Performativa tendenser i svenska och brittiska open access-nätverk : En aktör-nätverk-teoretisk studie av forskningsfinansiärers policydokument för öppen tillgång till vetenskaplig information

Sammanfattning: Emanating in a Swedish and British context, this study seeks to map and discuss contemporary performative tendencies within the countries’ respective open access movements. This is done through a Posthumanist and Material-Semiotic analysis of nine research funders policy documents for open access to scientific results. Using an actor-network-theoretical apparatus of concepts, the study seeks to assess actors, actants, intermediaries, mediators, agencies, connections and networks in the policy documents of the respective research funders. The study therefore aspires to illuminate the complexities of these networks, similarities and differences between the two countries’ networks and what these networks can say about contemporary tendencies within the Swedish and British open access movements respectively. Actors with their associated agencies and performative connections are analysed and compiled in tables according to the respective research funders. The output is thereafter visualised in a schematic network model and the performative tendencies are assessed. While Swedish council Vetenskapsrådet is defined as a ”spider in the web” of the research funder network, the British network is more fragmentary. As for Bioscientific networks, the Swedish network is of a more peripheral sort while the British consists of sprawling nodes. Within Health Science, there is for both countries a clear direction towards the fortification of infrastructures for data deposition. This can also be said regarding the deposition of monographs in Social Science and the Humanities. These tendencies are discussed in light of international open access research. It is proposed that research funders, libraries and other professionals active within the open access movements considers these tendencies in the forming of service activities. It is also emphasized that similar studies ought to be done in order to further map open access-networks. Two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.