Separate Worlds? Publishing Patterns and Views on Publishing at Two Academic Departments

This Master’s thesis aims to map and analyse publishing patterns at two academic departments at the University of Gothenburg - the department of Physics and the department of History. The investigation has been guided by a set of questions: Who chooses to publish their scientific outcomes? In which forums do they publish findings? In what kind of media are the results published? What type of findings get to be published? The departments' publication lists have been examined, covering the years 2004-2007. Furthermore, ten scientists have been asked to describe factors contributing to their individual publishing pattern. The analysis leans on communication theory and in particular on three concepts developed by information scientists Rob Kling and Geoffrey McKim. Their notions of trustworthiness, publicity and accessibility were created as both analytical and instrumental devices. Here, they are used analytically to describe and interpret publishing patterns. The comparison of the two departments' publishing patterns reveals both similarities and differences. They differ in their choices of publication media and types of publications. However, both departments regarded publishing as acts of communication. Hence, they shared a will to communicate scientific findings and (among other factors) this will emerged as an important incitement for choosing to publish at all.Uppsatsnivå: