Open Access Publishing

Perceptions of Open Access Publishing 'Changing for the Better'

Research Information | August 17, 2015

A survey of 22,000 academic researchers by Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and Palgrave Macmillan has found that a decreasing number of authors are concerned about perceptions of the quality of open access publications.
In 2014, 40 per cent of scientists who had not published open access in the last three years said 'I am concerned about perceptions of the quality of OA publications'. But this year, only 27 per cent said they were concerned. In the humanities, business and social sciences (HSS), the drop was more marked; from 54 per cent in 2014 to 41 per cent in 2015. Nonetheless, a concern about perceptions of the quality of OA publications is still the leading factor in authors choosing not to publish OA.

<more at http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=1964; related links: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009913331300102X (Observations and Perceptions of Academic Administrator Influence on Open Access Initiatives. thomas L. Reinsfelder, John A. Anderson. doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2013.08.014 [Abstract: Existing literature frequently covers the topic of open access from the perspectives of authors, librarians, or publishers. Investigations into the role of academic administrators, however, remain limited. Because librarians are uniquely positioned in the center of the scholarly communication ecosystem a survey of library directors was conducted to investigate the nature of any relationship between the actions of academic administrators and an institution's commitment to open access, as observed by librarians. Results indicate that, according to the perspective of librarians, as academic administrator attention to open access increases, open access activities of faculty and librarians also increase. Open access advocates should reflect upon the role of academic administrators and consider increasing efforts to gain the support of these individuals.] and http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/3/2/65/htm (Landscapes of Research: Perceptions of Open Access (OA) Publishing in the Arts and Humanities. Julia Gross and John Charles Ryan. doi:10.3390/publications3020065 [Abstract: It is widely known now that scholarly communication is in crisis, resting on an academic publishing model that is unsustainable. One response to this crisis has been the emergence of Open Access (OA) publishing, bringing scholarly literature out from behind a paywall and making it freely available to anyone online. Many research and academic libraries are facilitating the change to OA by establishing institutional repositories, supporting OA policies, and hosting OA journals. In addition, research funding bodies, such as the Australian Research Council (ARC), are mandating that all published grant research outputs be made available in OA, unless legal and contractual obligations prevent this. Despite these broader changes, not all scholars are aware of the new publishing environment. In particular, the rate of adoption of OA models in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) has historically been lower than Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) disciplines. Nevertheless, some local and international OA exemplars exist in HSS. At Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia, the faculty-administered environmental humanities journal, Landscapes, was migrated to the institutional open access repository in 2013. Subsequently, researchers in the Faculty of Education and Arts were surveyed regarding their knowledge, understandings, and perceptions of OA publishing. The survey was also designed to elicit the barriers to OA publishing perceived or experienced by HSS researchers. This article will present the findings of our small faculty-based OA survey, with particular attention to HSS academics (and within this subject group, particular attention to the arts and humanities), their perceptions of OA, and the impediments they encounter. We argue that OA publishing will continue to transform scholarship within the arts and humanities, especially through the role of institutional repositories. The “library-as-publisher” role offers the potential to transform academic and university-specific publishing activities. However, the ongoing training of university researchers and personnel is required to bring into balance their understandings of OA publisher and the demands of the broader Australian and international research environment.]>