OA Publishing: Authors attitude

Two main ways in which authors can provide open access to their work are i) by publishing in open access journals and ii) by depositing their articles in e-print archives (self-archiving). A survey among 154 OA authors and 160 Non-OA authors ware conducted in UK by Swan and Brown in 2004 to learn more about authors’ attitude towards OA publishing. Over 90% OA authors publish in this way because of the principle of free access. They also associate other values with publishing in OA journals such as: to be faster than traditional journals, to have a larger readership and consequently to be cited more frequently and to have high prestige and quality than traditional journals. The main reason for not publishing NOA authors worked in OA journals is that they are unfamiliar with any suitable open access journals in their field. While over 40% of OA authors think that publishing their work in open access journals may limits its impact, a far greater proportion, 74% of NOA authors share this view. The majority (66% of OA authors and 71% of NOA authors) think that when ‘a fee must be paid it should come from their research grant. Over all 71% of OA authors said they would be more likely to choose to publish in an open access journal again after their experience.

Read in detail from:

Swan, A., Brown, S. (2004). Authors and open access publishing. Learned Publishing, 17, pp 219-224.