Fulsidor och upptrampade vägar : Normer och praktiker kring åtkomst och spridning av digitalt vetenskapligt material bland forskare

Sammanfattning: The aim of this master’s thesis is to study information practices among scholars at Lund university regarding the accessing and sharing of digital scholarly material. This is done through examining of how scholars choose and motivate their use of different methods for accessing and sharing digital material. These methods includes platforms that may violate copyright and as well as informal peer-to-peer sharing. The thesis examines the scholars’ use, awareness and opinions of these methods. The thesis is based upon in-depth interviews with nine scholars with varying academic titles. The study uses a norm perspective through examining how the scholars perceive their colleagues or scholarly community to relate to and value these methods of access and dissemination. Their use and opinions of Open Access and Creative Commons are also relevant as these are a result of a movement that advocates a freer flow of scholarly information with lesser copyright-restrictions. The theoretical framework is based on practice theory, epistemic cultures and socio-legal theory. This framework enables an examination of the scholars’ practices and routines with regard to information access, as well as of social norms within their scholarly community. The socio-legal perspective is used to further understand the use of digital platforms that may violate copyright, in relationship to legal ways of accessing material. Our study shows that scholars perceive a general silence in the scholarly community regarding the use and sharing of material that violate copyright. Scholars themselves motivate, excuse or reject the use of material that violates copyright differently and express different opinions on who is using digital platforms that may violate copyright, what their motivations are and whether those are defensible. A common practice is shown in the use of peer-to-peer-sharing. In some cases the study shows a mismatch between opinions on copyright-breaches and the scholars’ own practices. Social relationships were in some cases valued higher than copyright restrictions, especially regarding peer-to-peer-sharing between colleagues. A dissonance is found between scholars positive opinions concerning Open Access as a principle and their willingness to use it, as it is perceived as having lower status than traditional forms of publishing. Overall our study stresses the importance among the scholars of gaining individual academic and social capital. This will regulate their choices to a greater extent than copyright restrictions, as well as ideals regarding publishing Open Access. Studying researchers’ use and opinions about methods of accessing and sharing material is important to be able to meet their information needs, which is of constant relevance to university libraries.