Green open access in computer science – an exploratory study on author-based self-archiving awareness, practice, and inhibitors

Abstract

Access to the work of others is something that is too often taken for granted, yet problematic and difficult to be obtained unless someone pays for it. Green and gold open access are claimed to be a solution to this problem. While open access is gaining momentum in some fields, there is a limited and seasoned knowledge about self-archiving in computer science. In particular, there is an inadequate understanding of author-based self-archiving awareness, practice, and inhibitors. This article reports an exploratory study of the awareness of self-archiving, the practice of self-archiving, and the inhibitors of self-archiving among authors in an Italian computer science faculty. Forty-nine individuals among interns, PhD students, researchers, and professors were recruited in a questionnaire (response rate of 72.8%). The quantitative and qualitative responses suggested that there is still work needed in terms of advocating green open access to computer science authors who seldom self-archive and when they do, they often infringe the copyright transfer agreements of the publishers. In addition, tools from the open-source community are needed to facilitate author-based self-archiving, which should comprise of an automatic check of the copyright transfer agreements. The study identified nine factors inhibiting the act of self-archiving among computer scientists. As a first step, this study proposes several propositions regarding author-based self-archiving in computer science that can be further investigated. Recommendations to foster self-archiving in computer science, based on the results, are provided.

Recent trends in agile processes and software engineering research - XP 2014 conference report

“…Several of them admitted to blindly sign the copyright transfer agreement when they publish a paper. This gathered experience is in line with what reported by Graziotin (2014), where the majority of the surveyed computer scientists was not aware of green open access, and was not performing it. Of the 23 regular and short papers presented at the conference, only three have been self-archived and are freely accessible on the Web.…”

Open Practices in Phytolith Research: A Community Survey

“…Other common issues that inhibit publishing preprints are fear of plagiarism, lack of authorisation, concern about excessive workload and notion of uselessness (e.g., Chiarelli et al 2019;Graziotin 2014). The results of the survey are in line with these issues, showing that 5% of participants consider publishing preprints overworking, 8.6% are afraid of plagiarism, 12.3% encountered coauthors' opposition and 13.6% think that it is useless.…”

Breaking the Mold of Promotion and Tenure Polices that De-Incentivize Open Access Publishing: A Case Study of an LIS Faculty

“…OA publishing venues like scholarly journals and repositories began to appear, including a repository developed by computer scientists for article preprints, as early as the 1970s. 9 A free, online psychology journal, Psycoloquy, was launched in 1989 by well-known OA advocate Stevan Harnad, 10 and the arXiv, a repository for sharing article preprints, was created by physicists in the 1990s. 11 Three events in the early 2000s popularized the term "open access": the Budapest Open Access Initiative, Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.…”