Introduction In the academic and research environment, scholarly communications has become a central part of the pro­cess by which faculty and researchers com- municate with each other, using certain channels of communication. The most impor­tant channels that enable academics to communicate with each other are scholarly journals, conferences proceedings, scholarly mono- graphs, open access platforms (repositories), and personal websites. The Internet and the World Wide Web now provide much easier and instant means of wider dissemination of information for authors. Open Access (OA) is a movement, or a revolutionary way of providing access to scholarly and scientific content. Scholarly Communication In the broadest definition, scholarly communication can be described as a system intended to facilitate the exchange of ideas among scholars through a broad range of media. This description is more aligned with Shaughenessy (1989), who defines scholarly communication broadly as “the social phe- nomenon whereby intellectual and creative activity is transmitted from one scholar to another” (p. 69). In a similar way Borgman (2000) defines schol- arly communication as “the study of how scholars in any field—­whether physical, biological, social, behavioral sciences, humanities, or even technology—­use and disseminate information through formal and infor- mal channels” (p. 414). According to the same author, scientific communi- cation involves the ongoing discussion between two scientists through informal means such as conversations, to the most formal means such as journal articles, books, reviews, and other media. In other words, the This chapter is based on Tmava, Ahmet M. “Investigating ­Factors That Affect Faculty Attitudes ­Towards Participation in Open Access Institutional Repositories.” PhD diss., University of North Texas, 2017.
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