| This research study looks at digital academic space, which is defined here as web-based digitally mediated artifacts produced by universities and their members. Open source software projects and the Open Access movement play large roles within digital academic space, not only because of their strong historical academic roots, but also because these projects are growing in prevalence in many universities. Framed by theories from the field of higher education and media studies, this research study is an analysis of the dynamics and effects of one open source software project that produces Open Access electronic journals. The software system, called the Open Journal Systems (OJS), originally developed by an education professor from a Canadian university, has been adopted by thousands of universities world- wide to publish electronic peer reviewed academic journals. OJS users distributed at universities throughout the world have contributed software code back to the system, by for example, creating translation modules enabling users to publish journals in a range of languages thus adding an interesting global dimension to the project. Based on interviews with the OJS software developers, administrators, and users, as well as a range of material culled from online, this situational analysis of the OJS sketches out the conditions, dynamics, discourses and professional identities that form the basis of an emerging phenomenon within universities that is named here the digitally mediated open research project (DMORP). |
