Conference Agenda

In this fast-paced world, digital competence is of greater importance. One of these areas of literacy, media and information literacy (MIL), has come to the forefront at the academic and everyday levels. Information literacy is the recognition of information, it includes finding, evaluating, using it, and selecting between information. In addition, the credibility and reliability of information are becoming increasingly important examinations, the ethical rules, as well as the question of how we communicate, in what form, and how we share information on social media. Information literacy has evolved from a library- and/or librarian-oriented concept into a multidisciplinary field, and is no longer limited to the social sciences, but covers 27 scientific fields in the Scopus subject classification. New literacy areas include digital literacy, media literacy, business information literacy, content knowledge, workplace information literacy, and scientific literacy. The set of perspectives that we actively use when we come into contact with mass communication systems and the messages that reach us we interpret is media literacy; accessing, analyzing, and producing information ability, the basic goal of which is critical autonomy about all media.

The MIL emphasizes a critical approach to literacy to enable people to answer questions critically about what they have read, heard, and learned. It needs to appear at all levels of education. The 21st-century knowledge society requires new literacy skills and critical awareness. The emerging generations must learn critical thinking and conscious use to become digital citizens and reinvent themselves on the information superhighway. MIL is a tool curriculum that integrates information, media, and digital literacy.

In many cases, however, we have experienced that media and information literacy rarely appears in educational programs or the minds of teachers, whether we are talking about public education or higher education. MIL is given a less important role in the curricula, therefore it is necessary to develop this basic competence during higher education studies, regardless of the field of study.

Media and digital literacy are increasingly recognized as the basic competence of a 21st-century citizen, but academic training is still far from fully fulfilling this emerging need. Previous research asserts that successful integration of media and information literacy in higher education must be based on close collaboration between librarians and faculty, strategic anchoring and visualization in curriculum, syllabi, course objectives, and examinations, and alignment with the university's mission. must be formed. Today, we can hardly single out a higher education course in which this competence is consciously displayed.

There is a growing movement worldwide to develop media and information literacy curricula (UNESCO) and to train teachers in media education, but these efforts are limited, and there is a risk that the faster-growing, better ones will cooperate. funded, and less critical education and information technology companies. It is essential to develop a critical response to the new information and communication technologies that are embedded in all areas of society. Media and information literacy is dynamic and spread across many disciplines, so interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches would be needed to implement it effectively in diverse and complex information and learning environments. According to UNESCO experts, information literacy should be included in education curricula at all educational levels. In higher education, the following requirements were formulated for information literacy:

• determining the nature and extent of the required information and wording
• efficient and effective access to the necessary information
• critical evaluation of information and its sources
• effective application of information individually or in groups for a goal
• knowledge of economic, legal, and social problems related to information, and ethical application.

The question how users interact and use websites, databases and other portals available online is as old as the internet itself (Zheng & Peltsverger 2015). To answer this question, website administrators used data collection technologies that record the use of a website early on, which can be grouped under the term web analytics. According to the still common definition by the Web Analytics Association from 2008, “Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of web data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage”. In contrast to qualitative user research, web analytics is less laborious and costly to execute. More importantly, it does not confine the data collection to a limited period but continuously generates data about usage (Palomino et al. 2021). Web statistics reveal, for example, how often users visit an online portal, which pages are particularly popular, how long visitors remain on the sites, and which paths they have taken across the website (Kaushik 2007). The analysed data is measured against pre-set key performance indicators which are directly tied to the main objective of the website and combined with the business strategy (Hassler 2019, Jyothi 2017) This approach provides web operators with not only insights into user behavior, but also areas for development in their web product, such as missing content or usability issues. Although web analytics is most commonly employed in online marketing, it is also utilized in education in the area of digital information and reference systems as offered by libraries, educational institutions, or research facilities.

A number of papers provide information on the use of web analytics in these settings. Some papers are concerned with operational issues such as data protection (Quintel and Wilson 2020, Chandler & Wallace 2016) or the inventory of web analytics usage in institutional contexts (Redkina 2018, Böhm &Rittberger 2016), whereas others describe usage scenarios for specific web portals based on web analytics (Perifanou & Economides 2022, Keil et al. 2015). Regardless of the findings of these studies, various research objectives for the field of web analytics remain in the context of educational portals. In the technological domain, work on how to measure specific indicators would be useful. Furthermore, it is critical to investigate how cross-portal insights into the use of information systems can be obtained and what benefits this might offer for user research. Studies detailing optimization cycles would be valuable regarding the management field, for instance by approaching the subject with contrasting case studies for various organizations. In the subject of open research data, questions about the prerequisites for making web analytics data available for subsequent use arise.

In my paper, I would like to address some of the questions raised above and underpin them with the case study at DIPF| Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education. DIPF operates a number of infrastructures for educational research and practice and the general public, including the German Education Server, which provides edited and curated online information, the “Education Research Portal” offering literature databases, as well as the "Research Data Centre for Education," which processes research data for re-use." DIPF monitors and evaluates the use of these infrastructures through web analytics. To implement web analytics efficiently across portals and thereby gain insights into the web use behaviour of stakeholder groups in education, I propose that web analytics research become an open research practice. Sharing web analytics data, transparent descriptions of data collecting techniques, and an open and collaborative culture are required for expanding research beyond case studies. By offering insights into web analytics practice at DIPF and showing cross-portal collaboration, I aim to exemplify open research in action.

Open Access (OA) publications are increasingly established in Educational Sciences. The Open Science Monitor of the European Union points to 23,7 % of Open Access journal publications in Educational Sciences (Open Science Monitor, 2009-2018). An online survey conducted in 2012 describes a fundamental change in publication behavior since some years (Bambey 2016: 275).

The publishing world has responded to the changing demands with new business models. In order to enable free access to the literature, publishing fees (APC) were introduced for the lost revenue from subscriptions (Rummler, Schindler 2018; Schimmer et al. 2015). In the so-called hybrid business models, the subscription model has been combined with APC, which has opened up additional sources of revenue for publishers.

The new model of publication-based funding runs the risk of missing one of the goals of OA, namely the radical reduction of costs in publishing, and of the large academic publishers continuing to make disproportionate profits (Asai 2020). Rather, there is a danger that the serial crisis of the 1990s will turn into a new APC crisis (Khoo 2019; Herb 2017).

In order to facilitate a transition from the subscription model to the APC model and the associated shift in budgets, transformation contracts (e.g. DEAL) have been concluded at national level, under which so-called publish and read fees are paid until the journals shift to a fully OA mode. These transformation contracts have led to a significant increase in the number of hybrid OA articles published. However, they carry the risk that they are associated with an increase in costs, especially for the HSS disciplines. Also, these contracts are only available to large publishers and exclude the breadth of smaller publishers (Schindler, Rummler 2018; Ferwerda et al. 2017).

A number of studies have been conducted that focus on OA status or the route to OA (e.g. Piwowar et al. 2018; Melero 2018; Wohlgemuth et al. 2017, Picarra et al. 2015). If the financial aspects are covered, mostly data driven approaches, based on available and processable data are used (Jahn et al. 2022, Stern 2017). The lack of a reference base of journals established in the research community, used as poulation, is evident. Approaches that do not follow a thematic or disciplinary approach have only limited explanatory power.

This paper examines the status of the OA transformation for core journals in the defined field of educational research in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. A differentiated presentation of the availability in Fully OA or Hybrid OA Journals as well as Green OA self-archived articles in OA Repositories is given.

In addition, the diversity of business models offered by the publishers is examined, assessing their efficiency in tearms of transformation as well as their impact on public funding.

In order to be able to make a reliable statement on the status of the OA transformation, this paper focuses on a concrete publication output of the educational research community. The bibliometric analysis carried out focuses on on a defined set of journals with high relevance for the discipline, published by publishing houses located in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.