French publishing attitudes in the open access era: The case of mathematics, biology, and computer science

Abstract

This study investigates the extent to which open access (OA) publishing models affect French researchers' attitudes. Research questions were: What place does OA have in attitudes of French researchers in mathematics, biology, and computer science? Are French researchers aware of new publishing models? Do they publish in these new outlets? What funds do they use? What kind of feedback and satisfaction can we observe? We used a quantitative approach to identify structural trends. From April to May 2015, the authors gathered empirical data (interviews, training, and meetings) on researchers' opinions and understanding of OA publishing models to define the variables and build up the questionnaire that was sent out in June 2015.The findings of the survey demonstrated that, when choosing journals to publish their articles, researchers did not rate OA as a criterion but rather impact, prestige, and symbolic recognition. Publishing OA articles is only in its first stages in the publishing practices of researchers. Lack of policy, prescriptions, and lack of rewards explain why OA is not a factor that determines the publishing strategies of French researchers. The researchers who take the risk of OA publishing are biologists, the older and more experienced researchers, and those who are members of editorial teams.

Chinese researchers' perceptions and use of open access journals: Results of an online questionnaire survey

“…decision-making than availability of OA (Bo-Christer & David, 2012), and (3) authors disliked the idea of APC without institutional support (Boukacem-Zeghmouri et al, 2018;Tenopir et al, 2017). Surprisingly, our survey results showed that nearly three quarter of respondents (n = 277, 72.70%) had published at least one paper in OAJs, and 30 of them had published more than four OAJ papers.…”

“…This topic is interesting to social scientists and also very important for all stakeholders in the scholarly communication system. Many studies looked at researchers' publication strategies and found that researchers did not rate OA as a criterion but rather impact, prestige, and symbolic recognition (Boukacem‐Zeghmouri, Dillaerts, Lafouge, Bador, & Sauer‐Avargues, ; Kieńć, , ; Schöpfel, Ferrant, André, & Fabre, ), although many confirmed that OA makes it easier to promote an academic work (Abrizah, Nicholas, Noorhidawati, Aspura, & Badawi, ; Tenopir et al ., ). In 2015, Professor Carol Tenopir and her team conducted a large‐scale questionnaire survey to investigate researchers' attitudes and behaviours towards gold OA in the USA.…”

Why do researchers decide to publish in questionable journals? A review of the literature

“…Open access is, for some authors, a factor when deciding on a journal to submit to, yet the underlying factors are similar to the already mentioned factors such perception of impact and prestige (Boukacem‐Zeghmouri, Dillaerts, Lafouge, Bador, & Sauer‐Avargues, ; Swan & Brown, ). Open access is not a factor that determines the publishing strategies of researchers in general, although there are differences across, for example, fields and means of funding (Tenopir et al, ).…”

We’re Still Failing to Deliver Open Access and Solve the Serials Crisis: To Succeed We Need a Digital Transformation of Scholarly Communication Using Internet-Era Principles

“…Canada's model policy on scientific integrity only asks authors to 'explore' the possibility of OA publishing 10 . Most French researchers' journal choice is shaped by the desire to further reputation, career and professional impact (Boukacem-Zegmouri et al, 2018). If review, tenure and promotion committees remain sceptical about publishing outside the traditional 'reputation economy' titles, why risk publishing in OA journals?…”