Öppet och tillförlitligt? Öppen tillgång och forskningskvalitet i styrdokument vid svenska lärosäten : Kvalitativ datamining ur ett ANT-perspektiv

Sammanfattning: The overall aim of this master’s thesis is to, with tools offered by Actor Network Theory, study how policies produced by Swedish universities present the actors involved in the practices surrounding open access and quality assuring mechanisms in scientific publishing. The material consists of policies regarding scientific publishing and the ongoing shift towards open access gathered from twenty-two universities in Sweden. The documents (23 in total) are analyzed qualitatively and further supported by patterns generated through data mining using Orange3. The results suggest that the shift towards open access is widely accepted at Swedish universities, although some variation is present regarding the type of open access that is promoted. Comments on the overall quality of open access channels are infrequent in the material. However, it is often mentioned that it is important to choose peer reviewed open channels. Furthermore, peer review and general reputation are commonly referred to as indicators of a quality publishing channel. Lastly, I conclude that the surrounding actors involved in scientific publishing have a large influence on the way the practices develop and solidifies. These actors are also actively referred to within the policies to strengthen the overall arguments.