Towards an understanding of the relationship between disciplinary research cultures and open access repository behaviors

Abstract

This article explores the cultural characteristics of three open access (OA)‐friendly disciplines (physics, economics, and clinical medicine) and the ways in which those characteristics influence perceptions, motivations, and behaviors toward green OA. The empirical data are taken from two online surveys of European authors. Taking a domain analytic approach, the analysis draws on Becher and Trowler's (2001) and Whitley's (2000) theories to gain a deeper understanding of why OA repositories (OAR) play a particularly important role in the chosen disciplines. The surveys provided a unique opportunity to compare perceptions, motivations, and behaviors of researchers at the discipline level with the parent metadiscipline. It should be noted that participants were not drawn from a stratified sample of all the different subdisciplines that constitute each discipline, and therefore the generalizability of the findings to the discipline may be limited. The differential role of informal and formal communication in each of the three disciplines has shaped green OA practices. For physicists and economists, preprints are an essential feature of their respective OAR landscapes, whereas for clinical medics final published articles have a central role. In comparing the disciplines with their parent metadisciplines there were some notable similarities/differences, which have methodological implications for studying research cultures.

Peer review and preprint policies are unclear at most major journals

“…Our results in this regard support previous work on disciplinary cultures and differential propensity to accept preprints (e.g. Fry et al, 2016). In the social sciences, publication patterns and citation cycles differ markedly from those in the natural sciences, e.g.…”

Motivations, understandings, and experiences of open‐access mega‐journal authors: Results of a large‐scale survey

“…A questionnaire was developed based on the early findings of the qualitative stages of the research and drawing on the literature (Fry, Spezi, Probets, & Creaser, ; Solomon, ) for the wording of some questions. Five main areas were explored: Factors that influenced an author's choice of journal. Perceptions of aspects of the submission and publication process. Awareness of the peer review criteria used to assess the article. Whether the article had previously been submitted elsewhere, and, if so, whether resubmission had been at the suggestion of an editor or publisher. The likelihood of the author submitting another article to the same journal. …”

Where Are We Now? Survey on Rates of Faculty Self-Deposit in Institutional Repositories

“…Faculty may not understand how to deposit, see no utility in depositing their article in a local repository, and even consider it a risk (Covey, 2011;Casey, 2012;Zheng & Li, 2015). Even in fields whose competitive practices lead to a culture of preprint deposit, this takes place in centralized disciplinary repositories rather than local IRs (Fry, Spezi, Probets, & Creaser, 2015).…”