Notes from my MRes dissertation on 'Research practices in transition'. Online Mres in Educational and Social research, Institute of Education, University of London

1. Research practices in transition: investigating the relationship between emerging digital and open
scholarship in higher education settings
Antonella Esposito
November 2010
Introduction
These notes take cue from the reflection on my dissertation’s topic I am working on in current days:
so, the exploration of theoretical concepts identified in the selected readings is intended as a work in
progress towards a more thorough review of my initial proposal and the definition of a theoretical
approach.
Key readings
My early analysis of useful theoretical concepts for my prospective study was driven by the
following needs:
- To find definitions and frameworks of ‘scholarship’, in order to classify (digital) scholarly
activities.
- To find frameworks to interpret ‘knowledge production and distribution’ in academic work.
- To find frameworks to interpret (academic) work practices in transition.
Given the above choice, I am aware that I excluded other interesting strands of analysis on the same
topic, such as any application of a digital literacy’s framework, or theories of innovation or
organizational change.
Reading 1
Pearce, N. (2010), Digital Scholarship Audit Report, Open University, Milton Keynes
Summary
This paper reports research approach and findings of an internal audit recently carried out at the
Open University and focusing on digital scholarship’s practices being adopted by a sample of OU
faculty. The aim of the research is to explore emergent open approaches in research behaviours, as
prompted by the use of digital tools. Sixteen interviews were conducted, after selecting as many
digital scholars’ champions, belonging to a range of research areas.
Theoretical concepts
This exploratory study uses a conceptualization of ‘digital scholarship’ as devised by Pearce et al.
(2010) and built on the model of ‘scholarship’ by Boyer (1990). Analyzing US higher education
sector at that time, Boyer tried to elaborate a more comprehensive understanding and valorisation of
the nature of academic scholarship, encompassing the following four dimensions: Discovery
(creation of new knowledge in a specific area); Integration (position of the individual discoveries in
a wider context); Application (engagement with the world outside university); Teaching
(management of all these procedure supporting teaching and learning). Pearce et al. (2010: 4)
compared the above four dimensions with as many “trends towards openness”: ‘open data’, ‘open
publishing’, ‘open boundary between the academia and the public’ and ‘open education’. Therefore,
this conceptualization of ‘digital scholarship’ assumes ‘openness’ as the only actual ‘break’ with

2. respect to traditional research practices. Pearce mainly considers individual researchers’ behaviours
coping with Web 2.0 tools, rather than their use of digital infrastructures. He explicitly states to
avoid any technological determinism, maintaining that any shift towards more open forms of
scholarship, as enabled by the use of technologies, is a potentiality whose ongoing enactement is to
be verified. However, he reports a quote underlining that ‘openness’ implies the uptake of a certain
ideology and open values leading practices. It is worth noting that neither ‘digital scholarship’ or
‘openness’ here are being conceptualized as further dimensions that transform the other ones (as
explicitated in Boyer’s model): digital tools and practices are apparently thought as embedded in
current research practices, while ‘openness’ is merely being defined by its identified practices (open
data, open publishing, open boundary, open education).
This adaptation of Boyer’s model of scholarship really lacks an authentic theoretical enhancement,
but I think is just being used as a springboard by the author, in order to rethink later the
conceptualization of research practices in transition only in the light of the interviews to faculty to
be carried out.
Relationship between concepts and data
The correspondence between scholarship’s dimensions and trends towards openness is being used
to guide the collection of data in the interviewing process: the interviewees were invited to
recognize themselves in Boyer’s four dimensions and to count how their use of digital tools is
shifting their own behaviour towards different practices.
Indeed, the collected data challenge the above conceptualization of digital scholarship, giving
evidence that tools can be used for different purposes and activities: for instance, a blog can be an
instrument for open publishing as well as a means for researcher to communicate with the world
outside of academia. So, digital scholarship seems to blur boundaries between dimensions of
scholarship, in particular where communication activities are implied (‘open publishing’ and ‘open
boundary’).
Relevance for my study
The approach, aim and limited extension of this study makes it close to the intent of my draft
proposal. Boyer’s notion of scholarship is popular enough (in an Anglo-saxon context) to be easily
used to spark reflection in the interviewed faculty on their own changing research practices as
driven by technology. However, I identify some issues that are not considered in this study and that
in my opinion would deserve a theoretical reflection:
- problematize the use of digital tools as a means to transform existing practice (i.e. the
concept of co-evolution of tools and practices as applied in educational technology studies);
- operationalise the four dimensions in Boyer’s model, so that they could be translated into
“scholarly activities” (i.e. information access, communication, curation, etc.) to be
investigated as many evolving practices;
- take into account the research context with its concurrent drivers and inhibitors of
innovation.
Finally, the author momentarily draws my attention to the contextual and historical value of a
theoretical concept, inducing a more careful consideration, for instance, of the actual importance of
the dimension of ‘teaching’ in a definition of scholarship to be applied to a specific national higher
education setting (discrepancy between US and UK higher education contexts).
Reading 2

3. Houghton, John W., Steele, C. and Henty, M. (2004), ‘Research practices and scholarly
communication in the digital environment’, report (in particular Chapter 2 – The production of
knowledge which focuses on theoretical frameworks).
Summary
This large-scale Australian study investigates how research practices are changing in the digital
environment, in order to draw policy recommendations at a national level. A wide-ranging
statistical and literature review constitutes the basis on which Houghton et al. build their framework
and grounding for analysis. The authors conducted a series of in-depth interviews to a small sample
of senior researchers working in a number of fields and institutional settings. The study focuses on
three aspects of academic activity: communicaton and collaboration; information search and access;
dissemination and publication. The authors aim to gain a systems view of the issue being
researched, through an analysis of the multiple factors (i.e. funding opportunities,
commercialisation of research outcomes and impact of ICTs) and conflicting forces at work (i.e. the
presence of international publishers and open access institutional repositories) which have
influenced the current landscape of research practices. They consider ICTs both as digital
infrastructures and as digital use for personal use by individual researchers. Their key findings
reveal that new forms of knowledge production and distribution are emerging: these forms are
shaping research practices, envisioning more sustainable and cost-effective ways to information
access and communication. These new modes of knowledge production and distribution are to be
strategically supported (through new forms of evaluation, incentives, facilities of communication,
publishing based on open access’s principle) to yield sustainable approaches to research. To this
purpose, the authors suggest to take an holistic approach to ‘re-engineering’ the system for the
creation, production and distribution of scientific and scholarly knowledge.
Theoretical concepts
In Chapter 2 they discuss four main frameworks which they retrieved from an international
literature review: the systems of innovation, that encompasses a wide body of study focusing on
functions of the systems in which the knowledge is being produced and communicated; the Triple
Helix, aiming to describe the interplay among academia, industry and state; the post-academic
science, that encompasses work analyzing the contrast between traditional ‘academic science’ and
the emerging era of science; the new knowledge production (based on Gibbons’s work, 1994),
which is based on the conceptualizations of a traditional mode of production of knowledge (Mode
1) and an emerging, transdisciplinary and problem-oriented mode of knowledge production (Mode
2).
In particular the authors widely use Gibbon’s conceptualization of Mode 1 and Mode 2 of
knowledge production, which is also of interest for my study.
Mode 1 of knowledge production refers to a complex of traditional values, practices, social norms –
originating from a Newtonian model of science - which must be followed “in the production,
legitimation and distribution” of what is considered scientific knowledge and sound scientific
practices. Knowledge is being driven by disciplinary norms and communities and theory and
application are distinguished.
Otherwise, Mode 2 of knowledge production is characterized by a focus on problems more than on
techniques, and on interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research; by an
emphasis on collaborative approaches and diverse and informal modes of communication; by a
diversity of location of research activities. Knowledge is transdisciplinary, integrative and

4. consensual and there is a dynamic between theory, application and context.
“Mode 1 is disciplinary, while Mode 2 is transdisciplinary. Mode 1 is characterised by
homogeneity, Mode 2 by heterogeneity. Organizationally, Mode 1 is hierarchical and tends to
preserve its form, while Mode 2 is more heterarchical and transient” (Gibbson, 2001, as quoted in
Houghton et al., p. 5).
Gibbson maintains that there is interaction between Mode 1 and Mode 2 and that the latter
supplements rather replaces the former. Moreover, Mode 2 is critically dependent on new
information and communication technologies, due to its transdisciplinary, dispersed and interactive
nature.
Relationship between concepts and data
This conceptualization helps Houghton et al. to frame current tensions emerging in research
practices at a cultural, institutional and organizational level: for instance, the coexistence of
traditional (i.e. peer review) and emerging approaches (open peer review), as well the need for a
multidimensional system of rules, i.e. research evaluation, which should combine quantitative,
qualitative and ‘relevance’ factors, Mode 1 and 2 of knowledge production. It is worth noting that
in this study there is no conceptualization of digital or open scholarship, but the framework being
used allows us to gain an understanding of whether evolving practices enabled by technologies are
merely improvements of pre-existing ways of conduct or whether they are disruptive breaks against
tradition (i.e. open access repositories), which should be ruled and supported. ICTs are identified as
a key factor in Mode 2, while features of Mode 2 help to identify distinctive approaches to
‘openness’ – beyond ideological positions - as many signs in an evolving research landscape, driven
by a plenitude of contextual, political and economic factors.
Relevance for my study
The system view adopted by the authors is particularly relevant to understanding digital scholarship
as one of the variables at work when we look at research practices in transition. The framework of
the contrasting modes 1 and 2 of knowledge production provides me with a tool for interpreting
change in scholarly practices from a number of viewpoints, from economic to cultural, from
organizational to epistemological.
However, I think that Gibbson’s model could be a starting point to analyse structures of knowledge
production and distribution. There are some problematic issues related to this framework, referring
to my study:
- given the selected framework and since they focus on a range of settings, the dimension of
teaching – so typical and controversial in academic scholarship – is quite missing;
- the ‘commodification of knowledge’ is seen as a given to be coped with and not as threat (as
in many higher education contexts and in postmodern debates);
- the role of ICTs is not critically thematized (thinking of the idea of ‘pedagogised society’ by
late Bernstein);
- the transition from disciplinary to transdisciplinary knowledge sparks a good hint for
analysis focusing on evolving differences in diverse subject areas: this needs to be faced
using further instruments (i.e. vertical and horizontal discourse);
- the contrast beween Mode 1 and Mode 2 of knowledge prompts a new question: what are
the emerging modes of legitimation of knowledge in academia? Here I think that the use of
theory of Legitimisation Device by Karl Maton (2005) could help to render academic

5. disciplines as many fields of practice in transition, animated by agents competing for power
and control.
Reading 3
Bernadou, A., Constantopoulos, P. Costis, D. and Gavrilis, D. (2010), ‘A Conceptual Model for
Scholarly Research Activity’, in iConference 2010. Retrieved 17 October 2010 at:
https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/14945
Summary
The paper presents a conceptual model of scholarly research activity, as being developed within a
European project aiming to define prerequisites for a digital infrastructure to be designed for
scholarly work in the humanities, arts and cultural heritage. The study originated from the statement
that in humanities effective research is increasingly dependent on expert use of an expanding mass
of scholarly resources. The aim is to formalise the research process in order to facilitate the design
and development of digital repositories which can support research in arts and humanities. The
model was founded on an empirical study carried out through an open-ended questionnaire and
used the Activity Theory framework to consider both historical development of inquiry work and
research planning.
Theoretical concepts
Activity Theory focuses on the concept of activity, intended as the “purposeful interaction of a
subject with the world”. Using the AT framework (following Leont’ev’s elaboration), the authors
define scholarly work as a purposeful process, carried out by actors, individuals or groups,
according to specific methods. The research process is thought of as a series of tasks and sub-tasks,
specified by procedures, which have a normative character and convey what in the related
community is being defined as good practice. Given that representation, the authors define the
research process as “an enactment of the corresponding procedure”, carried out by an individual or
group of researchers for specific goals. These goals can be represented in a more specific way in the
different tasks of the research process and “can be associated with the performance of the services
designed to support the respective tasks” (Bernadou, p. 3). Three kinds of ‘objects’ in the research
process are identified: ‘physical objects’, which are researched and stored (original domain
material); ‘conceptual objects’, which are concepts created and propositions formulated (the content
of scientific theories); and ‘information objects’, which are a particular class of conceptual objects
(content of digital repositories). The authors keep on elaborating their conceptual model of the
research process, combining it with another normalisation model (CIDOC CRM), internationally
utilized for historical and documentary purposes.
The use of the AT framework allows the authors to better detect and understand relationships
beween specific activities, goals, methods and tools, through a comprehensive description which
facilitates communication with the stakeholders.
Relevance for my study
The object and purpose of this study is quite different with respect to the intent of my initial
proposal. However, I find it interesting as an example of the conceptualization of scholarly
activities being investigated and as utilization of the cultural-historical Activity Theory framework

6. in order to capture the dynamics of scholarly work. The AT framework is an analytical lens
focusing on explaining social and cultural work practices through the environmental and historical
context in which the activity is taking place.
As a set of descriptive principles (Barab et al., 2006) it constitues a framework particularly suitable
to explain the goal-oriented, socially and culturally grounded work practices of scholars using
digital tools and artifacts. It can help highlighting the dynamics of scholarly practices in transition,
because it combines the active engagement of researchers with monitoring the developmental
change of participants.
Framed by the AT principles, the issue being researched can be analyzed to investigate scholars’
work practices in transition, as situated in a higher education context typically organized by
consolidated rules, driven by subjects within a community of peers, shared with students and non-
teaching staff, and mediated by digital artifacts which are affecting ways scholars establish rapport
with their own practices.
I think that the use of this analytical lens could be productively combined with other levels of
analysis - using theoretical constructions such as Gibbson’s Mode 1 and 2 or Maton’s Legitimation
Device - aiming to identify deep structures of knowledge production and distribution.