Research

The lab specializes in research on scholarly communication, including scholarly publishing, academic journals as well as open access and open science. Ongoing and past projects by researchers and students at the ScholCommLab are listed below.

You may also be interested in the research activities of the Public Knowledge Project and of the Canadian Institute for Studies in Publishing, with which Dr. Alperin is affiliated, or with the research activities of the School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa, where Dr. Haustein is based.

Current projects

• Open Access
  • Article Processing Charges (APCs)
  • Open Access Policy and Publishing Market (ROARA) funded by Volkswagen Foundation
  • Pan-Canadian Knowledge Access Initiative (PCKAI) funded by SSHRC
  • Public Knowledge Project
    
• Open Science
  • Biomedical Open Science Dashboard funded by Wellcome Trust
  • Reporting Guideline for Bibliometric Analyses (GLOBAL)
  • Equity and Inclusion in Open Science (VOICES) funded by SSHRC
    
• Thesis research
  • PhD theses
    • Open access policy and monitoring (Marc-André Simard, Université de Montréal)
    • Federal Roadmap to Open Science (Chantal Ripp, University of Ottawa)
    • Open access and EDI (Maddie Hare, University of Ottawa)
    • Breakaway journals (Saskia van Walsum, University of Ottawa)
    • Research data metadata change (Dorothea Strecker, Humboldt University Berlin)
      
  • Master’s theses
    • OpenAlex concepts (Huma Zafar) _{This thesis is nominated for the University of Ottawa Best Humanities Master’s Thesis Award 2026.}
    • Cognitive accessibility of OA repositories (Fatou Bah)

Past projects

• Altmetrics and Societal Impact
• Data Citation (Make Data Count: Meaningful Data Counts)
• Metrics Literacies
• Open Access and Open Science
• Open Education
• Preprints Uptake and Use
• Review, Promotion, and Tenure
• Science Communication
• Thesis research (completed)
  • PhD
    • “Unreviewed Science in the News: Why and How Journalists Cover Preprint Research” (2023), Alice Fleerackers, Simon Fraser University (supervisor: Juan Pablo Alperin)
    • Asura Enkhbayar, Simon Fraser University (supervisor: Juan Pablo Alperin)
      
  • Master’s
    • “Funding the Business of Open Access: A Bibliometric Analysis of Article Processing Charges, Research Funding, and the Revenues of the Oligopoly of Publishers” (2023), Leigh-Ann Butler, University of Ottawa (supervisor: Stefanie Haustein)
      _{This thesis won the University of Ottawa Best Humanities Thesis Prize 2024 and the CAIS Best Master’s Research Award 2023.}
    • “Data Reuse Among Digital Humanities Scholars: a Qualitative Study of Practices, Challenges and Opportunities” (2023), Lina Marie Harper, University of Ottawa (supervisor: Stefanie Haustein)
      _{This thesis was nominated for the University of Ottawa Best Humanities Thesis Prize 2024 and won the CAIS Best Master’s Research Award 2024.}