Crafting Open Research advocacy messages using Diffusion of Innovation theory

“Open science increases scientific collaborations and sharing of information for the benefits of science and society; makes multilingual scientific knowledge openly available, accessible and reusable for everyone, opens the processes of scientific knowledge creation, evaluation and communication to societal actors beyond the traditional scientific community.” (UNESCO, 2021). 

The benefits of Open Science have been internationally and widely acknowledged, and in 2021, UNESCO called for collective action to promote a common understanding of open science, associated benefits and challenges, as well as diverse paths to open science. Responding to this call are academic societies, corporate bodies, funders, government bodies, and institutions. The group with arguably the widest, on-the-ground reach are academic librarians, who have found themselves at the forefront of advocating for Open Science by introducing students and early-career academics to Open Science practices and sharing the benefits in the hopes of encouraging more researchers to change the way that they communicate their work. Unfortunately, librarians have little guidance on how to craft sea-change marketing messages.  

This paper seeks to address that need. Employing two theories, the Diffusion of Innovation theory and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Technology use, provides a complete landscape within which librarians can create marketing messages to best suit the maturity of the adopters they are trying to reach.

Presented as a lightning talk at the Edinburgh Open Research Conference, 15-17 May 2023.