Understanding copyright in support of scholarship: Some possible challenges to scholars and academic librarians in the digital environment?

This paper examines the rationale for copyright and how the copyright exemption of the law promotes scholarship. It examines the possible challenges that may be faced by scholars and academic librarians in implementing the copyright fair dealing exemption in the digital environment following that digital information is protected by copyright law and licensing agreements. The paper attempts to propose possible measures that could be implemented for copyright exceptions to better function and promote scholarship in the digital environment.     

From ivory towers to online bazaars? The internet,social media and competing discourses in the newspaper industry

In line with the development of new media, newspaper companies are facing drastic changes in their competitive environment. Managing change requires both new capabilities and new ways of thinking. Organizational learning could be seen in terms of increasing shared organizational knowledge through changing social practices, which in turn consist of discourses. In this article we investigate the Internet and social-media-related discourse among newspaper journalists, in order to enhance understanding of how social reality is constituted and made sense of in this environment. We identify four types of discourse: Ivory-tower-creating and Shielding, which seem to impede learning, and Accelerating and Connecting, which encourage adaptation to learning and change within newspaper companies.     

How and when information proactiveness leads to operational firm performance in the banking sector of Pakistan? The roles of open innovation,creative cognitive style,and climate for innovation

Utilizing the assumptions of the Resource-based theory, this study examined how and why new, rare, and inimitable resources in the form of information proactiveness motivation influence operational firm performance. We hypothesized open innovation as a mediator between information proactiveness motivation and operational firm performance. We also hypothesized the interactive effects of an individual’s creative cognitive style and information proactiveness motivation on open innovation whereas climate for innovation and open innovation jointly influence operational firm performance. A temporally segregated data (n = 260) was collected in three-time intervals from employees working in the banking sector of Islamabad, Pakistan. Utilizing the PROCESS approach, the findings of the study indicate that open innovation mediates the relationship between information proactiveness motivation, and operational firm performance. Moreover, the creative cognitive style was found to moderate the relationship between information proactiveness motivation and open innovation whereas climate for innovation emerged as a moderator between open innovation and operational firm performance. This research focused on unique information and contextual resources which directly and indirectly play significant roles in promoting the firm's open innovation and subsequent operational firm performance.     

Complements or substitutes? The role of universities and local context in supporting the creation of academic spin-offs

In this paper, we analyze the extent to which University-Level Support Mechanisms (ULSMs) and Local-Context Support Mechanisms (LCSMs) complement or substitute for each other in fostering the creation of academic spin-offs. Using a sample of 404 companies spun off from the 64 Italian Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics universities (STEM universities) over the 2000–2007 period, we show that the ULSMs’ marginal effect on universities’ spin-off productivity may be positive or negative depending on the contribution offered by different LCSMs. Specifically, in any given region, ULSMs complement the legislative support offered to high-tech entrepreneurship whereas they have a substitution effect with regard to the amount of regional social capital, regional financial development, the presence of a regional business incubator, regional public R&D expenses as well as the level of innovative performance in the region. Results support the idea that regional settings’ idiosyncrasies should be considered for universities to develop effective spin-off support policies. This paper contributes to the debate on the evaluation of economic policies supporting entrepreneurship.     

How do men and women differ in research collaborations? An analysis of the collaborative motives and strategies of academic researchers

Do men and women academic faculty vary in their research collaboration patterns and strategies? This straightforward question does not lend itself to a straightforward answer. A great many sex-correlated variables could possibly mitigate the relationship of sex and collaboration. If one finds sex-correlated differences in the number of collaborators, can one infer that there is something intrinsic to men's and women's work strategies and preferences? Or would such differences owe instead to women's and men's different positions in work structures and hierarchies? The focus here is on two sets of research collaboration variables, numbers of collaborators and the collaboration strategies employed. The study uses questionnaire data from the U.S. National Survey of Academic Scientists (n = 1714) and tests several hypotheses about collaboration numbers and strategies. Regression results indicate, counter to the core hypotheses and almost all published literature, that in a properly specified model, one taking into account such factors as tenure, discipline, family status and doctoral cohort, women actually have somewhat more collaborators on average than do men. For both men and women, those with more industrial interactions and those affiliated with university research centers have more collaborators. Men and women differ in their collaborator choice strategies. Men are more likely to be oriented to “instrumental,” and “experience” strategies, while both men and women are motivated by “mentoring” strategies. Regression analyses show that for both men and women, having a coherent collaborator choice strategy predicts the number of collaborators.     

ICT Research,the New Economy,and the Evolving Discipline of Economics: Back to the Future?

Economics-related ICT research has moved from the fringes of the discipline to penetrate all of its branches. It is, therefore, not a separate economics subdiscipline. It is also unlikely to become part of an “ICT or Internet research” proto-discipline. Instead, it should be seen as only one part of a bigger agenda toward a proper “information and knowledge economics” and possibly a future proto-discipline of a “unified theory of information and knowledge” or a meta-discipline of information sciences.     

The shifting role of information processing and management in interdiscipline development: From a collection of tools to a crutch?

Information science, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence have boosted interdisciplinary topics in a wide range of domains, which calls for novel theories and methods specialized for the interdisciplinary research driven by information processing and management (IP&M)-centric methodology, frameworks and methods. In this article, we present a taxonomy of the IP&M_driven interdiscipline describing different levels of cross-disciplinary research paradigms centered around data, information and computing, and discuss opportunities and challenges confronted with the IP&M-driven interdiscipline development. We highlight the role of IP&M (and related disciplines, fields, or areas) in facilitating the interdisciplinary research and development.     

Explanation and trust: what to tell the user in security and AI?

There is a common problem in artificial intelligence (AI) and information security. In AI, an expert system needs to be able to justify and explain a decision to the user. In information security, experts need to be able to explain to the public why a system is secure. In both cases, an important goal of explanation is to acquire or maintain the users’ trust. In this paper, I investigate the relation between explanation and trust in the context of computing science. This analysis draws on literature study and concept analysis, using elements from system theory as well as actor-network theory. I apply the conceptual framework to both AI and information security, and show the benefit of the framework for both fields by means of examples. The main focus is on expert systems (AI) and electronic voting systems (security). Finally, I discuss consequences of the analysis for ethics in terms of (un)informed consent and dissent, and the associated division of responsibilities.     

Government centrality to university–industry interactions: University research centers and the industry involvement of academic researchers

This paper uses data from a national survey of academic researchers in the US to detect how different types of university research centers affect individual-level university–industry interactions. The results suggest that while affiliation with an industry-related center correlates positively with the likelihood of an academic researcher having had any research-related interactions with private companies, affiliation with centers sponsored by government centers programs correlates positively with the level of industry involvement, no matter whether these centers additionally have ties to private companies. The analysis takes the “scientific and technical human capital” approach, which draws from theories of social capital and human capital and proves useful for framing the institutional and resource-based perspectives that characterize much of the literature on university–industry interactions. The scientific and technical human capital approach is taken because its emphasis on the research capacities of individual academic researchers provides a more direct explanation of government centrality to academic researchers’ industry involvement than provide either the resource-based or institutional views. Implications for policy and management as well as for future applications of the scientific and technical human capital approach are discussed.     

Effects of user experience on user resistance to change to the voice user interface of an in‑vehicle infotainment system: Implications for platform and standards competition

This study examines the effects of user experience on user resistance to change—particularly, on the relationship between user resistance to change and its antecedents (i.e. switching costs and perceived value) in the context of the voice user interface of an in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system. This research offers several salient findings. First, it shows that user experience positively moderates the relationship between uncertainty costs (one type of switching cost) and user resistance. It also negatively moderates the association between perceived value and user resistance. Second, the research test results demonstrate that users with a high degree of prior experience with the voice user interface of other smart devices exhibit low user resistance to change to the voice user interface in an IVI system. Third, we show that three types of switching costs (transition costs, in particular) may directly influence users to resist a change to the voice user interface. Fourth, our test results empirically demonstrate that both switching costs and perceived value affect user resistance to change in the context of an IVI system, which differs from the traditional IS research setting (i.e. enterprise systems). These findings may guide not only platform leaders in designing user interfaces, user experiences, and marketing strategies, but also firms that want to defend themselves from platform envelopment while devising defensive strategies in platform and standards competition.     

Figs,Wasps, Carrots and Sticks? A New Theoretical Approach to Understanding the Origin and Nature of Mutualisms and Symbiotic Relationships

<正>Mutualisms—relationships where by two organisms live in tandem with one another,each providing a service to the other—are among the most interesting and complex relationships in nature.These kinds of relationships are generally considered cooperative interactions,whereby each of the organisms incurs substantial cost in trading services with its partner in order for each of them to gain some benefit and increase their chances of survival and evolutionary fitness.While     

Between class and status? Examining the digital divide in Finland,the United Kingdom,and Greece

This article examines the digital divide in terms of access and the cultural use purposes of the Internet in Finland, the United Kingdom, and Greece. The analysis is based on data from Finnish, British, and Greek sections of Eurobarometer collected in 2013 (N = 3,009). Separate measures for class and status are applied in the analysis. The findings indicate that both access to and use of the Internet for cultural purposes are affected by a number of interdependent factors, whose effects and strengths vary significantly among the countries.     

How can contributors to open-source communities be trusted? On the assumption,inference, and substitution of trust

Open-source communities that focus on content rely squarely on the contributions of invisible strangers in cyberspace. How do such communities handle the problem of trusting that strangers have good intentions and adequate competence? This question is explored in relation to communities in which such trust is a vital issue: peer production of software (FreeBSD and Mozilla in particular) and encyclopaedia entries (Wikipedia in particular). In the context of open-source software, it is argued that trust was inferred from an underlying ‘hacker ethic’, which already existed. The Wikipedian project, by contrast, had to create an appropriate ethic along the way. In the interim, the assumption simply had to be that potential contributors were trustworthy; they were granted ‘substantial trust’. Subsequently, projects from both communities introduced rules and regulations which partly substituted for the need to perceive contributors as trustworthy. They faced a design choice in the continuum between a high-discretion design (granting a large amount of trust to contributors) and a low-discretion design (leaving only a small amount of trust to contributors). It is found that open-source designs for software and encyclopaedias are likely to converge in the future towards a mid-level of discretion. In such a design the anonymous user is no longer invested with unquestioning trust.     

The use of material transfer agreements in academia: A threat to open science or a cooperation tool?

The transfer of scientific material and data, which are scientific inputs, is fundamental to knowledge creation dynamics. This transfer is being controlled, more and more, by the use of Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs). Therefore, the effect of MTAs on the dynamic of knowledge creation is an important concern. The aim of this research is to characterise the restrictions imposed by MTAs, and their determinants. We consider MTA diversity based on a comprehensive analysis of the clauses included in 171 MTAs signed by two French universities. We show that the clauses included in MTAs depend on several factors such as kind of material involved, research field, patenting and collection of material. We find that the presence of an industry actor is not associated to more restrictions on publication and intellectual property. We propose a typology of MTAs corresponding to different transfer situations. We discuss the role of MTAs as collaborative tools and the influence of the legal, scientific, political and organisational context.