Drivers and Barriers for Open Access Publishing: From SOAP data 2010 to WOS data 2016

Abstract

Introduction The Open Access (OA) movement was born in the early 2000s. With the creation of electronic journals and the serials crisis it has changed the scholarly communication system. There has been many attempts to understand which are the opinions, attitudes and practices of one of its main stakeholders: researchers.

Objectives This PhD thesis is based on the largest survey to date. The SOAP survey was issued in 2010 and collected 38,522 responses from all disciplines and all over the world. We re-analysed the SOAP 2010 dataset and compared its results with a similar survey issued in 2016 which compiled 15,235 answers.

Methods Descriptive longitudinal study of active researcher’s opinions on Open Access publishing. We re-analyzed a dataset from a previous study run in 2010 (SOAP 2010) and we contacted authors publishing in scientific journals indexed in international databases (WoS 2016).

Results Most researchers are aware of the existence of OA journals in their fields and believe OA is beneficial. Around one third of researchers believe that OA articles have a citation advantage. Another third disagree and the remaining 33% are unsure. The majority of researchers don´t believe that OA articles have less quality than those in subscription-based journals, but a large proportion are unsure. More than half of researches have experience publishing in OA venues. More than half of those that published OA had to cover Article Processing Charges (APCs) to do so, although there are significant differences between disciplines and geographic regions. The most important factor for researchers when selecting a journal to publish in is the perceived quality of the journal. Speed of publication, absence of publication fees or the fact that the journal is OA are secondary.

Conclusions OA is mature enough and all stakeholders involved in the scholarly communication system are pushing for it. Researchers have an interest in the system, but their priority is to publish in journals read by their peers. Quality and peer review are the most important features when it comes to publish, despite they are ideologically in favor of OA. Initiatives like SCOAP3 and OA2020 should mark the way forward.