Open Access in Theory and Practice: The Uses of Theory in Research on Open Access and their Relationship with Practice

尽管库尔特·勒温（Kurt Lewin）有一句著名的格言：“没有什么比好的理论更实用”，但理论与实践之间往往存在差距。理论与实践（以及理论家与实践者）之间的关系并不总是和谐的，理论往往被视为远离实践，而理论家（通常在学术机构工作）与实践者（在企业、公共部门组织和学术界以外的其他组织）的相关性几乎没有什么可说的。本项目将探讨一个特定问题背景下的理论与实践关系：开放获取（OA）出版和研究传播。将研究成果（同行评审的期刊文章、书籍章节等）公开供任何人访问和使用，现在变得越来越普遍。世界各地的许多研究资助者现在都要求资助者这样做。然而，这种类型的开放获取带来了许多挑战：经济、技术和文化，仅举几例。这些挑战可以通过各种方式进行研究，但一种潜在的有价值的方法是开发、使用和测试与OA相关的理论。正如苏珊·格雷戈尔（Susan Gregor）所说，理论包含了“猜想、模型、框架或知识体系”，它有可能帮助分析和解释现象，甚至可以预测在特定条件下可能发生的事情，或者建议应该采取什么行动来实现预期的结果。这个项目将研究开放获取理论和实践之间的相互作用。特别是，它将讨论理论在多大程度上有助于解释OA现象，并已被从业者用于告知行动。它将调查学术研究人员和实践者（包括政策制定者、出版商和图书馆员）在OA研究中理论的价值，以及理论如何为OA实践提供信息。它还将调查OA实践如何为理论提供信息。该项目将从检查理论如何已经被用于OA开始。对同行评议文献的初步分析表明，大约有20种理论以不同的方式应用于OA研究。这些包括广泛使用的理论，如博弈论（来自应用数学）和公地理论（来自经济学）。其他使用的理论包括创新扩散理论（旨在理解社区采用新发展的方式）和技术接受和使用统一理论（关注影响个人接受技术的因素）。也将涵盖OA研究产生理论的方式。这些理论被使用或发展的方式，它们被用来解释OA的哪些方面，以及这些研究产生了什么样的结果和建议。然后，该项目将继续与参与OA的利益相关者进行详细的访谈，检查理论在为实践提供信息方面的价值和使用，以及OA的实践如何促进理论发展。政策制定者、图书馆员、出版商、顾问和研究人员将被邀请分享他们对理论的态度（积极和消极），共进行约40次访谈。他们的观点将会被严密地分析，并使用成熟的专题分析方法和其他方法，从而建立一个关于开放获取的理论与实践关系的详细画面。本项目将解决这些问题，以阐明开放获取现象本身和理论-实践问题。希望通过这样做，它将有助于更好地理解OA，目前一个重要的和有争议的政策发展领域，以及理论与实践之间的关系，这是一个涉及学术研究价值的核心问题，它对公共政策，商业创新和专业实践中的现实应用产生了影响。

Despite Kurt Lewin's well-known maxim "there is nothing so practical as a good theory", there is often a gap between theory and practice. The relationship between theory and practice (and theorists and practitioners) is not always harmonious, with theory often seen as remote from practice, and theorists (usually working in academic institutions) as having little to say of relevance to practitioners (in businesses, public sector organisations and other organisations outside academia). This project will investigate the theory-practice relationship in the context of a particular issue: open-access (OA) publication and dissemination of research. Making research outputs (peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters etc) publicly available for anyone to access and use is now becoming increasingly common. Many research funders worldwide now require grant holders to do so. However, open access of this sort creates numerous challenges: economic, technical, and cultural, to name just some. These challenges can be investigated in various ways, but one potentially valuable way is to develop, use and test theory in relation to OA. Theory, encompassing, as Susan Gregor puts it, "conjectures, models, frameworks, or body of knowledge", has the potential to help analyse and explain phenomena, even offer predictions on what could happen given certain conditions, or suggest what actions should be taken to achieve intended outcomes. This project will investigate the interactions between open access theory and practice. In particular, it will address the question of the extent to which theory has been helpful in explaining the OA phenomenon and has been used to inform action by practitioners. It will investigate the value placed on theory in research on OA by both academic researchers and practitioners (including policymakers, publishers and librarians), and the way theory has informed OA practice. It will also investigate how OA practice has informed theory. The project will begin by examining how theory has already been used in relation to OA. An initial analysis of the peer-reviewed literature shows that around 20 theories have been used in various ways in research on OA. These include widely-used theories like Game Theory (derived from Applied Mathematics) and Commons Theory (from Economics). Other theories used have included Innovation Diffusion Theory (which aims to understand ways communities adopt new developments) and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (which focuses on factors affecting individuals' take-up of technologies). The ways in which OA studies have generated theory will also be covered. The ways in which theories have been used or developed, which aspects of OA they have been used to explain, and what kinds of outcomes and recommendations have resulted from the studies will be analysed.The project will then go on to conduct detailed interviews with stakeholders involved in OA, examining the value and use of theory in informing practice, and how the practice of OA feeds into theory development. Policymakers, librarians, publishers, consultants and researchers will be invited to share their attitudes to theory (positive and negative), with a total of about 40 interviews being conducted. Their views will be closely analysed using well-established thematic analysis methods and other approaches enabling a detailed picture of the theory-practice relationship relating to OA to be built up. This project will address these issues in order to cast light on both the open access phenomenon itself and on the theory-practice question. It is hoped in doing so it will contribute a better understanding of OA, currently an important and controversial area policy development, and of the relationship between theory and practice, an issue which goes to the heart of the value of academic research and its impact on real-world applications in public policy, commercial innovation and professional practice.