting use and almost half the respondents (47.2 per cent) cited “lack of time” as a barrier.

Improving academics’ understanding of the uses of social media might increase their visibility and improve their research and other scholarly activities. Study findings support the development of relevant training programs that include a focus on integrating social media into research activities and the dissemination of research findings.

This study contributes to the limited literature on this topic in Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf region.

“Scholarly Communication” is a frequent topic of both the professional and research literature of Library and Information Science (LIS). Despite efforts by individuals (e.g. Borgman, 1989) and organizations such as the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) to define the term, multiple understandings of it remain. Discussions of scholarly communication infrequently offer a definition or explanation of its parameters, making it difficult for readers to form a comprehensive understanding of scholarly communication and associated phenomena.

This project uses the evolutionary concept analysis (ECA) method developed by nursing scholar, Beth L. Rodgers, to explore “Scholarly Communication” as employed in the literature of LIS. As the purpose of ECA is not to arrive at “the” definition of a term but rather exploring its utilization within a specific context, it is an ideal approach to expand our understanding of SC as used in LIS research.

“Scholarly Communication” as employed in the LIS literature does not refer to a single phenomenon or idea, but rather is a concept with several dimensions and sub-dimensions with distinct, but overlapping, significance.

The concept analysis (CA) method calls for review of a named concept, i.e. verbatim. Therefore, the items included in the data set must include the phrase “scholarly communication”. Items using alternate terminology were excluded from analysis.

The model of scholarly communication presented in this paper provides language to operationalize the concept.

LIS lacks a nuanced understanding of “scholarly communication” as used in the LIS literature. This paper offers a model to further the field's collective understanding of the term and support operationalization for future research projects.

This paper aims to investigate the extent to which social networking tools had an impact on academics’ patterns of informal scholarly communication in humanities and social science disciplines. Social networking tools, reinforced by proliferation and advances in portable computing and wireless technologies, have reshaped how information is produced, communicated and consumed.

A cross-institutional quantitative study utilized an online questionnaire survey sent to 382 academics affiliated with humanities and social science disciplines in two different academic institutions: one that belongs to a Western tradition of scholarly communication in Ireland, and the other to a developing country in Oman. Descriptive interpretation of data compared findings from both universities. Frequencies, percentages and means were displayed in tables to enhance the meaning of collected data. Inferential analysis was also conducted to determine statistical significance.

Overall findings indicate progressive use of social networking tools for informal scholarly communication. There is perceived usefulness on the impact of social networking tools on patterns of informal scholarly communication. However, nearly one-third of the respondents have never used social networking tools for informal scholarly communication. Institution-based data comparison revealed no significant differences on data except for few activities of informal scholarly communication.

Given that the number of study subjects was eventually small (total = 382) and that academics by their very nature are disinclined to respond to online surveys, results of the study may suggest non-response errors, and these may impact negatively on the acceptability of inferences and statistical conclusions. The results of the study are, therefore, unlikely to be useful for generalization, but they remain suggestive of a growing tendency among humanities and social sciences’ academics to use social networking tools for informal scholarly communication.

Empirical findings provide a broad understanding about the potential of social networking tools on informal scholarly communication in areas of humanities and social sciences disciplines. Multi-disciplinary investigation and qualitative studies may further deepen our understanding of the impact of social networking tools on patterns of scholarly communication.

The MetaScholar Initiative is a collaborative endeavor to explore the feasibility and utility of scholarly portal services developed in conjunction with Open Archives Initiative (OAI) metadata harvesting technologies. The MetaScholar Initiative comprises two projects, the MetaArchive and AmericanSouth projects, both funded by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation totaling $600,000. These two projects have created two metadata aggregation networks connecting some 24 libraries, archives, museums, and electronic text centers. Each network has an associated portal being created under the guidance of teams composed of scholars, librarians, archivists, and technologists. The MetaScholar Initiative is studying issues such as metadata normalization, alternative forms of scholarly communication through portals, and the process of facilitating smaller archival institutions in providing better access to their collections through the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI‐PMH). The MetaScholar Initiative is based at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 1971 UNISIST proposed a model for scientific and technical communication. This model has been widely cited and additional models have been added to the literature. There is a need to bring this model to the focus of information science (IS) research as well as to update and revise it. There are both empirical and theoretical reasons for this need. On the empirical side much has happened in the developments of electronic communication that needs to be considered. From a theoretical point of view the domain‐analytic view has proposed that differences between different disciplines and domains should be emphasised. The original model only considered scientific and technical communication as a whole. There is a need both to compare with the humanities and social sciences and to regard internal differences in the sciences. There are also other reasons to reconsider and modify this model today. Offers not only a descriptive model, but also a theoretical perspective from which information systems may be understood and evaluated. In addition to this provides empirical exemplification and proposals for research initiatives.

This chapter outlines libraries’ (and librarians’) changing identities in the new world of research mandates from funders, institutions, and publishers. As libraries respond to the demands of these mandates on their users at the individual, departmental, and institutional levels, they need to revise their approaches to relationship building and user engagement, as well as maintain flexibility in the face of changing roles and skill requirements. This chapter will (1) outline the changing scholarly ecosystem; (2) summarize major terms and concepts to understand the process of producing research outputs; (3) discuss the perspectives of the major players in the research enterprise; (4) present some of the challenges that research mandates and the changing research environment have brought to libraries; and finally (5) review ways in which libraries have successfully addressed them. The focus here is on the academic research setting, although many of the strategies outlined can be equally applicable in both non-academic research and non-research funding contexts.

Studies of inequality in higher education on both undergraduate and graduate levels have rarely examined experiences of Asians and Pacific Islanders (APIs). In this study, we focus on the experiences and outcomes of API students in doctoral education. More specifically, we examine socialization experiences and research productivity of three groups of students: domestic API, international API, and domestic white students. The results, based on a national cohort of PhD students in biology, reveal notable differences in experiences and outcomes of domestic and international API students. Although variation in socialization experiences explains differences in research productivity in the first year, that is not the case in the second year of doctoral study. In the second year, international API students have publication productivity comparable to their white peers, despite less favorable socialization experiences. Domestic API students, however, have lower research productivity than their white peers, even though they have comparable socialization experiences. Given the presumption of APIs’ success, especially in the STEM fields, findings for domestic API students are surprising and not aligned with the model minority stereotype. Contributions to research on API students, doctoral education, and socialization theory are discussed.