Open access has played a significant part in the development of scholarlycommunication. Today, several research funding agencies around the worldrequires that the results of the research it supports must be published openaccess where the underlying idea is that publicly funded research should befree and available to all users. The purpose of this thesis is to discuss the issueof open access publishing from the perspective of researchers in the field ofodontology, focused on their attitudes, behaviors and publishing experienceswith open access. Through a qualitative interview study with fiveodontological researchers, the results have been compared to previous studieson researchers' attitudes and experiences with open access. The results showthat both knowledge and experience with open access publishing is fairly lowamong the participating scientists.

This Master's thesis aims at pinpointing the political arguments that appear in the recent debate on scientific publication. There is a widely spread opinion that prices on digital resources are far too high, thus taking up a major part of the University libraries budget, while publishing companies make high profits. It is also a common opinion that the current publishing method does not take full advantage of the possibilities of electronic publishing. Lately a number of alternative ways of publishing have been initiated and discussed, generally referred to as open access. Open access published material is available free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions on the public internet.In this thesis the minutes from four hearings held by the UK House of Commons in the spring of 2004 are examined.

This thesis aims to explore how musicologists reason about publishing their articles in open-access journals. What is the challenge they face and what are the possibilities musicologists are concerned about? For the method I used open-ended and structured interviews based on four factors: trustworthiness, accessibility, reaching the readers and status of the publishing media. Musicologists are positive to the open-access concept and are willing to submit their papers to open-access journals. They think that the accessibility of the articles is going to increase when they publish them in open-access journals.

Since the beginning of the 21st century the Open Access-movement, which advocates free online distribution of scholarly information, has gained momentum. Authors can provide Open Access to their work in two main ways: by depositing a copy of their research output in an e-print archive and by publishing in Open Access journals. During the past few years, universities and other research institutions throughout the world have established institutional repositories to manage, preserve and provide access to the intellectual output of the university/research institution. The purpose of this master?s thesis is to describe the implementation of an institutional repository at the Swedish University College of Borås.

Scholarly publishing has since the introduction of electronically distributed periodicals seen a time of change, mainly in the STM-business (Science Technology and Medicine). The roles of the three main participants in the publication process; researcher, publisher and library are developing into new directions. Researchers themselves are taking a more active part in the discussion, with the boycott list from the Public Library of Science organization as an illustrating example. Reforms are being launched partly as an economical and efficiency issue, partly as an increasing desire from researchers to maintain the control of scientific end result. This Master s thesis examines how the partly conflicting goals of the participants affect the conditions for scholarly publication in an electronic environment.

To self-archive is to make research publications freely accessible by depositing them in an open digital archive or on a public website. The aim of this thesis is to explore what Swedish scientists think of self-archiving, what they know about it and how they make use of it, in order to understand why they do not self-archive more actively.A web survey was conducted which was answered by 296 scientists at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). Results show that only 24 % have previous experience of self-archiving, but that a majority is willing to self-archive if there are no legal objections or if it is demanded by the research funder. The most important reasons why many scientists do not self-archive are that they feel uncertain about copyright issues and/or lack knowledge about self-archiving..

This masters thesis shows that the changes in the scientific publishing system have affected the academic libraries. Both technological change and the increased prices on scientific journals have forced academic libraries to take action. Some Swedish academic libraries have started publishing the university s own research material. The issue has in many cases been treated more as a library concern, than as a concern for the university as a whole. Neither has there been a national coordination of these matters in Sweden.

Institutional repositories are now being created to manage, preserve, and maintain the digital assets and intellectual output of a university. The incentives to change the process of scholarly communication have also begun serving as a strong motivator. There are problems to consider and questions to be solved when dealing with electronic publishing and the implementation of institutional repositories. At present time no summary exists regarding the activities of scholarly electronic publishing at Swedish universities and university colleges.This Master's thesis aims to describe the current situation regarding electronic publishing and the development of institutional repositories at Swedish universities and university colleges. To investigate the situation, a questionnaire was sent out to 38 academic libraries since they are normally responsible for the electronic publishing within institutions of higher education.

Syftet med denna uppsats var att kartlägga de projekt för elektronisk publicering, där forskningsbiblioteken är inblandade. Detta genomfördes genom en studie över vad det är som styr utvecklingen av alternativa publiceringssystem. Det var både svenska och utländska projekt som undersöktes, fast tonvikten lades på situationen i Sverige och det nystartade DiVA-projektet. DiVA-projektet är ett projekt som bygger upp ett gemensamt biblioteksarkiv för vetenskapliga dokument, där man inledningsvis e-publicerar avhandlingar. Forskningsbiblioteken antar i dessa projekt en ny roll, den som förläggare av lärosätenas vetenskapliga information.

Self-archiving as a way to provide open access to research publications is gaining ground in the area of scholarly publishing. An increasing number of research funders and universities are mandating open access for output associated with their research, which calls for evaluation of the effects of the phenomenon.This two years master?s thesis aims to investigate researchers? experiences of self-archiving. A qualitative web survey was conducted and answered by 41 researchers from several different countries, and a vast majority of the respondents concur with the principle of open access. Although self-archiving shows not to be a guarantee of increased impact for the single researcher, the study shows that might be the case.

This Master?s thesis aims to map and analyse publishing patterns at two academic departments at the University of Gothenburg - the department of Physics and the department of History. The investigation has been guided by a set of questions: Who chooses to publish their scientific outcomes? In which forums do they publish findings? In what kind of media are the results published? What type of findings get to be published? The departments' publication lists have been examined, covering the years 2004-2007. Furthermore, ten scientists have been asked to describe factors contributing to their individual publishing pattern.

The aim of this master thesis is to show how the dissemination of scientific information took place and developed during the 19th century. The main focus is Lund University. Therefore I have formulated two questions: How did the five heads of the history department at Lund University publish their research findings in the 19th century? What factors in society influenced the scientific spreading of results in the 19th century? To assess the scientific reliability of the sources I have used a method based on source criticism and hermeneutics. The thesis covers important concepts such as the exchange of publications between the universities, commercium litterarium and Akademischer Tauschverein and also the development of Lund University yearbook.

Dissatisfaction with the current market for scientific publishing, dominated by a few large publishers able to obtain high subscription fees, gave birth to the Open Access movement. One problem for the Open Access movement, which aims at making research results freely available, is that scientists are reluctant to publish in journals that are free on the Internet, so called Open Access journals. This master's thesis aims at showing how scientists reason about their own publishing in scientific journals. It is investigated which factors are important when scientist decide on which journals to send their articles. The aim is to increase the understanding of scientists' views on Open Access.Six interviews were conducted with scientists in Biomedicine at Lund University.

Publicering är guldmyntet av forskningsarbete och det är genom publicering som forskningsframgång uppnås. Tidigare studier visar att manliga läkare publicerar fler artiklar än vad kvinnliga läkare gör och föreliggande studies resultat är i linje med detta. Syftet med denna studie var att utreda samband mellan olika faktorer och publiceringsgrad inom medicinsk akademisk forskning. Här togs sociodemografiska och arbetsrelaterade faktorer i beaktning. Undersökningen ingår i projektet HOUPE, ?Health and Organisation among University hospital Physicians in Europe?.

The main aim in this thesis is to analyse the attitudes of fivearchaeologists at the Department of History, University ofGothenburg, on the subject of scholarly publishing injournals. The investigation has been led by a set of questionsconcerning the motives and conditions for submitting articlesto scholarly journals.The primary way of collecting emprical data is based onsemistructured qualitative interviews. To get a broaderpicture, the publishing patterns of the archaeologists at theDepartment of History were mapped using the databaseGöteborgs universitets publikationer (GUP). A documentstudy was also conducted.The analysis uses Björk & Holmström?s The net value ofsubmission model to highlight which factors are assumed toinfluence an author when submitting to a scientific journal.This model is reduced and developed to six aspects whichmore or less effect the decision making of the author whenpublishing an article in a scientific journal.