PhD thesis,
Cultural and contextual shaping of scholarly communication. Publishing and reading practices in Finnish state research institutes
fi=Väitöskirja (monografia) | en=Doctoral dissertation (monograph)|, (2014)
Abstract
Communication has been portrayed as the essence of science. Thus, communication practices such as publishing and reading are one of the main tasks in scholarly work. In recent years, communication has become even more important, as for example governments have started to evaluate research primarily by visible outcomes: publications. Consequently, researchers are not only encouraged but also required to show the impact of their work by this form of productive output. 

This study examines scholarly publishing and reading practices in state research institutes. Earlier studies of scholarly publishing and reading practices have focused mainly on universities, while studies focusing on state research institutes are in minority. State research institutes are important actors along universities in national innovation systems. The traditional role of state research institutes has been to produce ‘policy-oriented research’ for the needs of Finnish society and decision-making. 

Publishing and reading practices in research institutes were studied by collecting both qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative interviews yield insight into the everyday work practices of researchers in Finnish research institutes. Quantitative data from a survey covering all 18 state research institutes in Finland forms the core of the study and shows the big picture concerning publishing and reading practices and their variation in different disciplines. Study includes various academic, professional and general publishing forums. Results also show how different cultural and contextual factors influence publishing and reading practices. Indicators derived from Becher’s (1989) and Whitley’s (1984) theories of academic cultures are applied to explore the impact of cultural factors such as nature of research, field interdependence, and dependence between researchers, on publishing and reading practices. In addition, the influence of amount and types of collaboration partners, types of research funding and nature of research projects are examined. 
 
Researchers in research institutes engage in collaborations with many types of organisations. The main collaboration organisations are Finnish universities and public research institutes. In the technical sciences, collaboration with the private sector is common. Research funding in state research institutes is covered mainly by governmental basic funding. The main external funders are ministries, Tekes, and the EU. Researchers typically work on many research projects at the same time. 

Four publishing orientations were identified from the survey data. These were: professional, academic article, academic conference, and industrial. Three types of reading orientations, academic, professional and fact orientation, were detected. In all, active reading is associated with active publishing. Professional publishing and reading are most typical in bio and environmental sciences, social sciences and humanities. Academic article publishing and reading is most typical in health care sciences and bio and environmental sciences. Conference and industrial publishing is most common in technical and natural sciences. 

Academic publishing and reading is especially related to conducting theoretical and empirical research. Of the contextual factors academic publishing and reading was related to collaborating with other academic organizations such as universities working without external research funding or funding from the Academy of Finland. Those working with multiple research projects at the same time and with long projects were most active publishers and readers of academic literature. Professional publishing and reading was related to specialist work / consulting. Most active publishers and readers of professional literature worked without external funding and collaborated with various other research organizations. Industrial publishing on the other hand was highly related to collaborating and having research funding from the private sector. Working with many projects at the same time and long projects were related to academic and professional communication. Short research projects were related to active industrial publishing. 

In sum, the study shows that different types of research, conducted in different disciplines, with different research funding, in collaboration with different types of organisations and in different types of research projects, are related to differences in publishing and reading practices. Therefore, it is reasonable to argue that studies focusing only on academic outputs of research (such as journal articles) give only a limited picture of scholarly communication practices. In state research institutes in addition to academic audience, communication with professional and industrial audiences is important. In research institutes, where the nature of research is often applied and research outputs are not always academic publications, research outcomes cannot be evaluated with the same criteria as those used in the evaluation of universities. Also disciplinary differences in communication practices should be taken into account. According to the results, the nature of the research and the aims of the research projects should be taken as points of departure in research evaluation. State research institutes are engaged in structural reorganisation at the moment. Forthcoming changes such as mergers of research institutes and the changes in funding structure may have an effect on researcher’s ways of publishing and reading. In the future research it will be interesting to follow how the reorganisation works out and what consequences it may have for research and communication practices.
