Open Access Publishing: What Authors Want

Abstract

Campus-based open access author funds are being considered by many academic libraries as a way to support authors publishing in open access journals. Article processing fees for open access have been introduced recently by publishers and have not yet been widely accepted by authors. Few studies have surveyed authors on their reasons for publishing open access and their perceptions of open access journals. The present study was designed to gauge the uptake of library support for author funding and author satisfaction with open access publishing. Results indicate that York University authors are increasingly publishing in open access journals and are appreciative of library funding initiatives. The wider implications of open access are discussed along with specific recommendations for publishers.

Attitudes towards open access: A meta-synthesis of the empirical literature

“…For instance, Schroter, Tite & Smith [15] stated that several authors "had not made the connection between author charges and open access publishing" (p. 757), while some of the respondents who reported being familiar with the term "author pays model" failed to describe it accurately. Twelve of the 20 faculty members interviewed by Nariani & Fernandez [18] had published more than once in an OA journal. Still, not all authors were familiar with the ability to attach supplementary data to the articles and neither did they know the meaning of open peerreview or online peer-review.…”

“…Hernadez-Borges et al [19] and Sanchez-Tarrago & FernandezMolina [12] attributed the relatively low levels of knowledge among Spanish-speaking scholars to the fact that OA initiatives appeared initially in English-speaking settings. Colleagues seem to play an essential role in raising OA awareness [8,9,12,13,16,18]. Self-knowledge is another common source of awareness.…”

“…Self-knowledge is another common source of awareness. Scholars learn about OA journals and initiatives by searching the Internet [8,13], using the literature [12,16,18], reading articles in newspapers or magazines [8] or even accidentally when searching for other information [13]. Other sources of awareness are funding agencies [8,9] and professional societies [8].…”

Engaging Faculty and Reducing Costs by Leveraging Collections: A Pilot Project to Reduce Course Pack Use

“…Instead, the project relied on a direct outreach strategy to faculty that emphasized specialized assistance in developing a cost-free course reading list as well as the strength of the library collection, such that, in nearly all cases, the actual materials included in the reading lists changed very little, if at all. The conversation around how to engage faculty in the discussion about course materials costs and, more broadly, the costs of scholarly literature in general, often addresses the problem of the misalignment of faculty incentives with low-cost or cost-free publishing models (Warlick & Vaughan, 2007;Nariani & Fernandez, 2012;Migheli & Ramello, 2013). One theory that is fairly representative of explanations of this misalignment is that of R. Preston McCafee, who analogizes faculty behavior with the economic concept of "moral hazard" (Cohen, 2008).…”

Library Consortia and Article Processing Charges: An International Survey

“…Significantly, the existence of APCs is not the major factor in deciding where to publish. Journal quality was of paramount importance, with the wider visibility of open access being an added bonus (Monson, Highby, & Rathe, 2014;Nariani & Fernandez, 2012).…”