Futures of Open Access and Library Publishing in Taiwan｜Master's thesis

Abstract of Master's thesis:

"Since the 21st century, scholarly communication has entered a very complicated business operation mode. Periodical publishers join the academic publishing industry, and gradually form a huge transnational publishing system, which makes the academic circles couldn't to defend the freedom of scholarly communication and limit the academic libraries to provide research resources for scholars. In this context, a new academic publishing model quietly opened the prelude to counterattack, provide the opportunity for academia and the library re-mastering academic leadership. This research aims at exploring the possible futures of Taiwan's scholarly communication in 2035 and examining whether the ways of "open access and library publishing" could become an alternative way for Taiwan's academia to break away from publishers. This research utilize futures methodology, including the Futures Triangle, Delphi Method, Futures Table, Scenario Analysis and Causal Layered Analysis (CLA), to observe the academic community and library that they will have what kind of thinking about the future development of scholarly communication. Through the process of information-gathering, interviewing, brainstorming and deepening the future possibilities, scenarios generated should create subsequent actions to pursue the true value of scholarly communication. Additionally, the weak signals also revealed wildcard scenarios which may surprise us along the way of trend development. In conclusion, the primary goal is to construct the future images of scholarly communication which may lead to the stakeholders' preferred future in Taiwan and a much broader knowledge context."

Author: 傅淑琴(Shu-Chin Fu)

Supervisor: Dr. Kuo-Hua Chen

University: Tamkang University / Department of Educational Technology