eScholarship as socio-technical change: theory, practice and praxisDevelopments in electronic publishing in higher education are leading to significant changes in the information supply chain and institutional arrangements for the creation, organisation, dissemination and preservation of scholarly communications such as journal papers, conference papers, working papers and other scholarly information products. Despite the rich and growing literatures about scholarly ePublishing there is still much uncertainty about its impact on the social dynamics of learning, on universities and on the providers and consumers of scholarly publications.Much of the current literature focuses on technical issues such as: the design of systems for storage and retrieval; the develoment of tools for resource discovery, user authorisation and authentication; the develoment and selection of standards for resource description, encoding, interoperabilty and digital preservation as well as on publishing issues such as the changes to the peer review process. Whilst this provides important technical guidance to the designers of ePublishing systems it is less helpful in translating these systems into useful services. Further, there are few longitudinal studies assessing how these systems are being adopted and accepted by content providers and consumers. In this paper we present a program of critical and evaluative research to investigate scholarly ePublishing systems in use and over time. The aim of the research is to investigate the impact of ePublishing on the work practices of individuals, the responsibilities of professional groups and institutional structures, policies and practices. The paper is structured as follows. First we argue for socio-technical theoretical perspectives that make the work of scholarly ePublishing visible. Second, to assist us in understanding the interplay of theory and practice, we discuss the need for longitudinal studies and participatory research designs involving academic and practitioner researchers. These support the development of evidence-based policies and practices and our understanding of scholarly ePublishing praxis.
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