Almost half (49%) of the respondent population have self-archived at least one article during the last three years in at least one of the three possible ways by placing a copy of an article in an institutional (or departmental) repository, in a subject-based repository, or on a personal or institutional website. The purpose of this present study, however, was to move the focus onto selfarchiving, the alternative means of providing open access to scholarly journal articles. These reasons, and their rank order, exactly match the findings from our survey that was specifically on open access publishing last year. The principal reasons why authors have not published in open access journals are that they are unfamiliar with any in their field and that they cannot identify a suitable one in which to publish their work.
For example, the main reasons for authors publishing their work in open access journals are the principle of free access for all and their perceptions that these journals reach larger audiences, publish more rapidly and are more prestigious that the toll-access (subscription-based) journals that they have traditionally published in. Many of the findings reported here match those of that previous study.
The survey also briefly explored author experiences and opinions on publishing in open access journals to follow up our previous study on this topic for JISC and the Open Society Institute. The survey was carried out during the last quarter of There were 1296 respondents.
The full study report, for those who are interested, can be found at any of the following URLs: Open Access Briefing Paper A two-page Briefing Paper on Open Access, which covers the principles and issues of open access in a very concise form, is published by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and is available at:ģ EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This, our second author study on open access, was carried out to determine the current state of play with respect to author self-archiving behaviour. The Introduction serves as a stand-alone starter document for those wishing to acquaint themselves with self-archiving without too much pain. +44 (0)Ģ Note to readers The pages that follow constitute the Introduction, Executive Summary and References from a document written in May 2005 reporting the findings of a large-scale survey of scholarly researcher behaviour with respect to open access, specifically the green route to OA via self-archiving.
Once the download is complete, open the file to initiate the installation - just follow the on-screen instructions.