Among the various types of research activities, research communication holds a central place and is linked with production and distribution of knowledge. Scholarly discourse and cooperation would be impossible without communication. Publications are products of research communication. Generally, the research community is a network of communicating people with different specialisations, and science and research is communication (Nentwich, 2003). Willinsky (2006) argues “a commitment to the value and quality of research carries with it a responsibility to extend the circulation of such work as far as possible and ideally to all who are interested in it and all who might profit by it” (p. xii). He explains that making research freely available is not only about human rights and greater circulation of knowledge but also increasing research impact.
Research communication serves to boost strategic research - it contributes to the growth of knowledge by improving the effectiveness and efficiency of research. Secondly, it contributes to proper knowledge management in that it is geared towards supporting scholarly research in evaluating results, institutions and researchers. In addition, research communication facilitates both the generation of relevant research problems (raising the right questions) and the solution to these problems (giving the right answers), which relate to the issues of use, availability and retrievability of information (Roosendaal &
Geurts, 1997).
Communication of research results serves to add new observations and ideas to what is already known; thus, creating a higher level of knowledge. Isaac Newton illustrated this metaphorically when he proclaimed, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” (Meadows, 1998, p.8). This metaphor connotes two implications about communication: (1) that the process of accumulation involves providing information about one’s own work to others and, in return, receiving information from them; and (2) information must be made available in a durable, readily accessible form since the accumulation process stretches over time (Meadows, 1998).
One of the conditions for scientific communication is that it should provide effective and efficient ways of filtering new research results that allow proper "aging" of research models and theories (Roosendaal & Geurts, 1997). Thus certification should be subject to the conditions of strategic research for obvious reasons of consistency.
Figure 2.1 below represents the four main functions of scientific communication:
registration, awareness, certification and archiving. It shows the overall communication process as it is embedded within the research process. The vertical axis describes registration and awareness, which can both be seen as different aspects of scientific observation; the horizontal axis describes certification and archiving, which can be seen as different aspects of scientific judgment. The registration function is both a concrete and objective one; the awareness function is abstract and subjective; the certification function is concrete and subjective; and the archive function is abstract and objective.
There is a half plane of two objective functions (registration & archiving) and a half plane of two subjective functions (awareness & certification). The subjective communication functions are the ones that are internal to the research process itself, whereas the objective functions are external to the research process and can easily be outsourced within the market to the product space, viz. the publisher and the library.
However, it should be noted that scientific communication results above all form the interactions or transactions between the functions, which include the transfer of content (primarily the author-reader interface) and the transfer of (consolidated) knowledge (primarily the subjective-objective interface). The latter is in particular important for strategic research as it largely determines its degree of applicability (Roosendaal &
Geurts, 1997).
From figure 2.1 below, the archive function serves as a main transaction function or sluice between author and reader. This raises the immediate issue of integrating informal communication into the platform of such an archive leading to an integration of formal and informal communication, which means formalising informal communication into one and the same platform and management system. A result of these developments is that the now distinct roles of publishers and libraries will be merged to become nodes in the overall management of scientific communication (Roosendaal & Geurts, 1997).
Moreover, in the paper-based era the published article in a refereed journal is archived in an ad hoc fashion as libraries shelf it across the world (Van de Sompel, et al. 2004); thus limiting access. This necessitates the need to explore possibilities of alternative models
of research communication, especially ICT-enabled ones, which could enhance accessibility of research outputs. This study was an attempt to develop a contextual framework for adoption of ICT for research communication for enhanced scientific research accessibility and visibility by researchers in Kenya.
Figure 2.1: The four functions of scientific communication (Roosendaal & Geurts, 1997).
There is a close link between the four functions of communication represented in figure 2.1 above and the object of this research. The research investigated the socio-cultural, institutional and technological factors that affect the adoption of ICT for research communication, which in essence are the registration, awareness, certification and archiving functions.
As summarised in table 2.1 below, other scholars share and add to Kircz and Rosendaal’s (1996) views on the functions of research publication system (Franks, 1993;
Guedon, 1994; Kircz & Roosendaal, 1996; Morton, 1997; Kling & McKim, 1999;
Nentwich, 2003; Kling, 2004; Van de Sompel, et al., 2004; Thompson, 2005; Warner, 2005; Borgman, 2007). The publication system is the nucleus of formal communication among researchers (Nentwich, 2003).
registration (concrete, external)
certification (concrete, internal)
archiving (abstract, external) author,
concrete
reader, abstract
internal awareness
(abstract, internal)
external
Table 2.1: Functions of research publication system
Source Functions of research publishing system
Franks (1993) • Certification
• Distribution
• Marketing
• Archiving
Guedon (1994) • Legitimisation & authority
• Communication & diffusion
• Archiving & memory
Kircz & Roosendaal (1996) • Certification
• Registration, i.e. ownership protection
• Awareness
• Platform for communication
• Archiving
Morton (1997) • Serial communication
• Public disclosure
• Feedback from informed readers to authors or editors
• Preservation of data
Roosendaal & Geurts (1997) • Certification
• Registration
Nentwich (2003) • Certification
• Registration
• Diffusion
• Transparency
• Discourse
• Preservation
Warner (2005) • Certification
• Registration
• Awareness
• Archiving
Thompson (2005) • Certification
• Dissemination
Borgman (2007) • Legitimisation
• Dissemination
• Access, preservation and curation.
Source Functions of research publishing system