Changing Research Practices in the Digital Information and Communication Environment

This 202-page study outlines an agenda for the evolutionary development of a sustainable research information and communication infrastructure.
It also examines research practices with a focus on how they are changing and what the implications of those changes are.

The study asserts that national prosperity is closely tied to innovation and that "the capacity to
create and disseminate scientific and scholarly information are increasingly fundamental determinants..." According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), it observed "that prosperity in a knowledge economy depends as much, if not more, on the knowledge distribution power of the system than it does on its knowledge production power."

According to the authors, this suggests that the infrastructure which supports research communication and collaboration, information search and access, and dissemination and publications are all key to innovation as the national level. This study seeks to provide research that sheds light on potential future needs. It does so by creating a framework for analysis based on examining statistical and literature reviews. Interviews and workshops were used and analysis focuses on three key areas of research activity: communication and collaboration; information search and access; and dissemination and publication.

The key questions in conducting this research are:

• How do researchers conduct their research, and how is that changing?
• What are their major information sources, and how are those sources changing?
• How do researchers access, use and manage information, and how is that changing?
• How do researchers use their sources in the creation of new content, and how that is changing?

According to the authors, some of the key findings of this research include the fact that there is a "new mode of knowledge production emerging" which is

changing research practices and creating new information access and dissemination needs. Further, they suggest that there is "an increasing focus on
interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research; an increasing focus on problems, rather than techniques; greater emphasis on

collaborative work and communication; and greater emphasis on more diverse and informal modes of communication." They also suggest that there is a need to

view the system for the creation, production, and distribution of scientific and scholarly knowledge "holistically."