Open and networked initiatives and the digital transformation of academic publishing in China

Many aspects of China's academic publishing system differ from the systems found in liberal market based economies of the United States, Western Europe and Australia. A high level of government intervention in both the publishing industry and academia and the challenges associated with attempting to make a transition from a centrally controlled towards a more market based publishing industry are two notable differences; however, as in other countries, academic communities and publishers are being transformed by digital technologies. This research explores the complex yet dynamic digital transformation of academic publishing in China, with a specific focus of the open and networked initiatives inspired by Web 2.0 and social media. The thesis draws on two case studies: Science Paper Online, a government-operated online preprint platform and open access mandate; and New Science, a social reference management website operated by a group of young PhD students. Its analysis of the innovations, business models, operating strategies, influences, and difficulties faced by these two initiatives highlights important characteristics and trends in digital publishing experiments in China. The central argument of this thesis is that the open and collaborative possibilities of Web 2.0 inspired initiatives are emerging outside the established journal and monograph publishing system in China, introducing innovative and somewhat disruptive approaches to the certification, communication and commercial exploitation of knowledge. Moreover, emerging publishing models are enabling and encouraging a new system of practising and communicating science in China, putting into practice some elements of the Open Science ethos. There is evidence of both disruptive change to old publishing structures and the adaptive modification of emergent replacements in the Chinese practice. As such, the transformation from traditional to digital and interactive modes of publishing, involves both competition and convergence between new and old publishers, as well as dynamics of co-evolution involving new technologies, business models, social norms, and government reform agendas. One key concern driving this work is whether there are new opportunities and new models for academic publishing in the Web 2.0 age and social media environment, which might allow the basic functions of communication and certification to be achieved more effectively. This thesis enriches existing knowledge of open and networked transformations of scholarly publishing by adding a Chinese story. Although the development of open and networked publishing platforms in China remains in its infancy, the lessons provided by this research are relevant to practitioners and stakeholders interested in understanding the transformative dynamics of networked technologies for publishing and advocating open access in practice, not only in China, but also internationally.

Sessional Academic Success : A distributed framework for academic support and development

With approximately half of Australian university teaching now performed by sessional academics, there has been growing recognition of the contribution they make to student learning. At the same time, sector-wide research and institutional audits continue to raise concerns about academic development, quality assurance, recognition and belonging. In response, universities have increasingly begun to offer academic development programs for sessional academics. However, such programs may be centrally delivered, generic in nature, and contained within the moment of delivery, while the Faculty contexts and cultures that sessional academics work within are diverse, and the need for support unfolds in ad-hoc and often unpredictable ways. In this paper we present the Sessional Academic Success (SAS) program–a new framework that complements and extends the central academic development program for sessional academic staff at Queensland University of Technology. This program recognises that experienced sessional academics have much to contribute to the advancement of learning and teaching, and harnesses their expertise to provide school-based academic development opportunities, peer-to-peer support, and locally contextualized community building. We describe the program’s implementation and explain how Sessional Academic Success Advisors (SASAs) are employed, trained and supported to provide advice and mentorship and, through a co-design methodology, to develop local development opportunities and communities of teaching practice within their schools. Besides anticipated benefits to new sessional academics in terms of timely and contextual support and improved sense of belonging, we explain how SAS provides a pathway for building leadership capacity and academic advancement for experienced sessional academics. We take a collaborative, dialogic and reflective practice approach to this paper, interlacing insights from the Associate Director, Academic: Sessional Development who designed the program, and two Sessional Academic Success Advisors who have piloted it within their schools.

Earnings management and the role of the audit committee: an investigation of the influence of cross-listing and government officials on the audit committee

This paper extends research on the corporate governance practices of transitional economies by examining whether the ability of the audit committee to constrain earnings management in Chinese firms is associated with the listing environment and the presence of government officials on the audit committee. Despite considerable regulatory reforms by the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission, there remain incentives for Chinese firms to manage earnings. However, government initiatives to encourage domestic firms to cross-list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange are accompanied by improved governance. We find that the expertise and independence of the audit committee for cross-listed (CL) Chinese firms are associated with lower abnormal accruals, our measure of earnings management. Both domestic only listed firms and CL Chinese firms appoint government officials as independent members on the audit committee. However, due to the political connection between government officials and the controlling shareholder (the State), these appointments can severely mitigate audit committee independence. Subsequently, we find a significant and positive association between audit committee independence and experience and earnings management when there are government officials on the audit committee.

Parents’ perception about children’s academic stress and child care related issues

The present study intends to understand the parents' perception about children's academic stress and child care related issues. A group of 139 parents, 68 fathers and 71 mothers, participated in the study voluntarily and they were selected following convenience sampling technique. In order to achieve the objective of the study, a specially designed semi-structured questionnaire was used. Findings disclosed that about one-third of the fathers (29.4%) and one-tenth of the mothers (9.9%) frankly admitted that they could not provide quality care and guidance to their children and in this regard significant difference was observed between fathers and mothers (p<.05). More than four-fifth of the parents stated that they should be friendly with their children so that children feel comfortable to share their personal issues with them. More than one-fifth fathers (27.9%) and one-fourth mothers (16.9%) applied corporal punishment as they believed it is necessary to discipline them and/or for better academic performance.

Students' academic stress and welfare as perceived by the teachers

The objective of the present study was to understand the teachers' perception about students' academic stress and other welfare related issues. A group of 125 secondary and higher secondary school teachers (43 male and 82 female) from five schools located in Kolkata were covered in the study following convenience sampling technique. Data were collected by using a semi-structured questionnaire developed by the first author. Findings revealed that more than half of the teachers (55.8% male and 54.9% female) felt that today's students are not brought up in child friendly environment while an overwhelming number of teachers stated that students face some social problems (88.4% male and 96.3% female) which affects their mental health and causes stress (90.7% male and 92.7% female). However, majority of them (79.1% male and 78% female teachers), irrespective of gender, denied the fact that teaching method followed in schools could cause academic stress. Vast majority of the teachers felt that New Education System in India i.e., making Grade X examination (popularly known as secondary examination) optional will not be beneficial for students. So far as motivation of the students is concerned, introducing innovative teaching methods like project work, field visit, using audio-visual aids in the schools has been suggested by more than 95% of the teachers. This apart, most of the teachers suggested reward system in the schools in addition to taking classes seriously by the teachers and punctuality. Reduction of load of home work was also suggested by more than two-fifth teachers. Although corporal punishment has gone down, it is still practiced by some of the teachers' especially male teachers in Kolkata. Male and female teachers differed significantly with respect to two issues only (p < .05) i.e., applying corporal punishment and impact of sexual health education. Male teachers apply more corporal punishment compared to female teachers and secondly, male teachers do not forsee any negative influence of sexual health education.

Ensuring sessional academic success by rethinking the place of academic development

There has been growing recognition of the contribution that Sessional Academics make to student learning in higher education; with recent studies concluding that around half Australian university teaching is now performed by casual staff [Red Report 2008; May, 2013]. However, sector-wide research and institutional audits continue to raise concerns about academic development and quality assurance, as well as the recognition and retention of Sessional Academics. In response, universities offer academic development programs. However, while such centrally offered programs are undoubtedly useful, they are necessarily generic and cannot address the local contexts of faculties or provide ‘on the ground’ support. This paper presents a new, distributed model of academic support and development for Sessional academics at Queensland University of Technology. Entitled the Sessional Academic Success program, it employs the principles of distributed leadership. Experienced Sessional academics are trained and supported to assume roles as Sessional Academic Success Advisors within their schools. Complementing our central programs, they design bespoke, locally situated, peer-to-peer academic development for new Sessional teachers; provide ‘just in time’, safe and reliable advice; and build supportive communities of teaching practice in their local contexts. This distributed model re-envisages the forms and places of academic development and support. It helps ensure that new Sessional Academics are embraced by faculty life. And, recognizing that experienced Sessional Academics have much to contribute to the advancement of learning and teaching, it builds their capacity through leadership opportunities. As the designer/facilitator of the program and a Sessional Academic Success Advisor, the authors take a dialogic approach and together describe the design, implementation and outcomes of the program.

The Sessional Academic Success (SAS) project

The Sessional Academic Success (SAS) project is a sustainable, distributed model for supporting sessional staff at QUT. Developed by the Learning and Teaching Unit. SAS complements our Sessional Academic Program (SAP): a sequence of formal academic development workshops explained in complementary nomination. SAS recognises that while these programs are very well received and a crucial aspect of preparing and advancing sessional teachers, they are necessarily encapsulated in the moment of their delivery and are generic, as they address all faculties (with their varied cultures, processes and pedagogies). The SAS project extends this formal, centrally offered activity into local, ‘just in time’, ongoing support within schools. It takes a distributed leadership approach. Experienced sessional academics are recruited and employed as Sessional Academic Success Advisors (SASAs). They provide sessional staff in their schools with contextually specific, needs based, peer-to-peer development opportunities; one-on-one advice on classroom management and strategies for success; and help to trouble-shoot challenges. The SASAs are trained by the Learning and Teaching Unit co-ordinator, and ongoing support is provided centrally and by school-based co-ordinators. This team approach situates the SASAs at the centre of an organisation map (see diagram of support relationships below). The SAS project aims to support sessional staff in their professional development by: • Offering contextual, needs-based support at school level by harnessing local expertise; • Providing further development opportunities that are local and focal; SAS aims to retain Sessional Staff by: • Responding to self-nominated requests for support and ‘just in time’, safe and reliable advice in times of need; • Building sessional staff confidence through help with dealing with challenges from a trusted peer; • Building a supportive academic community for sessional staff, which helps them feel a part of faculty life, and a community of teaching practice. SAS aims to support sessional staff in the development of academic teaching careers by: • Recognising the capacity of experienced sessional staff to support their peers in ways that are unique, valuable and valued and providing the agency to do so; • Providing career advancement and leadership opportunities for sessional staff. SAS takes unique approaches within each school using strategies such as: • Welcomes and schools orientation by SASAs; • Regular check ins; face-to-face advice and online support; • Compiling local resources to complement university wide resources. • Sessional-to-sessional ‘just in time’ training (eg. assessment and marking when marking commences); • Peer feedback and mentoring (the opportunities to sit in more experiences sessionals’ classes; • Sessional staff awards (nominated by students); • Communities of practice to discuss topics and issues with a view to (and support for) publishing on learning and teaching. In these ways, SASAs complement support offered by unit coordinators, administrators, and the Learning and Teaching Unit. Pairing senior and ‘understudy’ advisors ensures a line of succession, sustainability and continuity. A pilot program commenced in 2012 involving three schools (Psychology and Social Work; Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Media, Entertainment and Creative Arts). It will be expanded across schools in 2013.

Academic Development Program : QUT University Wide

The QUT Sessional Academic Program (SAP) has scaffolded levels, each with experience-appropriate objectives: • SAP 1: Introduction to Learning and Teaching aims to develop confidence and build awareness of pedagogy and managing class-room scenarios. • SAP 2: Learning and Teaching in Large Units focuses on aligning curriculum and assessment through learning activities and builds a community of teaching practice with sessionals and subject coordinators. • SAP 3: Developing your Teaching Practice focuses on whole of university and classroom strategies to ensure student success through effective feedback; reflective practice and learning communities. • SAP 4: Enhancing your Teaching Practice applies these factors to teaching success. In conjunction with: • Sessional Career Advancement Development: for Higher Degree Research students/ sessional staff who aspire to become academics provides guidance on developing an academic portfolio in teaching, research and service. And • Sessional Academic Success program providing ongoing, local support (see separate nomination). A critical factor in its success is its praxis approach. Theoretical principles are modelled. Eg, ‘active learning’ is explained and modelled through learning activities, which participants evaluate ‘on the fly’ against the criteria of learning, engagement and connection with peers. The topics ‘learning communities’ and ‘reflective practice’ are explored as a learning community–then applied in participants’ classes, with reflections shared in the next session. This produces a ‘meta-awareness’ of theory and principles, as they are explained, applied in practice, and critically analysed for their effectiveness in workshops.

But what makes it doctoral? Taking on the traditionalists : interdisciplinary, practice-led doctoral research in the creative industries - a case study in academic politics, research, rigour and relevance

This paper examines a Doctoral journey of interdisciplinary exploration, explication, examination...and exasperation. In choosing to pursue a practice-led doctorate I had determined from the outset that ‘writing 100,000 words that only two people ever read’, was not something which interested me. Hence, the oft-asked question of ‘what kind of doctorate’ I was engaged in, consistently elicited the response, “a useful one”. In order to satisfy my own imperatives of authenticity and usefulness, my doctoral research had to clearly demonstrate relevance to; productively inform; engage with; and add value to: wider professional field(s) of practice; students in the university courses I teach; and the broader community - not just the academic community. Consequently, over the course of my research, the question, ‘But what makes it Doctoral?’ consistently resounded and resonated. Answering that question, to satisfy not only the traditionalists asking it but, perhaps surprisingly, some academic innovators - and more particularly, myself as researcher - revealed academic/political inconsistencies and issues which challenged both the fundamental assumptions and actuality of practice-led research. This paper examines some of those inconsistencies, issues and challenges and provides at least one possible answer to the question: ‘But what makes it Doctoral?’

Academic legal research and academic research capacity enhancement working topic : "purposes and objectives of law schools beyond educating students (research, capacity building,community service and outreach)"

One of the main objectives of law schools beyond educating students is to produce viable legal research. The comments in this paper are basically confined to the Australian context, and to examine this topic effectively, it is necessary to briefly review the current tertiary research agenda in Australia. This paper argues that there is a need for recognition and support for an expanded legal research framework along with additional research training for legal academics. There also needs to be more effective methods of measuring and recognising quality in legal research. This method needs to be one that can engender respect in an interdisciplinary context.

An audit of first-aid treatment of pediatric burns patients and their clinical outcome

This study describes the first aid used and clinical outcomes of all patients who presented to the Royal Children's Hospital, Brisbane, Australia in 2005 with an acute burn injury. A retrospective audit was performed with the charts of 459 patients and information concerning burn injury, first-aid treatment, and clinical outcomes was collected. First aid was used on 86.1% of patients, with 8.7% receiving no first aid and unknown treatment in 5.2% of cases. A majority of patients had cold water as first aid (80.2%), however, only 12.1% applied the cold water for the recommended 20 minutes or longer. Recommended first aid (cold water for >or=20 minutes) was associated with significantly reduced reepithelialization time for children with contact injuries (P=.011). Superficial depth burns were significantly more likely to be associated with the use of recommended first aid (P=.03). Suboptimal treatment was more common for children younger than 3.5 years (P<.001) and for children with friction burns. This report is one of the few publications to relate first-aid treatment to clinical outcomes. Some positive clinical outcomes were associated with recommended first-aid use; however, wound outcomes were more strongly associated with burn depth and mechanism of injury. There is also a need for more public awareness of recommended first-aid treatment.

A 3D virtual medical imaging suite : bridging the academic-clinical training boundary

Aims The Medical Imaging Training Immersive Environment (MITIE) system is a recently developed virtual reality (VR) platform that allows students to practice a range of medical imaging techniques. The aim of this pilot study was to harvest user feedback about the educational value of the application and inform future pedagogical development. This presentation explores the use of this technology for skills training and blurring the boundaries between academic learning and clinical skills training. Background MITIE is a 3D VR environment that allows students to manipulate a patient and radiographic equipment in order to produce a VR-generated image for comparison with a gold standard. As with VR initiatives in other health disciplines (1-6) the software mimics clinical practice as much as possible and uses 3D technology to enhance immersion and realism. The software was developed by the Medical Imaging Course Team at a provider University with funding from a Health Workforce Australia “Simulated Learning Environments” grant. Methods Over 80 students undertaking the Bachelor of Medical Imaging Course were randomised to receive practical experience with either MITIE or radiographic equipment in the medical radiation laboratory. Student feedback about the educational value of the software was collected and performance with an assessed setup was measured for both groups for comparison. Ethical approval for the project was provided by the university ethics panel. Results This presentation provides qualitative analysis of student perceptions relating to satisfaction, usability and educational value as well as comparative quantitative performance data. Students reported high levels of satisfaction and both feedback and assessment results confirmed the application’s significance as a pre-clinical training tool. There was a clear emerging theme that MITIE could be a useful learning tool that students could access to consolidate their clinical learning, either during their academic timetables or their clinical placement. Conclusion Student feedback and performance data indicate that MITIE has a valuable role to play in the clinical skills training for medical imaging students both in the academic and the clinical environment. Future work will establish a framework for an appropriate supporting pedagogy that can cross the boundary between the two environments. This project was possible due to funding made available by Health Workforce Australia.

Knowledge unlatched : encouraging innovation in academic publishing through collective action and Open Access licensing

This case study examines the way in which Knowledge Unlatched is combining collective action and open access licenses to encourage innovation in markets for specialist academic books. Knowledge Unlatched is a not for profit organisation that has been established to help a global community of libraries coordinate their book purchasing activities more effectively and, in so doing, to ensure that books librarians select for their own collections become available for free for anyone in the world to read. The Knowledge Unlatched model is an attempt to re-coordinate a market in order to facilitate a transition to digitally appropriate publishing models that include open access. It offers librarians an opportunity to facilitate the open access publication of books that their own readers would value access to. It provides publishers with a stable income stream on titles selected by libraries, as well as an ability to continue selling books to a wider market on their own terms. Knowledge Unlatched provides a rich case study for researchers and practitioners interested in understanding how innovations in procurement practices can be used to stimulate more effective, equitable markets for socially valuable products.

Admission as a lawyer : the fearful spectre of academic misconduct

Notwithstanding a cultural critique of the concepts that underpin the values of academic integrity, both the university, as a community of scholarship, and the legal profession, as a vocation self-defined by integrity, retain traditional values. Despite the lack of direct relevance of plagiarism to legal practice, courts now demonstrate little tolerance for applicants for admission against whom findings of academic misconduct have been made. Yet this lack of tolerance is neither fatal nor absolute, with the most egregious forms of academic misconduct, coupled with less than complete candour, resulting in no more than a deferral of an application for admission for six months. Where allegations are of a less serious nature, law schools deal with allegations in a less formal or punitive fashion, regarding it as an educative function of the university, assisting students to understand the cultural practices of scholarship. For law students seeking admission to practice, applicants are under an obligation of complete candour in disclosing any matters that bear on their suitability, including any finding of academic misconduct. Individual legal academics, naturally adhering to standards of academic integrity, often have only a general understanding of the admissions process. Applying appropriate standards of academic integrity, legal academics can create difficulties for students seeking admission by not recognising a pastoral obligation to ensure that students have a clear understanding of the impact adverse findings will have on admission. Failure to fulfil this obligation deprives students of the opportunity to take prompt remedial action as well as presenting practical problems for the practitioner who moves their admission.

Supermarkets and private standards : unintended consequences of the audit ritual

Recent scholarship has considered the implications of the rise of voluntary private standards in food and the role of private actors in a rapidly evolving, de-facto ‘mandatory’ sphere of governance. Standards are an important element of this globalising private sphere, but are an element that has been relatively peripheral in analyses of power in agri-food systems. Sociological thought has countered orthodox views of standards as simple tools of measurement, instead understanding their function as a governance mechanism that transforms many things, and people, during processes of standardisation. In a case study of the Australian retail supermarket duopoly and the proprietary standards required for market access this paper foregrounds retailers as standard owners and their role in third-party auditing and certification. Interview data from primary research into Australia’s food standards captures the multifaceted role supermarkets play as standard-owners, who are found to impinge on the independence of third-party certification while enforcing rigorous audit practices. We show how standard owners, in attempting to standardize the audit process, generate tensions within certification practices in a unique example of ritualism around audit. In examining standards to understand power in contemporary food governance, it is shown that retailers are drawn beyond standard-setting into certification and enforcement, that is characterized by a web of institutions and actors whose power to influence outcomes is uneven.