The philosophy of open access has an important role in the academic publishing world, as it wants to make access to scientific information less restricted to researchers. The reality of it is,...Show moreThe philosophy of open access has an important role in the academic publishing world, as it wants to make access to scientific information less restricted to researchers. The reality of it is, however, more complicated than it seems. The first step is to accept that we are not dealing with a single academic publishing field but with a number of different ones. Each field is highly influenced by the environments in which it emerged. This thesis wants to present two different approaches to the idea of open access to science, and how these approaches were influenced by their regional environments. The two regions analysed in this thesis are Latin America and the Global North. Even though open access has a global character, being part of an international establishment such as academic publishing, the two regions present a diverse development of the idea of open access. These were influenced by the different social, technological and historical environments that the two regions displayed when the ideas of open access were emerging. After presenting a general picture of how the publishing process works and the role of its agents, I analyse the reasons for the use of open access in the two regions and create two timelines portraying the main events, infrastructure, initiatives and regulations that took place and that shaped the two approaches in use today. These two approaches of open access developed at different tempos and they were driven by contrasting motivations. The relationship that the Global North and Latin America have as academic circuits is, however, responsible for the flow of interaction between the two connotations and implementations of open access. In this thesis, I argue that the uneven power dynamics between the two approaches of open access have been influenced by a historical relation between the two regions through a core-periphery perspective. This has created an asymmetrical flow of influences moving from one region to the other, and vice versa. After presenting how these convergences of interactions are experienced on a practical level by researchers and academics, I conclude by suggesting that the discussion should not be about an open access connotation prevailing over the other, but rather about initiating a dialogue and starting a conversation between the two approaches and accepting both perspectives as legitimate and valuable.Show less
Books are deeply intertwined with the societies that produce them. Besides the unmistakable benefits leisure reading can give to individuals, such as literacy, creativity, imagination, knowledge...Show moreBooks are deeply intertwined with the societies that produce them. Besides the unmistakable benefits leisure reading can give to individuals, such as literacy, creativity, imagination, knowledge and empathy, this free time activity has an impact on a higher level too. The written word enables connections between individuals and communities in ways that were unimaginable before the Print Revolution. Books can encompass the values of a nation, they can communicate and reinforce them. These aspects are especially important in the case of a small nation with a distinct language, as a strong need of cultural preservation is present. The main focus of this thesis is the two-way connection between a country’s reading culture and its social, political and economic realms. It is based on the argument that participants of the reading landscape not only affect the readers with their actions, but have an indirect impact on the wider cultural system through the reading landscape. The means to support this argument is an analysis of the literary landscape of Hungary, based on a self-constructed model, the Reading Promotion Impact Matrix. The two dimensions of this model are the nation’s core values that are supported and reflected by the reading promotion efforts; and the areas that can impact and can be impacted by these reading promotion activities. The thesis also highlights the interactivity and interconnectedness of the participants of a country’s literary landscape.Show less
Preprints are complete scholarly manuscripts that have not (yet) been through a formal peer review process and are made publicly available, often by uploading them to a preprint server, which can...Show morePreprints are complete scholarly manuscripts that have not (yet) been through a formal peer review process and are made publicly available, often by uploading them to a preprint server, which can be accessed without any limitations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, preprints gained popularity because they allow for rapid dissemination of research, which was vital at that point. Yet, this increased popularity of preprints does not appear to have lessened since the recent end of the pandemic and it is not expected that it will rapidly diminish either. Instead, it has even spread to fields that have arguably had little to do with COVID research. It would appear that the pandemic was the boost preprints needed to become more widely accepted across many academic fields. Now, many contemporary critics argue that preprints are becoming ‘a common part of the scholarly publishing process’ and are referring to preprints as an ‘important tool’ in scholarly publishing, a way to ‘complement’ the current system. This thesis analyses which functions of academic publishing are complemented by preprints and in what way they prove to be important tools within the existing system. In order to do so, the thesis commences with a comparative analysis of five separate theories regarding what the functions of (academic) publishing are and builds a new theoretical framework with which to analyse preprints and their role.Show less
In the course of the twentieth century, digital multimodal longform journalism has grown to become one of the most consequential genres of online writing. From being a peripheral genre in the 1990s...Show moreIn the course of the twentieth century, digital multimodal longform journalism has grown to become one of the most consequential genres of online writing. From being a peripheral genre in the 1990s, it is now an essential part of most news outlet’s digital platforms. The genre’s ascent, its connection with the digital advances of the last two decades, and its effect on readers has been closely followed and widely analyzed by media scholars. This thesis is especially concerned with the latter topic as it primarily explores what affordances of the digital multimodal longform genre contribute to immersion.Show less
