Abstract

This study examines the scholarly communication activities in two scientific fields, chemistry and economics, in a Polish context. The dissertation aims at investigating what characterises the publishing choices of researchers and what supplementary forms for the dissemination of research output are used by scholars. In addition, the paper is looking into what are the views and awareness of open access and institutional repositories within this scientific community. This thesis gives the results of semi-structured interviews and an online survey at two academic faculties at a Polish technical university. As its theoretical framework, the study uses Whitley’s theory of the intellectual and social organisation of academic fields and Latour and Woolgar’s study regarding various motivations for publishing. The study found that there are some similarities between the two investigated disciplines, especially in the context of extra- disciplinary factors that have impact on scholars’ publishing choices. The study also revealed that the general awareness of open access is rather good among the participating academics, however the number of open access publications is not very high. In addition, the findings suggest that there were some misunderstanding about the definitions and functions of institutional repositories among scholars.

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