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Open science disrupting the status quo in academic libraries: A perspective of Zimbabwe
The Journal of Academic Librarianship 45 (2019) 406–412
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Open science disrupting the status quo in academic libraries: A perspective of Zimbabwe
T
Mass Masona Tapfuma , Ruth Geraldine Hoskins ⁎
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Information Studies, School of Social Sciences, College of Humanities, Pte Bag X01, Scottsville, 3209 Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
ARTICLE INFO
ABSTRACT
Keywords: Institutional repositories Academic libraries librarian's role Developing countries Disruptive technologies
The ever-increasing journal subscriptions have seen many universities and research institutions failing to provide access to the much-needed scholarship for propagation of research and development due to dwindling budget allocations. Hence, the adoption of open access (OA) institutional repositories (IR) by the institutions to increase access, availability and visibility of their research output to a wider readership. Institutional repository (IR) technologies have transformed the traditional academic library practice, thus upsetting the work culture of librarians. Though studies there have been studies on the impact of IRs on academic librarians elsewhere in the world, none have been done on the Zimbabwean context. This study draws from a wider study which explored utilisation of institutional repositories in Zimbabwe's public universities. The study sought to answer the question: What is the role of the academic librarian in promoting the institutional repository? The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of technology (UTAUT) informed the study, while a mixed methods approach was employed using document analysis, questionnaires and interviews to collect data from librarians in eight public universities. Findings revealed that in some instances IR responsibilities were added to existing duties for incumbent staff while in others, staff were reassigned to IR roles resulting in diverse staff categories maintaining the IRs across the universities. Recommendations for effective and efficient management of the repositories by the universities are made. The study is relevant to other academic libraries in developing countries and Africa particularly countries whose economies are crumbling.
Introduction Academic libraries play a significant role in the knowledge production, sharing and dissemination cycle by mediating this process. However, 21st century technological advancements brought about open access publishing which has transformed the scholarly communication ecosystem. Traditionally, libraries have provided access to the requisite scientific and technological journal literature, which Scholars and researchers largely depend upon to support their own research (Panitch & Michalak, 2005). Librarians actively identify, select, acquire and evaluate information resources so that they provide the right information and knowledge for the advancement of scholarship for sustainable development. The prevailing hyper-inflationary economy of Zimbabwe has curtailed information provision efforts of libraries resulting in a dearth of scientific literature. Libraries are unable to keep pace with the runaway costs of journal subscriptions (Panitch & Michalak, 2005) in the face of diminishing budget allocations (Plasmeijer, 2002). Hence, the shrinkage in journal subscription lists because of cancellations. Universities had to consider cheaper ways of accessing and
⁎
disseminating research output while ensuring that libraries remain relevant to their user community. In addition, Abrahams, Burke, and Mouton's (2010) study on Research productivity, visibility, accessibility and scholarly communication in Southern African universities, found that there is a low volume of research and publishing in the region and, in comparison with authors and journals from the global North, there was low visibility of published research. Writing for the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA) the authors advocated for universities in the region to adopt open access platforms to increase visibility, access and reach to their output on the global sphere. Universities in Zimbabwe moved to adopt OA IRs to capture, store, disseminate and preserve their scholars' research works (Rizor & Holley, 2014; Cullen & Chawner, 2011), and to enable access to the literature within and beyond institutional and national boundaries. Contents of these IRs comprise theses, dissertations, pre-print, and post-print articles, grey literature, patents and data sets. Institutional repositories have become a new collection development strategy for the libraries. They have transformed and expanded collection development practice and scope “from
Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M.M. Tapfuma), [email protected] (R.G. Hoskins).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2019.05.005 Received 20 January 2019; Received in revised form 9 May 2019; Accepted 13 May 2019 Available online 22 May 2019 0099-1333/ © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
The Journal of Academic Librarianship 45 (2019) 406–412
M.M. Tapfuma and R.G. Hoskins
the identification and purchase of published materials, to the gathering and dissemination of the works of the faculty” (Giesecke, 2011, p.530). This study draws from a wider study on the utilisation of institutional repositories in Zimbabwe's public universities. The institutions have invested in IR technologies to overcome cost and access restrictions to scholarship, and to increase visibility and reach of their research. The responsibility of managing and maintaining the IRs system was bestowed upon them. Therefore, the success of the IR innovation hinges on considerable personal and institutional commitment to change (Malenfant, 2010, p.63). Resources were invested in the establishment of IR infrastructure (Jantz & Wilson, 2008), therefore the universities expect a return on their investment. Organisations have yielded disappointing returns due to low usage of the technologies (Venkatesh & Davis, 2000). Therefore, this study sought to answer the question: What is the role of the academic librarian in promoting the institutional repository? It sought to establish changes brought by IRs brought to the librarians' work culture, to find out how they were coping with the IR system, and to determine their attitudes and perceptions of IRs. Several studies have been recorded on establishment and development of IRs in Africa (Chalabi & Dahmane, 2011; Ezema, 2013; Njagi & Namande, 2018), their promotion (Siyao, Whong, Martin-Yeboah, & Namamonde, 2017), attitudes and perceptions of scholars towards IRs (Chilimo, 2016; Calderón-Martínez & Ruiz-Conde, 2013; Casey, 2012; UKCoRR, 2011; Alemayehu, 2010). According to McKay (2007), studies have neglected how librarians interact with IR software and the usability of the software for them. However, there have been studies on implications of IRs on the work of librarians in developing countries (Cassella & Morando, 2012) but none have focused on the Zimbabwean context. The study is relevant to other academic libraries in developing countries particularly those whose economic climate is similar to the Zimbabwean context so that they develop coping strategies for IR development and keep pace with modern trends in scholarly communication.
IRs and the scholarly communication ecosystem In scholarly communication, commercial or mainstream publishers have enjoyed the monopoly of publishing and supplying peer reviewed scholarly literature which is revered by the scholarly community. Suber (2004) remarks that over time, because of their monopoly of the market, they continued to increase the cost of scientific journals and imposed licensing fees, pay per view and permissions barriers through copyright and licensing restrictions. Basically, commercial publishers sell literature which they have neither produced nor paid for (Phillips, 2010). The literature is produced by scholars who are required by commercial publishers to surrender to them copyright of their works, thus giving them power over the intellectual output. Plasmeijer's (2002) contends that universities and the scholarly community have immensely contributed to the continuation of the serials crisis by compelling their scholars to publish in renowned journals owned by commercial publishers. Thus, increasing commercial publishers' market power. Institutional repositories present a departure from the traditional scholarly communication practice by making research literature freely available to all potential users before publication (pre-print) and/ or after publications (post-print) (Boissy & Schatz, 2011; Rizor & Holley, 2014). So, they breakdown the traditional trade-offs between access, cost and performance (Christensen, Aaron, & Clark, 2003). Though the theory of disruptive innovations proffers that over time, a disruptive technology will eventually push out incumbent businesses as it gains acceptance from the mainstream market, this view is disputable with IRs. Lewis (2012) argues that repositories have not replaced the mainstream journal subscription system but sit alongside it. They afford the mainstream publisher an opportunity to make money for a given period (embargo) before making the articles freely accessible to the lower end market. IRs supplement provision of a version (pre-print or post-print) of an article to the lower end market (Lafferty, Edwards, & Dovey, 2005), that is, those who may have been unable to access the article. They remove price barriers, increase the long-term preservation of institutional intellectual capital and restore, to institutions and scholars, control of their research output whose supply has been monopolised by commercial publishers for decades. The fact that OA affords a copyright holder an opportunity to consent “in advance to unrestricted reading, downloading, copying, sharing, storing, printing, searching, linking, and crawling” (Suber, 2003), solves the permissions crisis. Repositories are potential concrete indicators of an institution's quality demonstrating the “scientific, societal, and economic relevance of its research activities, thus expanding the institution's visibility, status, and public value” (Crow, 2002). Institutional repositories brought a new dimension to the scholarly communication system whose effects are being felt by academic libraries as they grapple with the interruption of their work culture by the innovation.
Literature review Relevant literature is reviewed placing this study in the broader context of the impact of IR establishment on the work culture of academic librarians, mechanisms engaged to cope with the system, and the attitudes and perceptions of librarians towards IRs. Therefore, it is important to understand how people accept and adapt or reject some technology to use. Mathiesen (1991, p.176) proffers that “since systems that are not used cannot be effective, no matter what their technical merit, it is important to understand how people decide whether they will use the particular Information System”. The study was guided by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to help explain the behaviour of academic librarians towards usage of IR technology.
Changes to the librarians work culture and coping mechanisms The success or failure of innovations is partly attributed to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviour of its implementers. In many academic libraries, according to Czerniewicz (2013), the adoption of IRs introduced new roles whose scope they are contending with in addition to requirements for librarians in charge of IR development to acquire new skill sets and adopt the new roles. McKay (2007) states that librarians have assumed titles that are expressive of their roles, for example, IR data creator or IR data maintainer. They are responsible for creating metadata, uploading documents, general oversight of content recruitment for the IR. Czerniewicz (2013) advocates for capacity building in numerous skills and activities for the librarians to be efficient and effective in their newly assumed roles and responsibilities. This is supported by McKay (2007) who proffers that the job requires “technical expertise, an understanding of metadata and metadata standards, copyright knowledge [and licensing agreements] and the
Theoretical framework The Unified theory of acceptance and usage of Technology (UTAUT) was used to explain the utilisation of IR technology in the universities. The model developed by Venkatesh, Morris, Davis and Davis (2003) who proffered that four constructs regulate an individual's behavioural intention to use technology, namely, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions. The constructs ‘effort expectancy’ and ‘facilitating conditions’ were used to explain how librarians accepted and adapted to usage of IRs. Effort expectancy refers to the extent of ease of use of the system while ‘facilitating conditions’ is concerned with the degree to which a person believes that an organisational and technical infrastructure exists to support use of the system. 407
The Journal of Academic Librarianship 45 (2019) 406–412
M.M. Tapfuma and R.G. Hoskins
inclination to collate research publications”. Technical expertise is required in aggregation, harvesting, analytics and impact assessment. The fact that institutional repositories operate on open licenses such as the Creative Commons, it is paramount that IR librarians acquire legal interpretive knowledge and skills on how to publish, adapt or reuse copyrighted works (Czerniewicz, 2013; Jaguswewiski & Williams, 2013; Potvin, 2013). A study by Jaguswewiski and Williams (2013) found a huge demand from stakeholders for assistance with intellectual property and copyright issues and it was agreed that libraries could lead in that regard. The study also found that most of the libraries had a dedicated expert librarian in charge of copyright issues, and the librarians had law degrees and a Masters' degree in Library Science. According to Czerniewicz (2013) and Poynder (2016) some libraries have taken over the function of scholarly publishing as many librarians are beginning to view the IR as a platform for creating and managing OA journals. The Western Kentucky University (Bowling Green) and Illinois Wesleyan University (Bloomington) libraries, collaborated with faculty editors to launch publishing projects and were quite hopeful about their potential (Xia & Opperman, 2010). This implies that librarians in such institutions need to be equipped with publishing skills and possess an understanding of the publishing process from soliciting for articles, the peer review process, copyright and permissions processing to online dissemination (Giesecke, 2011). Possession of publishing skills is assumed by Giesecke to intrigue faculty to buy-in on the innovation and eventually become supporters and advocates for the repository. The library leadership is obliged to ensure that capable people work in areas with processes and values matching the task. Yu and Hang's (2010) study on success factors of a disruptive innovation found that selection of team members favoured risk takers and recruitment of outsiders. A faculty librarian with knowledge and understanding of communication and information sharing culture of academics in a discipline, can advise the design and development of the IR (Jaguswewiski & Williams, 2013). In addition, library units or positions involved in scholarly communication and those participating in digital projects, collection development, or electronic resources may also be assigned OA responsibilities. Subject specialists, reference librarians, and liaisons in academic libraries may shoulder OA responsibilities (Potvin, 2013). Little (2012) and Potvin (2013) expressed that IR technology has added and expanded the outreach role to the academic librarian in order to attract content depositors' attention for the construction of the repositories and operationalisation of their work. So, in their IR outreach programs, the librarians have to integrate marketing and rights clearance skills and author rights knowledge.
Methodology The wider study employed the mixed methods approach to gain deeper understanding how IRs were utilised in the universities. Mixing quantitative and qualitative methods increases the quality of the study as limitations of one method are compensated by others (Fidel, 2008). The research question for this study was: What is the role of the academic librarian in promoting the institutional repository? Through simultaneous methodological triangulation using content analysis of IR policy documents (Only five institutions had IR policies), self-administered questionnaires for IR and faculty librarians, and interviews with library directors, data were collected with limited interaction between the methods during the process. This was done to gain insight into the evolving roles of librarians, how IRs disrupted the status quo of the library environment, and how they were coping with the system. The findings would then complement each other at the analysis stage (Johnson, Onwuegbuzie & Turner, 2007). Eight public universities participated in the study except the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) and three infant universities that were still under the tutelage of some of the universities studied. Using a census, eight Library Directors, and 40 IR and faculty librarians were selected because they were responsible for IR issues, its management and maintenance. The instruments were piloted with staff at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Pietermaritzburg library in South Africa. Thematic content analysis was used for qualitative data while descriptive statistics generated through the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS v25) were used for quantitative data analysis. Ethical clearance was granted by the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee (Reference number HSS/0941/ 014D) of the UKZN. Participating universities also granted permission to conduct the study while respondents were shown the permission letters and signed the informed consent form before participation. The findings Response rate Of the 40 questionnaires distributed to faculty and IR librarians, 25 (62.5%) were returned, all interviews with Library directors were successfully conducted and the five IR policy documents were analysed. Disruptions to the work of librarian and measures to cope with the system To determine the mix of ranks and people who were managing and running the IRs in the libraries IR and faculty librarians were asked to indicate their designations. It emerged that eleven (44%) were Faculty Librarians, two (8%) IR Librarians, three (12%) Deputy Librarians/ manager, two (8%) Research Services Librarians, one (4%) Documentalist, one (4%) Assistant Librarian and two (8%) Senior Library Assistants, and three (12%) others who did not specify. To corroborate this result Library directors were asked to state which categories of staff were involved in IR management. For two (25%) universities, the Deputy librarian supervised IR issues, the Systems librarian was responsible for training and Faculty librarians managed the IR. Two (25%) directors explained that they considered the talent or skills of individuals to identify IR champions, so they both had an Assistant librarian and a Senior library assistant with IT competence managing the IR. Another two (25%) directors said they had assistant librarians and the reader services section staff managing the IR. All the directors said they had incorporated an IT person in their staffing for maintenance of the system and training of library staff on IR issues. A follow-up question asked respondents to state their role regarding the IR. To corroborate the responses Library Directors were asked to state IR responsibilities that were fulfilled by their staff. The following duties were mentioned:
Librarians' attitudes and perceptions of institutional repositories “Where the library leads, others on campus often follow” (Little, 2012, p.66). It is important to note that IR development absorbs a significant amount of staff time given that academics are on record as being largely resistant to participation in the development of IRs (McKay, 2007). This calls for attitudes and behaviours of academic librarians towards OA to take a positive shift to ensure success of the IR initiative in the universities. Potvin (2013) underscores the need for every librarian to possess an understanding of OA and IR concepts and be at ease with depositing works in the IR. This knowledge will motivate and enable them to carry out OA outreach activities beyond the library and provoke introspection “within the library around the functionality of publishing platforms and the spectrum of OA” (Potvin, 2013, p.70). Impartation of such knowledge can be achieved through self-study, workshops, webinars, and programming. Open access has significantly contributed to the evolvement of roles of academic librarians in scholarly communication from facilitators to active players in knowledge production, dissemination and sharing, thus disrupting the status quo. 408
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i. Sit in committees that decide what goes in the IR ii. Solicitation and collection of articles from academics and uploading on IR iii. Collection and requesting for metadata from faculty to be put on IR. iv. Engage in IR awareness campaigns. v. Teaching/instruction on how to search IR. vi. Quality control of IR content. vii. IR administration, co-ordination and Supervision of IR activities.
Fourteen (56%) librarians said ‘Yes’ while 11 (44%) said ‘No’. Both inhouse and off-the-job training had been offered including; training on Greenstone and DSpace software; workshops run by International Network for the availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) and the Zimbabwe University Libraries Consortium (ZULC) workshops; inhouse training by Systems librarians; self-training and, contact visits to universities, such as the UZ and Midlands State University (MSU). Library directors were asked if the library liaised with faculty regarding the depositing of research materials and use of the IR. All the directors said that liaison with faculty was done through faculty librarians who kept a close relationship with them and who were encouraged to talk about the IR at faculty board meetings. One (12.5%) director said he took a leading role in encouraging faculty to deposit content in the IR thought the responsibility to communicate with faculty and obtains articles lay with the Acting Manager. Another director admitted slackness in performance of that role by their library though it was the turf of the IR librarian. One (12.5%) director said that they informally engage influential researchers to convince scholars to participate in populating the repository. Another librarian also said even though they encouraged faculty librarians to liaise with faculty the responsibility had largely been relegated to the IR librarian who also liaised with the research office. Faculty/IR librarians were then asked if they had any qualifications in publishing. The researcher felt that the management of the IR requires someone with a background in publishing to understand the nature of materials being handled as scholarly publications. Five (20%) respondents said ‘Yes’ and the majority, 20 (80%) said ‘No’.
Following-up to this question, Library directors were asked if they had established an IR team or committee and to state the criteria followed in selection of the team. It was the researcher's opinion that inclusion of stakeholders to lighten the job of the librarians in driving the IR project. To corroborate the result, IR policy documents were analysed to check if they contained a clause on establishment of an IR committee. The Library directors said they all had established IR committees whose compositions had slight differences, but common amongst them was the inclusion of an Information Technology (IT) expert, an IR librarian or the person in charge of the running of the IR and faculty librarians. Committees of three (37.5%) universities included a representative from faculty and the Pro-Vice Chancellor academic affairs. One (12.5%) university's committee comprised only of library staff and a law faculty member whose role was to offer legal advice. Another university had a library quality assurance team which subsequently reports to the university's quality assurance committee. From the five IR policy documents, only two (25%) made mention of the IR committee and outlined the committee's functions while other policies did not. Those libraries whose committees included faculty explained that they recognised the need to involve all stakeholders, while the institution whose committee had a heavy presence of library staff considered “People that are directly involved with e.g. the identification of material, the IT practices that are involved in the creation of the IR and, also the involvement of users.” Amongst the functions of the committees as stated by the policies were: determination of “policies on submission and dissemination and submission of content, copyright issues for approval by the university”, and to ensure the smooth running of the repository. Librarians were asked to indicate if their work was affected the establishment of the IR. Eighteen (72%) said ‘Yes’ and seven (28%) said ‘No’. A follow-up multiple response question sought to establish how they were affected. Eleven (44%) respondents had responsibilities added to the existing ones, eight (32%) were assigned new responsibilities and six (24%) were not affected at all. Library directors were asked what implications of establishing the repository were on staffing. They were also asked if staff were reorganized and if new duties were assigned. All the directors lamented that government-imposed job freeze had prevented them from recruiting new staff. They said they had to reorganise existing staff and spread the old and new duties to the staff, resulting in job enlargement and or job enrichment for some individuals in the library. One director said:
Attitudes and perceptions of librarians towards IRs Attitudes and perceptions of implementers of an innovation play a significant role to acceptance and usage of the innovation. Repository and faculty librarians were asked to state, on a five-point Likert scale, to state the extent to which they agreed with the notion that “libraries should create professional positions for the management of OA initiatives, projects and repositories”. Table 1 shows that twelve (48%) respondents strongly agreed, five (20%) agreed, and six (24%) strongly disagreed giving a mean 3.63 (SD: 1.680). Respondents had to give explanations for their responses. Explanations given by respondents who were in agreement with the statement, revealed the sentiment that the IR required a special skilled person to manage it with one (9.1%) expressing that, “IR comes with a lot of responsibilities. It is therefore, weird and seemingly insurmountable, for example, for one man to shoulder all its responsibilities. This compromises its effectiveness. A full-fledged IR unit is needed.” Another question asked the librarians if they thought IRs were important drivers of scholarly publishing. They had to provide explanations to their response. All respondents said ‘Yes’ giving varied explanations with excerpts stating: a. Indeed, I guess it starts at a small scale, confidence increasing from internal reviews etc. It also encourages others to write or research seeing other people's output, and
“the environment we are operating in where, because of the harsh economic climate, the staffing situation has remained stagnant, particularly for service or support systems. So, recruitment of personnel has been frozen. We don't have the leisure, if you want, of recruiting people that are specifically for the IR or with specific skills.”
Table 1 Need to create professional positions.
However, another director said they had to recruit an IT person “because the software had to be noted, defined, modified and they had to train the people that were going to be doing this on a daily basis”. Another director said they were able to recruit two assistant librarians, but other staff were moved and assigned new duties. The next question asked librarians if they had received any training on IR maintenance and content recruitment and, to state the mode of training where such had been received. To corroborate the responses, Library directors were also asked if the staff had been trained on open sources and IR issues, and to explain the nature of training received.
Valid
409
Strongly disagree Disagree Not sure Agree Strongly agree Total
Frequency
Percent
Valid percent
Cumulative percent
6
24.0
24.0
24.0
1 1 5 12 25
4.0 4.0 20.0 48.0 100.0
4.0 4.0 20.0 48.0 100.0
28.0 32.0 52.0 100.0
The Journal of Academic Librarianship 45 (2019) 406–412
M.M. Tapfuma and R.G. Hoskins
b. Researchers are encouraged, motivated to publish because their work is exposed to researchers around the world who would not otherwise have access to it through traditional channels.
Table 3 IRs will fail is academic libraries are excluded.
The explanations point to the fact visibility of scholars' work to a wider audience through IRs would motivate them to publish. A followup question solicited the librarians' perceptions of IRs as information resources for academic research. Extracts of responses stated:
Valid
a) They are reliable source as the research papers have been produced by researchers i.e. academics themselves knowledgeable or experts in their fields of specialty. b) Very important because researchers share information locally and internationally. They give local content with local examples but also give room to compare with what others are doing elsewhere and room for partnership across the globe.
Discussion and implication of findings This section discusses the findings in relation to the reviewed literature and also guided by the UTAUT model which will helps to explain the behavioural intentions of individuals to adopt IR technologies to use in the universities. This study was drawn from a wider study which explored utilisation of IRs in Zimbabwe's public universities. This study answered the question: What is the role of the academic librarian in promoting the institutional repository? This was achieved by establishing changes brought by IRs brought to the librarians' work culture, Table 2 OA principles in sync with role of academic libraries.
Valid
Strongly disagree Disagree Agree Strongly agree Total
Percent
Valid percent
3
12.0
12.0
12.0
1 5 16 25
4.0 20.0 64.0 100.0
4.0 20.0 64.0 100.0
16.0 36.0 100.0
Percent
Valid percent
Cumulative percent
4
16.0
16.0
16.0
11 10 25
44.0 40.0 100.0
44.0 40.0 100.0
60.0 100.0
ascertain coping strategies employed to cope with the IR system, and determination of their attitudes and perceptions of IRs. The constructs ‘effort expectancy’ and ‘facilitating conditions’ drawn from the UTAUT model helped to explain how the librarians accepted and adopted IR systems to use in capturing, storing disseminating and preserve their institutions' and scholars' intellectual capital. The results of the study can be used to inform other institution in developing countries of how to cope with the IR system under difficult economic environments. Literature (Potvin, 2013) indicated that responsibilities for OA in libraries can be shouldered by subject specialists, reference librarians, liaisons, library units or positions involved in digital projects, collection development, or electronic resources. This concurs with the findings which revealed a mixed bag of designations and rank within the libraries and across the universities involving both junior and senior staff. The government-imposed job freeze left the libraries without an option but to utilise existing staff. The ‘effort expectancy’ construct significantly influenced the decision by some of the libraries to consider staff's ICT skills and interest in (re)assigning IR responsibilities to them. This strategy motivates the staff endowed with ICT skills and knowledge for them to manage and operate IRs with limited difficulties difficulty. Literature, (McKay, 2007; Potvin, 2013), underscored the need for technical expertise in aggregation, harvesting, analytics and impact assessment. The staff mix reveals discord and lack of agreement amongst Zimbabwe's public universities as to which rank of library staff should manage and maintain the IR. This could work negatively on the morale of employees particularly when the job enlargement does not come with an incentive, worse still, for junior staff who shoulder the same responsibilities as the senior staff. The job enlargement strategy has implications on the performance of the librarians in service delivery, and efficiency and effectiveness in the execution of their duties. The strategy helped the libraries overcome the possibilities of staff developing resentment towards IRs after finding the development process taxing and time-consuming (Jain, 2011; McKay, 2007). The findings showed that most (mean of 3.64) librarians felt there was a need to create professional positions for managing OA initiatives due to the numerous responsibilities associated with the systems. This sentiment confirms McKay (2007) and Pinfield, Gardner and MacColl (2002) view that an IR maintainer requires “technical expertise, an understanding of metadata and metadata standards, copyright knowledge [and licensing agreements] and the inclination to collate research publications”. The view of opening of an IR unit within the library to manage OA and IR initiatives is quite noble as this would enable the librarians to specialise in open science issues and “provide institutional leadership to drive change in this service area” (Raju et al., 2018). However, efforts were being made towards capacity building for staff for them to have the requisite skills to use the software, run and maintain the IR through in-house or off-the-job workshops. By organizing and sending their staff for skills training, the libraries created an enabling environment for the library staff to execute their duties and responsibilities effectively and efficiently. When the drivers of a system are empowered, they are motivated to adopt and use the system and advocate for its use by the end-users. It was intriguing to find that a majority (80%) of the librarians did not have a qualification in
They perceive IRs to be crucial information reserves providing access to and enabling sharing of locally produced content. On a five-point Likert scale, IR/faculty librarians had to state the extent to which they thought the statement that “the principles of OA are in tandem with the role of academic libraries”. Results in Table 2 show a majority, 16 (64% of respondents strongly agreed while three (12%) strongly disagreed giving a mean 4.2 (SD: 1.385). One respondent who highly agreed with the statement explained that, “open access promotes the five laws of Ranganathan without which information could not reach its intended recipients”. Lastly, on a five-point Likert scale, the librarians were required to indicate the degree to which they agreed with the statement that ‘OA IRs would fail without the active involvement of academic libraries.’ Table 3 shows that most of the respondents, 11 (44%) agreed, 10 (40%) strongly agreed, and four (16%) strongly disagreed, giving a mean 3.92 (SD: 1.382). Those who disagreed opined that that scholars were more important IR stakeholders as content developers. The majority having agreed with the statement underscored the bibliographic descriptions, indexing, abstracting and preservation roles played by academic libraries in facilitating easy access to and dissemination of information to the readership; a skill which gives them an edge in IR development. On a five-point Likert scale the librarians had to state the extent to which they agreed with the notion that “libraries should create professional positions for the management of OA initiatives, projects and repositories”.
Frequency
Strongly disagree Agree Strongly agree Total
Frequency
Cumulative percent
410
The Journal of Academic Librarianship 45 (2019) 406–412
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publishing. Possession of knowledge and skills of publishing would be an added advantage to IR maintainers and developers as they would understand the nature of scholarly publications and the publishing behaviours of authors. This would help them to devise powerful services that will attract participation by the academic community in the development of the IR. Given that poor funding of universities by government (Kanyengo, 2007) has seen libraries failing to provide requisite research literature, lack of publishing skills and knowledge is a drawback to active participation in knowledge production and dissemination in the institutions like their counterparts in the global North are doing (Czerniewicz, 2013). The libraries would remain relevant in the evolving scholarly communication and publishing environment while at the same time rescuing their institutions from the effects of the ailing economy on research (re)generation. The libraries demonstrated commitment to development of the repositories by creating an enabling environment through IR teams or committees to solicit participation of stakeholders, thus, fostering a sense of ownership of the IR in the stakeholders and establish the repository's authority and value in the institution. Inclusion of a quality assurance team in one institution would contribute to showcasing high quality research items in the repository reflecting the institution's quality on the global sphere. Involvement of lawyers would also help the library to deal with copyright, licensing and permissions issues and avoid legal wrangles with publishers and authors. Stakeholder involvement goes in tandem with Lynch's (2003) perception that collaboration amongst librarians, information technologists, faculty and university administrators, and policy makers is essential to IR effectiveness. Participation of academics facilitates awareness creation in the scholarly community and persuasion of scholars to deposit their works (Cullen & Chawner, 2011). The burden of IR advocacy is offloaded from the shoulders of librarians from it being solely their responsibility a shared one. Resultantly, a return on investment would be achieved by the universities in research and development, and IR technology as soon as their intellectual output is visible and accessible to a wider audience, not forgetting the benefits accruing to the scholars and researchers locally. The findings revealed positive attitudes in librarians towards IRs as appreciated the role of the repositories in facilitating scholarly communication. Literature (Potvin, 2013) proffered that Knowledge and understanding of the role of IRs by librarians has both professional and institutional benefits including; closure of the gap between librarians' attitudes and behaviours towards OA; motivation and empowerment for OA outreach beyond the library; provide insight into repository resources that may inform information literacy; and provoke dialogue and discussions amongst librarians on the functionality of publishing platforms and OA. The performance expectancy variable from the UTAUT model resonates well with this perception. The result indicates that, the librarians are well-trained and understood “ethics, values, and foundational principles” of librarianship (Finks, 2010; Potvin, 2013) and were not lost in the OA environment. Hence, the expressed conviction that the initiative was bound to fail if they were not active partners.
libraries to establish the repository's authority and value within the institution. Overall, the librarians demonstrated an understanding and appreciation of OA and IRs and their role in scholarly communication and publishing. It stands to be noted that failure by the leading university, UZ, in IR development to participate in the study could have affected the results of the study. In addition, the researcher could not find literature on the effect of IRs on the work of librarians in the African setting. Availability of such literature could have contributed to the debate on the issue with an African perspective. Recommendations The following recommendations were made: University libraries that had not considered staff interests and skills or competencies in job reassignment and distribution of IR responsibilities need to take that factor into account in order to boost the morale their librarians and increase acceptance and use of the repositories. In addition, as resources permit, the university libraries should establish an IR position which would enable them to find a suitable unit within the library for the IR (e.g. acquisitions unit or special collections unit). Continuous training and offering of refresher courses for the staff for capacity building in numerous skills and tasks is necessary so that they remain relevant, efficient and effective in the OA environment and avoid relapse in cases where particular activities are not regularly undertaken. In keeping with the trend where academic libraries are becoming publishing entities for their institutions' scholarship, the university libraries could send their staff for training to institutions like the Africa University for training on IP issues and The National University of Science and Technology for publishing skills. Declaration of Competing Interest None. Acknowledgements The author's would like to thank National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe. Research grant RB No. 118/15. References Abrahams, L., Burke, M., & Mouton, J. (2010). Research productivity-visibility-accessibility and scholarly communication in Southern African universities. The African Journal of Information and Communication, 10, 20–36. http://reference.sabinet.co.za/ webx/access/electronic_journals/afjic/afjic_n10_a3.pdf, Accessed date: 21 February 2015. Alemayehu, M. W. (2010). Researchers’ Attitude to Using Institutional Repositories: A Case Study of the Oslo University Institutional Repository (DUO). ODA Open Digital Archive. Online https://oda.hio.no/jspui/handle/10642/426. Boissy, R., & Schatz, B. (2011). Scholarly communications from the publisher perspective. Journal of Library Administration, 51(5–6), 476–484. Online http://www.tandfonline. com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01930826.2011.589355, Accessed date: 11 February 2015. Calderón-Martínez, A., & Ruiz-Conde, E. (2013). The participation and web visibility of university digital repositories in the European context. Communicar, 40, 193–200. https://doi.org/10.3916/C40-2013-03-10. Casey, A. M. (2012). Does tenure matter? Factors influencing faculty contributions to institutional repositories. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 1(1), eP1032. https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1032. Cassella, M., & Morando, M. (2012). Fostering new roles for librarians: Skills set for repository managers—Results of a survey in Italy. LIBER Quarterly, 21(3–4). Chalabi, L., & Dahmane, M. (2011). Open access in developing countries: African open archives. Information Services & Use, 31(2011), 111–119. https://doi.org/10.3233/ isu-2012-0640. Chilimo, W. (2016). Institutional repositories: Awareness and self-archiving practices of academic researchers in selected public universities in Kenya. The International Information & Library Review, 49(3), 176–186. Christensen, C., Aaron, S., & Clark, W. (2003). Disruption in education. Educause Review, 38(1), 44–54. Online http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0313.pdf, Accessed date: 10 October 2018. Crow, R.. The case for institutional repositories: A SPARC position paper. (2002). Online http://www.sparc.arl.org/sites/default/files/media_files/instrepo.pdf (Retrieved 16 July 2014) .
Conclusion The university libraries have not made a collective decision as to which rank in the library should shoulder IR responsibilities the university libraries, a factor which could demotivate staff and ultimately affect the success of IR innovation. Though the reorganisation of staff and duties (due to the job freeze) would create a conducive facilitating environment for IR development, library staff could suffer fatigue and loss of morale due to work overloaded. However, an enabling environment for the staff to execute their duties and responsibilities effectively and efficiently was created by ensuring that they received training on IR software and IR issues. In addition, stakeholder involvement through IT teams and IR management committees assists the 411
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Cullen, R., & Chawner, B. (2011). Institutional repositories, open access, and scholarly communication: A study of conflicting paradigms. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 37(6), 460–470. Online http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ946526, Accessed date: 13 February 2014. Czerniewicz, L. (2013). Power and politics in a changing scholarly communication landscape. Proceedings of the IATUL conferences. Paper 23. . Online http://docs.lib. purdue.edu/iatul/2013/papers/23, Accessed date: 20 February 2015. Ezema, I. J. (2013). Local contents and the development of open access institutional repositories in Nigeria university libraries: Challenges, strategies and scholarly implications. Library Hi Tech, 31(2), 323–340. Fidel, R. (2008). Are we there yet? Mixed methods in Library and Information Science. Library and Information Science Research, 30, 265–272. http://faculty.washington. edu/fidelr/RayaPubs/sdaarticle.pdf, Accessed date: 3 July 2014. Finks, L. W. (2010). Ranganathan's five laws of library science: Their enduring appeal. Southeastern librarian. Vol. 31. Southeastern librarian (pp. 142–145). . Online http:// www2.hawaii.edu/~donnab/lis610/Finks_Only_1981.pdf, Accessed date: 16 September 2016 (28 September 2016) . Giesecke, J. (2011). Institutional repositories: Keys to success. Journal of Library Administration, 51(5–6), 529–542. Online https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2011. 589340 (Accessed 09 October 2014) . Jaguswewiski, J. M., & Williams, K. (2013). New roles for networking: Transforming liaison roles in research libraries. Report prepared for the Association of Research Libraries. Wasington DC: Association of Research Libraries. Online http://www.arl.org/ component/content/article/6/2893, Accessed date: 22 October 2018. Jain, P. (2011). New trends and future applications/directions of institutional repositories in academic institutions. Library Review, 60(2), 125–141. Online https://doi.org/10. 1108/00242531111113078 (Accessed 8 November 2014) . Jantz, R., & Wilson, M. (2008). Institutional repositories: faculty deposits, marketing and the reform of scholarly communication, Rutgers University community repository. http:// www.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/~ccchiang/GILIS/LIS/p186-Jantz.pdf, Accessed date: 6 August 2015. Johnson, R. B., Onwuegbuzie, A. L., & Turner, L. A. (2007). Toward a definition of mixed methods research. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 1(2), 112–133. Kanyengo, C. W. (2007). Serials management in Africa: A review of survival strategies at the University of Zambia. Serials Review, 33(1), 33–39. http://www.sciencedirect. com (Accessed 17 January 2019). Lafferty, S., Edwards, J., & Dovey, K. (2005). The Australian digital thesis program: A disruptive technology? A paper presented at the Educause Australasia, Auckland, 5–8 April. Lewis, D. W. (2012). The inevitability of Open Access. College and Research Libraries, 73(5), (Sep.) http://crl.acrl.org/content/73/5/493.full.pdf+html, Accessed date: 15 March 2014. Little, G. (2012). Managing technology solutions in search of problems? The challenges and opportunities of institutional repositories. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 38(1), 65–67. Online https://www.infona.pl/.../bwmeta1.element.elseviere79513b0-aed7-30b8, Accessed date: 13 February 2014. Lynch, C. A. (2003). Institutional repositories: Essential infrastructure for scholarship in the digital age. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 3(2), 327–336. Online http://muse. jhu.edu/journals/pla/summary.v003/3.2lynch.html, Accessed date: 23 July 2015. Malenfant, K. J. (2010). Leading change in the system of scholarly communication: A case study of engaging liaison librarians for outreach to faculty. College and Research Libraries, 71(1), 63–76. Online http://crl.acrl.org/content/71/1/63.full.pdf+html, Accessed date: 15 March 2014. Mathiesen, K. (1991). Predicting user intentions: comparing the Technology Acceptance Model with the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Information Systems Research, 2(3), 173–191. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23010882, Accessed date: 13 February 2014. McKay, D. (2007). Institutional repositories and their 'other' users: Usability beyond authors. Ariadne, 52. Online http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue52/mckay/, Accessed date: 8 June 2015. Njagi, P. R., & Namande, B. (2018). The status of the implementation of institutional
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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
The Journal of Academic Librarianship journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jacalib
Open science disrupting the status quo in academic libraries: A perspective of Zimbabwe
T
Mass Masona Tapfuma , Ruth Geraldine Hoskins ⁎
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Information Studies, School of Social Sciences, College of Humanities, Pte Bag X01, Scottsville, 3209 Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
ARTICLE INFO
ABSTRACT
Keywords: Institutional repositories Academic libraries librarian's role Developing countries Disruptive technologies
The ever-increasing journal subscriptions have seen many universities and research institutions failing to provide access to the much-needed scholarship for propagation of research and development due to dwindling budget allocations. Hence, the adoption of open access (OA) institutional repositories (IR) by the institutions to increase access, availability and visibility of their research output to a wider readership. Institutional repository (IR) technologies have transformed the traditional academic library practice, thus upsetting the work culture of librarians. Though studies there have been studies on the impact of IRs on academic librarians elsewhere in the world, none have been done on the Zimbabwean context. This study draws from a wider study which explored utilisation of institutional repositories in Zimbabwe's public universities. The study sought to answer the question: What is the role of the academic librarian in promoting the institutional repository? The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of technology (UTAUT) informed the study, while a mixed methods approach was employed using document analysis, questionnaires and interviews to collect data from librarians in eight public universities. Findings revealed that in some instances IR responsibilities were added to existing duties for incumbent staff while in others, staff were reassigned to IR roles resulting in diverse staff categories maintaining the IRs across the universities. Recommendations for effective and efficient management of the repositories by the universities are made. The study is relevant to other academic libraries in developing countries and Africa particularly countries whose economies are crumbling.
Introduction Academic libraries play a significant role in the knowledge production, sharing and dissemination cycle by mediating this process. However, 21st century technological advancements brought about open access publishing which has transformed the scholarly communication ecosystem. Traditionally, libraries have provided access to the requisite scientific and technological journal literature, which Scholars and researchers largely depend upon to support their own research (Panitch & Michalak, 2005). Librarians actively identify, select, acquire and evaluate information resources so that they provide the right information and knowledge for the advancement of scholarship for sustainable development. The prevailing hyper-inflationary economy of Zimbabwe has curtailed information provision efforts of libraries resulting in a dearth of scientific literature. Libraries are unable to keep pace with the runaway costs of journal subscriptions (Panitch & Michalak, 2005) in the face of diminishing budget allocations (Plasmeijer, 2002). Hence, the shrinkage in journal subscription lists because of cancellations. Universities had to consider cheaper ways of accessing and
⁎
disseminating research output while ensuring that libraries remain relevant to their user community. In addition, Abrahams, Burke, and Mouton's (2010) study on Research productivity, visibility, accessibility and scholarly communication in Southern African universities, found that there is a low volume of research and publishing in the region and, in comparison with authors and journals from the global North, there was low visibility of published research. Writing for the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA) the authors advocated for universities in the region to adopt open access platforms to increase visibility, access and reach to their output on the global sphere. Universities in Zimbabwe moved to adopt OA IRs to capture, store, disseminate and preserve their scholars' research works (Rizor & Holley, 2014; Cullen & Chawner, 2011), and to enable access to the literature within and beyond institutional and national boundaries. Contents of these IRs comprise theses, dissertations, pre-print, and post-print articles, grey literature, patents and data sets. Institutional repositories have become a new collection development strategy for the libraries. They have transformed and expanded collection development practice and scope “from
Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M.M. Tapfuma), [email protected] (R.G. Hoskins).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2019.05.005 Received 20 January 2019; Received in revised form 9 May 2019; Accepted 13 May 2019 Available online 22 May 2019 0099-1333/ © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
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the identification and purchase of published materials, to the gathering and dissemination of the works of the faculty” (Giesecke, 2011, p.530). This study draws from a wider study on the utilisation of institutional repositories in Zimbabwe's public universities. The institutions have invested in IR technologies to overcome cost and access restrictions to scholarship, and to increase visibility and reach of their research. The responsibility of managing and maintaining the IRs system was bestowed upon them. Therefore, the success of the IR innovation hinges on considerable personal and institutional commitment to change (Malenfant, 2010, p.63). Resources were invested in the establishment of IR infrastructure (Jantz & Wilson, 2008), therefore the universities expect a return on their investment. Organisations have yielded disappointing returns due to low usage of the technologies (Venkatesh & Davis, 2000). Therefore, this study sought to answer the question: What is the role of the academic librarian in promoting the institutional repository? It sought to establish changes brought by IRs brought to the librarians' work culture, to find out how they were coping with the IR system, and to determine their attitudes and perceptions of IRs. Several studies have been recorded on establishment and development of IRs in Africa (Chalabi & Dahmane, 2011; Ezema, 2013; Njagi & Namande, 2018), their promotion (Siyao, Whong, Martin-Yeboah, & Namamonde, 2017), attitudes and perceptions of scholars towards IRs (Chilimo, 2016; Calderón-Martínez & Ruiz-Conde, 2013; Casey, 2012; UKCoRR, 2011; Alemayehu, 2010). According to McKay (2007), studies have neglected how librarians interact with IR software and the usability of the software for them. However, there have been studies on implications of IRs on the work of librarians in developing countries (Cassella & Morando, 2012) but none have focused on the Zimbabwean context. The study is relevant to other academic libraries in developing countries particularly those whose economic climate is similar to the Zimbabwean context so that they develop coping strategies for IR development and keep pace with modern trends in scholarly communication.
IRs and the scholarly communication ecosystem In scholarly communication, commercial or mainstream publishers have enjoyed the monopoly of publishing and supplying peer reviewed scholarly literature which is revered by the scholarly community. Suber (2004) remarks that over time, because of their monopoly of the market, they continued to increase the cost of scientific journals and imposed licensing fees, pay per view and permissions barriers through copyright and licensing restrictions. Basically, commercial publishers sell literature which they have neither produced nor paid for (Phillips, 2010). The literature is produced by scholars who are required by commercial publishers to surrender to them copyright of their works, thus giving them power over the intellectual output. Plasmeijer's (2002) contends that universities and the scholarly community have immensely contributed to the continuation of the serials crisis by compelling their scholars to publish in renowned journals owned by commercial publishers. Thus, increasing commercial publishers' market power. Institutional repositories present a departure from the traditional scholarly communication practice by making research literature freely available to all potential users before publication (pre-print) and/ or after publications (post-print) (Boissy & Schatz, 2011; Rizor & Holley, 2014). So, they breakdown the traditional trade-offs between access, cost and performance (Christensen, Aaron, & Clark, 2003). Though the theory of disruptive innovations proffers that over time, a disruptive technology will eventually push out incumbent businesses as it gains acceptance from the mainstream market, this view is disputable with IRs. Lewis (2012) argues that repositories have not replaced the mainstream journal subscription system but sit alongside it. They afford the mainstream publisher an opportunity to make money for a given period (embargo) before making the articles freely accessible to the lower end market. IRs supplement provision of a version (pre-print or post-print) of an article to the lower end market (Lafferty, Edwards, & Dovey, 2005), that is, those who may have been unable to access the article. They remove price barriers, increase the long-term preservation of institutional intellectual capital and restore, to institutions and scholars, control of their research output whose supply has been monopolised by commercial publishers for decades. The fact that OA affords a copyright holder an opportunity to consent “in advance to unrestricted reading, downloading, copying, sharing, storing, printing, searching, linking, and crawling” (Suber, 2003), solves the permissions crisis. Repositories are potential concrete indicators of an institution's quality demonstrating the “scientific, societal, and economic relevance of its research activities, thus expanding the institution's visibility, status, and public value” (Crow, 2002). Institutional repositories brought a new dimension to the scholarly communication system whose effects are being felt by academic libraries as they grapple with the interruption of their work culture by the innovation.
Literature review Relevant literature is reviewed placing this study in the broader context of the impact of IR establishment on the work culture of academic librarians, mechanisms engaged to cope with the system, and the attitudes and perceptions of librarians towards IRs. Therefore, it is important to understand how people accept and adapt or reject some technology to use. Mathiesen (1991, p.176) proffers that “since systems that are not used cannot be effective, no matter what their technical merit, it is important to understand how people decide whether they will use the particular Information System”. The study was guided by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to help explain the behaviour of academic librarians towards usage of IR technology.
Changes to the librarians work culture and coping mechanisms The success or failure of innovations is partly attributed to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviour of its implementers. In many academic libraries, according to Czerniewicz (2013), the adoption of IRs introduced new roles whose scope they are contending with in addition to requirements for librarians in charge of IR development to acquire new skill sets and adopt the new roles. McKay (2007) states that librarians have assumed titles that are expressive of their roles, for example, IR data creator or IR data maintainer. They are responsible for creating metadata, uploading documents, general oversight of content recruitment for the IR. Czerniewicz (2013) advocates for capacity building in numerous skills and activities for the librarians to be efficient and effective in their newly assumed roles and responsibilities. This is supported by McKay (2007) who proffers that the job requires “technical expertise, an understanding of metadata and metadata standards, copyright knowledge [and licensing agreements] and the
Theoretical framework The Unified theory of acceptance and usage of Technology (UTAUT) was used to explain the utilisation of IR technology in the universities. The model developed by Venkatesh, Morris, Davis and Davis (2003) who proffered that four constructs regulate an individual's behavioural intention to use technology, namely, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions. The constructs ‘effort expectancy’ and ‘facilitating conditions’ were used to explain how librarians accepted and adapted to usage of IRs. Effort expectancy refers to the extent of ease of use of the system while ‘facilitating conditions’ is concerned with the degree to which a person believes that an organisational and technical infrastructure exists to support use of the system. 407
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inclination to collate research publications”. Technical expertise is required in aggregation, harvesting, analytics and impact assessment. The fact that institutional repositories operate on open licenses such as the Creative Commons, it is paramount that IR librarians acquire legal interpretive knowledge and skills on how to publish, adapt or reuse copyrighted works (Czerniewicz, 2013; Jaguswewiski & Williams, 2013; Potvin, 2013). A study by Jaguswewiski and Williams (2013) found a huge demand from stakeholders for assistance with intellectual property and copyright issues and it was agreed that libraries could lead in that regard. The study also found that most of the libraries had a dedicated expert librarian in charge of copyright issues, and the librarians had law degrees and a Masters' degree in Library Science. According to Czerniewicz (2013) and Poynder (2016) some libraries have taken over the function of scholarly publishing as many librarians are beginning to view the IR as a platform for creating and managing OA journals. The Western Kentucky University (Bowling Green) and Illinois Wesleyan University (Bloomington) libraries, collaborated with faculty editors to launch publishing projects and were quite hopeful about their potential (Xia & Opperman, 2010). This implies that librarians in such institutions need to be equipped with publishing skills and possess an understanding of the publishing process from soliciting for articles, the peer review process, copyright and permissions processing to online dissemination (Giesecke, 2011). Possession of publishing skills is assumed by Giesecke to intrigue faculty to buy-in on the innovation and eventually become supporters and advocates for the repository. The library leadership is obliged to ensure that capable people work in areas with processes and values matching the task. Yu and Hang's (2010) study on success factors of a disruptive innovation found that selection of team members favoured risk takers and recruitment of outsiders. A faculty librarian with knowledge and understanding of communication and information sharing culture of academics in a discipline, can advise the design and development of the IR (Jaguswewiski & Williams, 2013). In addition, library units or positions involved in scholarly communication and those participating in digital projects, collection development, or electronic resources may also be assigned OA responsibilities. Subject specialists, reference librarians, and liaisons in academic libraries may shoulder OA responsibilities (Potvin, 2013). Little (2012) and Potvin (2013) expressed that IR technology has added and expanded the outreach role to the academic librarian in order to attract content depositors' attention for the construction of the repositories and operationalisation of their work. So, in their IR outreach programs, the librarians have to integrate marketing and rights clearance skills and author rights knowledge.
Methodology The wider study employed the mixed methods approach to gain deeper understanding how IRs were utilised in the universities. Mixing quantitative and qualitative methods increases the quality of the study as limitations of one method are compensated by others (Fidel, 2008). The research question for this study was: What is the role of the academic librarian in promoting the institutional repository? Through simultaneous methodological triangulation using content analysis of IR policy documents (Only five institutions had IR policies), self-administered questionnaires for IR and faculty librarians, and interviews with library directors, data were collected with limited interaction between the methods during the process. This was done to gain insight into the evolving roles of librarians, how IRs disrupted the status quo of the library environment, and how they were coping with the system. The findings would then complement each other at the analysis stage (Johnson, Onwuegbuzie & Turner, 2007). Eight public universities participated in the study except the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) and three infant universities that were still under the tutelage of some of the universities studied. Using a census, eight Library Directors, and 40 IR and faculty librarians were selected because they were responsible for IR issues, its management and maintenance. The instruments were piloted with staff at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Pietermaritzburg library in South Africa. Thematic content analysis was used for qualitative data while descriptive statistics generated through the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS v25) were used for quantitative data analysis. Ethical clearance was granted by the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee (Reference number HSS/0941/ 014D) of the UKZN. Participating universities also granted permission to conduct the study while respondents were shown the permission letters and signed the informed consent form before participation. The findings Response rate Of the 40 questionnaires distributed to faculty and IR librarians, 25 (62.5%) were returned, all interviews with Library directors were successfully conducted and the five IR policy documents were analysed. Disruptions to the work of librarian and measures to cope with the system To determine the mix of ranks and people who were managing and running the IRs in the libraries IR and faculty librarians were asked to indicate their designations. It emerged that eleven (44%) were Faculty Librarians, two (8%) IR Librarians, three (12%) Deputy Librarians/ manager, two (8%) Research Services Librarians, one (4%) Documentalist, one (4%) Assistant Librarian and two (8%) Senior Library Assistants, and three (12%) others who did not specify. To corroborate this result Library directors were asked to state which categories of staff were involved in IR management. For two (25%) universities, the Deputy librarian supervised IR issues, the Systems librarian was responsible for training and Faculty librarians managed the IR. Two (25%) directors explained that they considered the talent or skills of individuals to identify IR champions, so they both had an Assistant librarian and a Senior library assistant with IT competence managing the IR. Another two (25%) directors said they had assistant librarians and the reader services section staff managing the IR. All the directors said they had incorporated an IT person in their staffing for maintenance of the system and training of library staff on IR issues. A follow-up question asked respondents to state their role regarding the IR. To corroborate the responses Library Directors were asked to state IR responsibilities that were fulfilled by their staff. The following duties were mentioned:
Librarians' attitudes and perceptions of institutional repositories “Where the library leads, others on campus often follow” (Little, 2012, p.66). It is important to note that IR development absorbs a significant amount of staff time given that academics are on record as being largely resistant to participation in the development of IRs (McKay, 2007). This calls for attitudes and behaviours of academic librarians towards OA to take a positive shift to ensure success of the IR initiative in the universities. Potvin (2013) underscores the need for every librarian to possess an understanding of OA and IR concepts and be at ease with depositing works in the IR. This knowledge will motivate and enable them to carry out OA outreach activities beyond the library and provoke introspection “within the library around the functionality of publishing platforms and the spectrum of OA” (Potvin, 2013, p.70). Impartation of such knowledge can be achieved through self-study, workshops, webinars, and programming. Open access has significantly contributed to the evolvement of roles of academic librarians in scholarly communication from facilitators to active players in knowledge production, dissemination and sharing, thus disrupting the status quo. 408
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i. Sit in committees that decide what goes in the IR ii. Solicitation and collection of articles from academics and uploading on IR iii. Collection and requesting for metadata from faculty to be put on IR. iv. Engage in IR awareness campaigns. v. Teaching/instruction on how to search IR. vi. Quality control of IR content. vii. IR administration, co-ordination and Supervision of IR activities.
Fourteen (56%) librarians said ‘Yes’ while 11 (44%) said ‘No’. Both inhouse and off-the-job training had been offered including; training on Greenstone and DSpace software; workshops run by International Network for the availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) and the Zimbabwe University Libraries Consortium (ZULC) workshops; inhouse training by Systems librarians; self-training and, contact visits to universities, such as the UZ and Midlands State University (MSU). Library directors were asked if the library liaised with faculty regarding the depositing of research materials and use of the IR. All the directors said that liaison with faculty was done through faculty librarians who kept a close relationship with them and who were encouraged to talk about the IR at faculty board meetings. One (12.5%) director said he took a leading role in encouraging faculty to deposit content in the IR thought the responsibility to communicate with faculty and obtains articles lay with the Acting Manager. Another director admitted slackness in performance of that role by their library though it was the turf of the IR librarian. One (12.5%) director said that they informally engage influential researchers to convince scholars to participate in populating the repository. Another librarian also said even though they encouraged faculty librarians to liaise with faculty the responsibility had largely been relegated to the IR librarian who also liaised with the research office. Faculty/IR librarians were then asked if they had any qualifications in publishing. The researcher felt that the management of the IR requires someone with a background in publishing to understand the nature of materials being handled as scholarly publications. Five (20%) respondents said ‘Yes’ and the majority, 20 (80%) said ‘No’.
Following-up to this question, Library directors were asked if they had established an IR team or committee and to state the criteria followed in selection of the team. It was the researcher's opinion that inclusion of stakeholders to lighten the job of the librarians in driving the IR project. To corroborate the result, IR policy documents were analysed to check if they contained a clause on establishment of an IR committee. The Library directors said they all had established IR committees whose compositions had slight differences, but common amongst them was the inclusion of an Information Technology (IT) expert, an IR librarian or the person in charge of the running of the IR and faculty librarians. Committees of three (37.5%) universities included a representative from faculty and the Pro-Vice Chancellor academic affairs. One (12.5%) university's committee comprised only of library staff and a law faculty member whose role was to offer legal advice. Another university had a library quality assurance team which subsequently reports to the university's quality assurance committee. From the five IR policy documents, only two (25%) made mention of the IR committee and outlined the committee's functions while other policies did not. Those libraries whose committees included faculty explained that they recognised the need to involve all stakeholders, while the institution whose committee had a heavy presence of library staff considered “People that are directly involved with e.g. the identification of material, the IT practices that are involved in the creation of the IR and, also the involvement of users.” Amongst the functions of the committees as stated by the policies were: determination of “policies on submission and dissemination and submission of content, copyright issues for approval by the university”, and to ensure the smooth running of the repository. Librarians were asked to indicate if their work was affected the establishment of the IR. Eighteen (72%) said ‘Yes’ and seven (28%) said ‘No’. A follow-up multiple response question sought to establish how they were affected. Eleven (44%) respondents had responsibilities added to the existing ones, eight (32%) were assigned new responsibilities and six (24%) were not affected at all. Library directors were asked what implications of establishing the repository were on staffing. They were also asked if staff were reorganized and if new duties were assigned. All the directors lamented that government-imposed job freeze had prevented them from recruiting new staff. They said they had to reorganise existing staff and spread the old and new duties to the staff, resulting in job enlargement and or job enrichment for some individuals in the library. One director said:
Attitudes and perceptions of librarians towards IRs Attitudes and perceptions of implementers of an innovation play a significant role to acceptance and usage of the innovation. Repository and faculty librarians were asked to state, on a five-point Likert scale, to state the extent to which they agreed with the notion that “libraries should create professional positions for the management of OA initiatives, projects and repositories”. Table 1 shows that twelve (48%) respondents strongly agreed, five (20%) agreed, and six (24%) strongly disagreed giving a mean 3.63 (SD: 1.680). Respondents had to give explanations for their responses. Explanations given by respondents who were in agreement with the statement, revealed the sentiment that the IR required a special skilled person to manage it with one (9.1%) expressing that, “IR comes with a lot of responsibilities. It is therefore, weird and seemingly insurmountable, for example, for one man to shoulder all its responsibilities. This compromises its effectiveness. A full-fledged IR unit is needed.” Another question asked the librarians if they thought IRs were important drivers of scholarly publishing. They had to provide explanations to their response. All respondents said ‘Yes’ giving varied explanations with excerpts stating: a. Indeed, I guess it starts at a small scale, confidence increasing from internal reviews etc. It also encourages others to write or research seeing other people's output, and
“the environment we are operating in where, because of the harsh economic climate, the staffing situation has remained stagnant, particularly for service or support systems. So, recruitment of personnel has been frozen. We don't have the leisure, if you want, of recruiting people that are specifically for the IR or with specific skills.”
Table 1 Need to create professional positions.
However, another director said they had to recruit an IT person “because the software had to be noted, defined, modified and they had to train the people that were going to be doing this on a daily basis”. Another director said they were able to recruit two assistant librarians, but other staff were moved and assigned new duties. The next question asked librarians if they had received any training on IR maintenance and content recruitment and, to state the mode of training where such had been received. To corroborate the responses, Library directors were also asked if the staff had been trained on open sources and IR issues, and to explain the nature of training received.
Valid
409
Strongly disagree Disagree Not sure Agree Strongly agree Total
Frequency
Percent
Valid percent
Cumulative percent
6
24.0
24.0
24.0
1 1 5 12 25
4.0 4.0 20.0 48.0 100.0
4.0 4.0 20.0 48.0 100.0
28.0 32.0 52.0 100.0
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b. Researchers are encouraged, motivated to publish because their work is exposed to researchers around the world who would not otherwise have access to it through traditional channels.
Table 3 IRs will fail is academic libraries are excluded.
The explanations point to the fact visibility of scholars' work to a wider audience through IRs would motivate them to publish. A followup question solicited the librarians' perceptions of IRs as information resources for academic research. Extracts of responses stated:
Valid
a) They are reliable source as the research papers have been produced by researchers i.e. academics themselves knowledgeable or experts in their fields of specialty. b) Very important because researchers share information locally and internationally. They give local content with local examples but also give room to compare with what others are doing elsewhere and room for partnership across the globe.
Discussion and implication of findings This section discusses the findings in relation to the reviewed literature and also guided by the UTAUT model which will helps to explain the behavioural intentions of individuals to adopt IR technologies to use in the universities. This study was drawn from a wider study which explored utilisation of IRs in Zimbabwe's public universities. This study answered the question: What is the role of the academic librarian in promoting the institutional repository? This was achieved by establishing changes brought by IRs brought to the librarians' work culture, Table 2 OA principles in sync with role of academic libraries.
Valid
Strongly disagree Disagree Agree Strongly agree Total
Percent
Valid percent
3
12.0
12.0
12.0
1 5 16 25
4.0 20.0 64.0 100.0
4.0 20.0 64.0 100.0
16.0 36.0 100.0
Percent
Valid percent
Cumulative percent
4
16.0
16.0
16.0
11 10 25
44.0 40.0 100.0
44.0 40.0 100.0
60.0 100.0
ascertain coping strategies employed to cope with the IR system, and determination of their attitudes and perceptions of IRs. The constructs ‘effort expectancy’ and ‘facilitating conditions’ drawn from the UTAUT model helped to explain how the librarians accepted and adopted IR systems to use in capturing, storing disseminating and preserve their institutions' and scholars' intellectual capital. The results of the study can be used to inform other institution in developing countries of how to cope with the IR system under difficult economic environments. Literature (Potvin, 2013) indicated that responsibilities for OA in libraries can be shouldered by subject specialists, reference librarians, liaisons, library units or positions involved in digital projects, collection development, or electronic resources. This concurs with the findings which revealed a mixed bag of designations and rank within the libraries and across the universities involving both junior and senior staff. The government-imposed job freeze left the libraries without an option but to utilise existing staff. The ‘effort expectancy’ construct significantly influenced the decision by some of the libraries to consider staff's ICT skills and interest in (re)assigning IR responsibilities to them. This strategy motivates the staff endowed with ICT skills and knowledge for them to manage and operate IRs with limited difficulties difficulty. Literature, (McKay, 2007; Potvin, 2013), underscored the need for technical expertise in aggregation, harvesting, analytics and impact assessment. The staff mix reveals discord and lack of agreement amongst Zimbabwe's public universities as to which rank of library staff should manage and maintain the IR. This could work negatively on the morale of employees particularly when the job enlargement does not come with an incentive, worse still, for junior staff who shoulder the same responsibilities as the senior staff. The job enlargement strategy has implications on the performance of the librarians in service delivery, and efficiency and effectiveness in the execution of their duties. The strategy helped the libraries overcome the possibilities of staff developing resentment towards IRs after finding the development process taxing and time-consuming (Jain, 2011; McKay, 2007). The findings showed that most (mean of 3.64) librarians felt there was a need to create professional positions for managing OA initiatives due to the numerous responsibilities associated with the systems. This sentiment confirms McKay (2007) and Pinfield, Gardner and MacColl (2002) view that an IR maintainer requires “technical expertise, an understanding of metadata and metadata standards, copyright knowledge [and licensing agreements] and the inclination to collate research publications”. The view of opening of an IR unit within the library to manage OA and IR initiatives is quite noble as this would enable the librarians to specialise in open science issues and “provide institutional leadership to drive change in this service area” (Raju et al., 2018). However, efforts were being made towards capacity building for staff for them to have the requisite skills to use the software, run and maintain the IR through in-house or off-the-job workshops. By organizing and sending their staff for skills training, the libraries created an enabling environment for the library staff to execute their duties and responsibilities effectively and efficiently. When the drivers of a system are empowered, they are motivated to adopt and use the system and advocate for its use by the end-users. It was intriguing to find that a majority (80%) of the librarians did not have a qualification in
They perceive IRs to be crucial information reserves providing access to and enabling sharing of locally produced content. On a five-point Likert scale, IR/faculty librarians had to state the extent to which they thought the statement that “the principles of OA are in tandem with the role of academic libraries”. Results in Table 2 show a majority, 16 (64% of respondents strongly agreed while three (12%) strongly disagreed giving a mean 4.2 (SD: 1.385). One respondent who highly agreed with the statement explained that, “open access promotes the five laws of Ranganathan without which information could not reach its intended recipients”. Lastly, on a five-point Likert scale, the librarians were required to indicate the degree to which they agreed with the statement that ‘OA IRs would fail without the active involvement of academic libraries.’ Table 3 shows that most of the respondents, 11 (44%) agreed, 10 (40%) strongly agreed, and four (16%) strongly disagreed, giving a mean 3.92 (SD: 1.382). Those who disagreed opined that that scholars were more important IR stakeholders as content developers. The majority having agreed with the statement underscored the bibliographic descriptions, indexing, abstracting and preservation roles played by academic libraries in facilitating easy access to and dissemination of information to the readership; a skill which gives them an edge in IR development. On a five-point Likert scale the librarians had to state the extent to which they agreed with the notion that “libraries should create professional positions for the management of OA initiatives, projects and repositories”.
Frequency
Strongly disagree Agree Strongly agree Total
Frequency
Cumulative percent
410
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publishing. Possession of knowledge and skills of publishing would be an added advantage to IR maintainers and developers as they would understand the nature of scholarly publications and the publishing behaviours of authors. This would help them to devise powerful services that will attract participation by the academic community in the development of the IR. Given that poor funding of universities by government (Kanyengo, 2007) has seen libraries failing to provide requisite research literature, lack of publishing skills and knowledge is a drawback to active participation in knowledge production and dissemination in the institutions like their counterparts in the global North are doing (Czerniewicz, 2013). The libraries would remain relevant in the evolving scholarly communication and publishing environment while at the same time rescuing their institutions from the effects of the ailing economy on research (re)generation. The libraries demonstrated commitment to development of the repositories by creating an enabling environment through IR teams or committees to solicit participation of stakeholders, thus, fostering a sense of ownership of the IR in the stakeholders and establish the repository's authority and value in the institution. Inclusion of a quality assurance team in one institution would contribute to showcasing high quality research items in the repository reflecting the institution's quality on the global sphere. Involvement of lawyers would also help the library to deal with copyright, licensing and permissions issues and avoid legal wrangles with publishers and authors. Stakeholder involvement goes in tandem with Lynch's (2003) perception that collaboration amongst librarians, information technologists, faculty and university administrators, and policy makers is essential to IR effectiveness. Participation of academics facilitates awareness creation in the scholarly community and persuasion of scholars to deposit their works (Cullen & Chawner, 2011). The burden of IR advocacy is offloaded from the shoulders of librarians from it being solely their responsibility a shared one. Resultantly, a return on investment would be achieved by the universities in research and development, and IR technology as soon as their intellectual output is visible and accessible to a wider audience, not forgetting the benefits accruing to the scholars and researchers locally. The findings revealed positive attitudes in librarians towards IRs as appreciated the role of the repositories in facilitating scholarly communication. Literature (Potvin, 2013) proffered that Knowledge and understanding of the role of IRs by librarians has both professional and institutional benefits including; closure of the gap between librarians' attitudes and behaviours towards OA; motivation and empowerment for OA outreach beyond the library; provide insight into repository resources that may inform information literacy; and provoke dialogue and discussions amongst librarians on the functionality of publishing platforms and OA. The performance expectancy variable from the UTAUT model resonates well with this perception. The result indicates that, the librarians are well-trained and understood “ethics, values, and foundational principles” of librarianship (Finks, 2010; Potvin, 2013) and were not lost in the OA environment. Hence, the expressed conviction that the initiative was bound to fail if they were not active partners.
libraries to establish the repository's authority and value within the institution. Overall, the librarians demonstrated an understanding and appreciation of OA and IRs and their role in scholarly communication and publishing. It stands to be noted that failure by the leading university, UZ, in IR development to participate in the study could have affected the results of the study. In addition, the researcher could not find literature on the effect of IRs on the work of librarians in the African setting. Availability of such literature could have contributed to the debate on the issue with an African perspective. Recommendations The following recommendations were made: University libraries that had not considered staff interests and skills or competencies in job reassignment and distribution of IR responsibilities need to take that factor into account in order to boost the morale their librarians and increase acceptance and use of the repositories. In addition, as resources permit, the university libraries should establish an IR position which would enable them to find a suitable unit within the library for the IR (e.g. acquisitions unit or special collections unit). Continuous training and offering of refresher courses for the staff for capacity building in numerous skills and tasks is necessary so that they remain relevant, efficient and effective in the OA environment and avoid relapse in cases where particular activities are not regularly undertaken. In keeping with the trend where academic libraries are becoming publishing entities for their institutions' scholarship, the university libraries could send their staff for training to institutions like the Africa University for training on IP issues and The National University of Science and Technology for publishing skills. Declaration of Competing Interest None. Acknowledgements The author's would like to thank National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe. Research grant RB No. 118/15. References Abrahams, L., Burke, M., & Mouton, J. (2010). Research productivity-visibility-accessibility and scholarly communication in Southern African universities. The African Journal of Information and Communication, 10, 20–36. http://reference.sabinet.co.za/ webx/access/electronic_journals/afjic/afjic_n10_a3.pdf, Accessed date: 21 February 2015. Alemayehu, M. W. (2010). Researchers’ Attitude to Using Institutional Repositories: A Case Study of the Oslo University Institutional Repository (DUO). ODA Open Digital Archive. Online https://oda.hio.no/jspui/handle/10642/426. Boissy, R., & Schatz, B. (2011). Scholarly communications from the publisher perspective. Journal of Library Administration, 51(5–6), 476–484. Online http://www.tandfonline. com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01930826.2011.589355, Accessed date: 11 February 2015. Calderón-Martínez, A., & Ruiz-Conde, E. (2013). The participation and web visibility of university digital repositories in the European context. Communicar, 40, 193–200. https://doi.org/10.3916/C40-2013-03-10. Casey, A. M. (2012). Does tenure matter? Factors influencing faculty contributions to institutional repositories. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 1(1), eP1032. https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1032. Cassella, M., & Morando, M. (2012). Fostering new roles for librarians: Skills set for repository managers—Results of a survey in Italy. LIBER Quarterly, 21(3–4). Chalabi, L., & Dahmane, M. (2011). Open access in developing countries: African open archives. Information Services & Use, 31(2011), 111–119. https://doi.org/10.3233/ isu-2012-0640. Chilimo, W. (2016). Institutional repositories: Awareness and self-archiving practices of academic researchers in selected public universities in Kenya. The International Information & Library Review, 49(3), 176–186. Christensen, C., Aaron, S., & Clark, W. (2003). Disruption in education. Educause Review, 38(1), 44–54. Online http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0313.pdf, Accessed date: 10 October 2018. Crow, R.. The case for institutional repositories: A SPARC position paper. (2002). Online http://www.sparc.arl.org/sites/default/files/media_files/instrepo.pdf (Retrieved 16 July 2014) .
Conclusion The university libraries have not made a collective decision as to which rank in the library should shoulder IR responsibilities the university libraries, a factor which could demotivate staff and ultimately affect the success of IR innovation. Though the reorganisation of staff and duties (due to the job freeze) would create a conducive facilitating environment for IR development, library staff could suffer fatigue and loss of morale due to work overloaded. However, an enabling environment for the staff to execute their duties and responsibilities effectively and efficiently was created by ensuring that they received training on IR software and IR issues. In addition, stakeholder involvement through IT teams and IR management committees assists the 411
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