Author Attitudes Towards
Open Access Publishing
27th April 2011
TBI Communications on behalf of InTech Open Access Publisher
Author: Melinda Kenneway
TBI Communications Ltd
62 Church Road
Wheatley
Oxford
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1865 876 896
Fax: +44 (0)1865 876 346
1.0 Introduction
A continuing debate
Open Access (OA) continues to be a controversial business model for
publishing scholarly information, with both ardent advocates and critics. OA
places the burden of payment for the publishing and distribution process on
authors rather than readers; the purported benefit being that the resulting
information can then be made freely available online at no cost to the
reader, potentially increasing readership well beyond traditional boundaries
of access.
The concept of Open Access has been around for several decades but it has
only really gained traction in the past decade, particularly as it has begun to
gain the support of government, institutions and research funders. OA covers
three key areas relating to: 1) making access to scholarly content freely
available online; 2) making access to the data within scholarly content
accessible and re-usable; and 3) allowing institutions to deposit copies of their
authors articles in an institutional or subject-based repository.
1.1 Open access and peer review
Peer review is often (mistakenly) mixed up with OA, with some commentators
assuming that OA means limited peer review. In reality, this is a totally
separate issue. Many new systems of peer review are being developed, and
this too is proving highly controversial. Often these new systems of peer review
are combined with OA perhaps because it is the organizations that are
innovating with access business models that are more likely to innovate with
peer review business models. For example, PLoS One1 which combines OA
with a light peer review system that primarily checks an article for technical
accuracy rather than making more subjective judgements about quality and
potential impact.
Concerns from the traditional publishing community concerning OA generally
centre on issues of quality (ensuring a rigorous peer review process remains in
place, whatever the access model) and long-term stability. The existing
access models based on print publications and subscription access have
proved their longevity and the full implications of whole scale and rapid
change to OA remain uncertain, so traditional publishers call for caution and
experimentation to ensure the overall system remains stable. Charging authors
for publication also increases the incentive to publish many articles rather
than few, which Elsevier argued in its report to the UK Science and
Technology Select Committee in 2004, would force OA publishers to
continually be under pressure to increase output, potentially at the expense
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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of quality. Of course, the established publishing community also has vested
interests in the existing models that many will regard need protecting.
Although publishers have worked to adapt to OA opportunities and demands
(e.g. through offering optional OA within subscription products), most of the
significant innovation to date has come from relatively new organisations
such as Biomed Central and the Public Library of Science (PLoS), who have
less invested in the status quo.
1.2 Commercialisation of open access
Another interesting dynamic of OA is that the arguments for it have often
been highly emotive with a strong focus on ethics, promoting the value of
freely accessible information. Organisations and individuals supporting and
offering OA are often drawn from the not-for-profit community. However,
increasingly commercial organisations both new and established publishers
are embracing and offering this business model. This is causing some tension
in the market with some OA advocates seeing commercial objectives as
being to some extent in conflict with the principles of OA. Certainly the model
has some particular traits that could attract less scrupulous practices,
because the cost of entry into the market is so much lower than traditional
publishing. In an OA model few costs are incurred ahead of accruing income
so it is relatively easy for anyone to set up a company offering OA publishing.
The model also offers the opportunity for potentially high profits if the cost
base can be kept low. These factors taken together put the model at risk of
being exploited by a minority. In a recent article2 by Richard Poynder, he
highlighted comments from US librarian Jeffrey Beall who argued in a 2010
review that predatory publishers risked promoting vanity publishing and he
called them predatory because their focus would be not to promote,
preserve and make available scholarship , but to exploit the author-pays,
Open Access model for their own profit.
However, OA clearly does not need to be the preserve of not-for-profit
publishers. As in any open market, all organisations whatever their profit
status should be free to compete for authors and in doing so, the overall
quality of services offered will be driven up and costs minimised. Established
bodies like the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and
Open Access Publishing in Europe Networks (OAPEN) will be important for
vetting and verifying organisations offering OA services, but it will be critical for
them to remain open to innovation from OA publishers, seeking input directly
from the research community as to what constitutes quality and service and
managing the potential scare-mongering of established organisations in the
face of new and growing competition.
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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1.3 Serving authors
The future is likely to see a much wider range of organisations offering author-
side fees publishing services. Much of the current debate continues to focus
on what publishers think of OA, but relatively little research has been
undertaken to understand the attitudes of researchers. It was with this in mind
that InTech, a commercial Open Access publisher with a focus on book
publishing, commissioned TBI to survey its author-base to help better
understand researcher awareness of and attitudes towards this evolving
model. By sharing the results of this survey, InTech hopes to dispel some of the
myths about what researchers truly value relating to OA and peer review, so
that the scholarly communications community can continue to innovate and
evolve its business models to suit the needs of the authors that they serve.
References
1. PLoS ONE Peer Review: http://www.plosone.org/static/review.action
2. PLoS One, Open Access, and the Future of Scholarly Publishing. Richard Poynder.
About InTech
InTech is a multidisciplinary Open Access publisher of books and journals covering the
fields of Science, Technology and Medicine. Since 2004, InTech has published more
than 400 books and have provided publishing services to over 25,000 authors,
providing free online access to high-quality research, and helping leading academics
make their work visible and accessible to diverse new audiences around the world.
About TBI Communications
TBI Communications is a leading independent consultancy working with academic
and professional publishers around the world to help them understand their markets
and audiences better and adapt their business models and sales and marketing
processes to increase their success in meeting both commercial and non-commercial
goals.
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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2.0 Research Overview
A market research programme was developed by TBI on behalf of
InTech that would provide a better understanding of the needs of
researchers and the evolving context within which they carry out
research, publish and exchange information. Views on Open Access
and on InTech as a service provider were also sought.
The research programme comprised:
a. Telephone interviews with high profile Open Access
advocates
b. Telephone interviews with InTech contacts including staff,
authors and editors
c. Online survey sent to InTech database of authors, which
received over 8,000 responses
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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3.0 Survey Findings
The online author survey was conducted in early March 2011 and sent
out in an email by InTech to their database of approximately 25,000
authors worldwide. After just a few days there had been a response of
8,000. This in itself is an interesting indicator of interest how many
organisations receive a 32% response rate when they survey their
customer base? Clearly the issues surrounding OA resonate with the
research community.
In summary, 8,015 participants took part in the online author survey, of
which 4,692 (58.5%) participants completed the entire survey. The
survey responses are summarised in the points that follow.
3.1 Profile of Respondents
Primary job roles (Total= 7,990 responses):
" 78.1% (5,919) were researchers
" 21.4% (1,708) were lecturers
" 3.2% (252) were graduate researchers
" 1.3% (101) were students
" 0.1% (10) were librarians
" Other secondary roles named include professor, surgeon, physician,
medical doctor, university role or teaching role.
Primary workplace:
" 78.6% (6,282) work in universities
" 16.2% (1,295) work in not-for-profit research institutions
" 5.2% (413) work in a commercial research organisation
" Other workplaces include hospitals.
Geographic location:
Geographically the responses were very diverse. While the 10 most
common countries of origin were:
" China (8.3%)
" USA (7.8%)
" Japan (7.1%)
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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" Italy (5.3%)
" Brazil (4.8%)
" Spain (4.6%)
" Turkey (4.3%
" India (4.0%)
" Iran (3.8%)
" Poland (3%)
Responses also included 7 participants from Azerbaijan, 8 from
Ethiopia, 4 from Iceland, 29 from Morocco, 5 from Puerto Rico.
Specialty:
" 28.6% (2,286) have a specialty in medicine
" 22.4%% (2,328) have an engineering background, including
electrical/ electronic engineering
" 22% (1,755) have a biological sciences specialty
" 9.6% (770) have a background in materials science
" 8.0% have a background in computers and information science
" Technology (3.9%) and Earth Sciences (5.6%) are the lowest
3.2 Author attitudes towards open access
We asked authors for their general views on how important Open
Access was to them. 75% of participants said they think it is very
important or important to be able to offer their work free online to a
global audience even if that means the author pays.
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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Further analysis of participants views on Open Access country by
country shows that authors responses are uniformly high, which you
would expect from those who have published with an Open Access
publisher such as InTech. The following table shows the top ten
responding countries. There is little variation in the enthusiasm for Open
Access.
Table A: Author attitudes towards Open Access
% of positive % of negative
Total responses to responses ( very responses
question important or
Country of origin important )
72.2% 2.8%
443
China
69% 3.3%
333
Japan
70.8% 5.9%
339
United States
83% 3.3%
242
Brazil
68.7% 9.8%
205
India
77.8% 2.8%
212
Turkey
81.3% 5.2%
192
Iran
79.7% 3%
236
Italy
81.8% 3.6%
219
Spain
87.1% 3.4%
147
Mexico
Overall, only 2.4% participants thought the Open Access model was
unimportant or not important at all. 9.8% of responses from Indian
participants were negative, which is comparatively high. India also has
the lowest percentage of positive responses out of these 10 countries.
The participants comments on Open Access publishing fall into four
main categories and representative quotes for each are included
below.
a) Improving access to knowledge
There is, not unsurprisingly, widespread agreement amongst authors
that Open Access is key to reaching the widest possible audience,
which is an ambition for many authors:
I appreciate on-line free access as it makes data available to
anyone.
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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What I need is dissemination of my ideas in my subject, whatever the
cost.
I don't want price to be a barrier to someone obtaining access to my
work.
I want people to get the information as soon and freely as possible.
Fundamentally for me the purpose of publication is to share one's
reflection with others for their benefit as well as for the progress or
better understanding of the issue being discussed. It is also to stimulate
others for further investigation on the subject matter.
b) Author payments
Author payments remain controversial. Many researchers accept the
need to cover publication costs and for organisations to make a profit
from this, but publishers should take note that the payment must be
seen to be set at a fair level and authors should receive a high quality
service in return:
If a publisher does not offer my work online free of charge to a global
audience, I won't even consider it. However, if the publisher wants to
charge me an arm or a leg as publication charge, I definitely won't
consider it. In other words, a good piece of work will find a global
audience, sooner or later. The cream will rise to the top.
Many authors spoke of their lack of familiarity with the Open Access
model, which may explain why some see this kind of publishing as
purely vanity publishing or even a scam of some kind. However, some
authors commented that once they understood the model, they
revised their opinions:
It is quite unusual for the author to pay a publication charge and it
first worried me, but due to the fact that many readers can find out
about your work, I think it is a good thing after all.
Others remain firmly fixed against the principle of paying for
publication:
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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As an author, I would not like to pay to publish my work. The credibility
of the author is questioned when someone can pay and get
something published.
When the audiences are able to view it free of charge, the authors
should not also be charged. Open-access publications have merely
become a money-making business.
c) Quality
Quality remains a critical issue for authors. A vast pool of unmoderated
information is not what researchers want. There was also a sense that
work worthy of being read should still be able to be published via
conventional means:
The challenge for OA is to convince readers of the quality of
publication to my opinion.
If my work is of good quality other authors will reach it anyway.
Journal reputation is the most important item.
Although Open Access to content was seen as strongly desirable as a
general principle by the authors surveyed, clearly asking for a payment
makes them consider more carefully the direct value of publishing
under this model. OA publishers will need to provide evidence of
impact increasingly to justify the publication charges and persuade a
greater volume of researchers that Open Access is the way forward (if
indeed it is). More studies are required to prove the benefits:
The cost of publication will need to justify future citations - availability
to a global audience does not ensure citations in reputable journals.
3.3 Relative importance of publication types
We asked researchers to rate how important different publication
formats were to them. 78% of 4,754 respondents said journal papers
were the most important. 71% of 3,197 respondents said conference
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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papers were least important. 61% of 3,876 respondents rated books of
medium importance. However, a good proportion (30%) rated book
publishing as most important. Journals have traditionally dominated
many subject areas in terms of career importance to an individual
author. Perhaps this may change as Open Access models for book
publishing become more common with accompanying rapid
publication times.
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3.4 Perceptions of Open Access publishers
Firstly, we wished to establish how InTech as a commercial provider of
OA services, was perceived by its customers. There was an
overwhelming vote of confidence in the organisation, with 81% of
responding authors rating their publishing experience with InTech as
either excellent or good . Only 4.5% rated their experience as poor or
extremely poor. Clearly, although InTech is a commercial organisation,
this did not impact on author s overall satisfaction with the services
provided.
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2,042 (39.5%) included an explanation of their answer, which
highlighted some issues of importance to authors relating to Open
Access and peer review:
The publishing process is very well organized and I had no difficulty in
using the interface. The publishing manager always answered
promptly and was very helpful.
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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One of the most valuable features of your organization is your
punctuality. In addition, your efforts in trust building between your
organization and your authors.
Amongst many respondents there was a clear appreciation of the OA
business model:
As a current graduate student, I strongly support the concept of
open access textbooks.
It represents an excellent opportunity to spread scientific research
and application results.
But there are also pockets of suspicion of and lack of understanding
about Open Access:
I was invited to write a chapter for InTech on Nanotechnology
recently. I initially accepted the offer but then found out that you
expect each author to pay & to do this. I think this approach is
fraudulent so I reversed my decision and decided not to publish with
InTech for this reason.
Peer review proved to be a controversial subject, and InTech itself has
experimented with several different approaches to get the balance
right between providing the level of input that authors clearly still want
while minimising the costs, optimising publishing speed and elements of
subjectivity that can be associated with traditional peer review. There
was clear feedback from the survey that a light peer review model
was not felt to be sufficient:
Overall experience is good, however, as the chapter author I did not
obtain any feedback on my submission from the reviewers.
If there would be a review process, the writing process would be
more natural and the chapter could be improved.
Based on this feedback InTech completely revised its approach to
peer review to give more in-depth feedback to authors, who clearly
place a high value on publishers providing peer review as part of the
core service, whatever the access business model.
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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Another area for improvement identified through this survey is
information on the impact of an author s piece of work how widely
read and cited it is and by whom. While some authors are impressed
by the high number of downloads many of InTech s OA books have
achieved:
I looked on your site and I saw very high performance publishing
articles and I am honoured to collaborate with you. Our University has
partners which publish on your site and they are very satisfied, so I have
a very good image of your site.
Others clearly want more support from publishers in understanding how
OA helps them reach a wider audience and the evidence that
supports that post-publication:
I do not know how people find the work and read it.
InTech authors were asked which of the following other three Open
Access publishers they were most familiar with: Hindawi, PLoS and
BioMed Central. BioMed Central is the one that most authors are
familiar with:
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Attitudes to publishing with these Open Access competitors were more
positive than negative. The majority have a neutral attitude perhaps
indicating a lack of familiarity with these publishers. BioMed Central
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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received the most positive comments (41.2%). Geographic analysis of
this question showed that Hindawe had more awareness in Japan and
China.
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3.5. Author Services
In order to better understand how well authors needs were being met
we asked how satisfied they were with the range of services provided
by InTech as a representative Open Access publisher. Over 60%
participants gave InTech either a good or excellent rating for every
service provided.
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Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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Although these results relate to just one Open Access publisher, they
represent the range of services typically provided.
3.6 How authors choose an OA publisher
General feedback from the survey and interviews indicated that there
is still a lack of knowledge amongst the research community
(particularly in some subject areas) about the OA business model. We
asked where authors got information from to help them decide where
to publish. Peers and colleagues emerged as the most important
influencers for authors when deciding where to publish. However,
librarians were also highly influential, particularly in certain geographic
locations. Geographical analysis reveals that countries, where
librarians are considered important, include Brazil (73.5%*), China
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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(67.1%*), India (68.5%*), Turkey (66%*), Mexico (74.1%*) and Iran
(73.6%*).
*Rated as very important or important source of information.
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In telephone discussions too, several Open Access advocates
discussed the challenges for OA publishers in the face of continued
lack of understanding of the model amongst authors:
I ve seen blogs where some OA publishers have been accused of
being in it for the money and that is certainly true for some publishers,
but some of the suspicions are unfair. There is a lack of understanding
of OA.
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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4.0 Summary and conclusions
The survey was conducted amongst a group of authors who are
already favourably inclined towards Open Access, through their
experience as customers of InTech an Open Access Publisher.
However, it is rarely the case that InTech s authors have sought out
Open Access as their main publishing requirement. In fact, most of
InTech s authors (79%) had never heard of the publisher until
approached directly. Once they learn about the model they are
generally highly favourable. This indicates that there is still work to be
done to explain the model and its benefits to the research community.
However, OA publishers are going to increasingly need to provide
comprehensive evidence of the direct benefits of this model to an
individual author, and also increasingly the benefits of their particular
approach as competition increases and new publishers are launched
offering OA services; OA on its own will not be a big enough
differentiator.
As might be expected, authors have concerns over cost and quality
control, but as long as the cost can be kept reasonable and a good
system of peer review remains in place, they are generally accepting
of the value of free access to their work after publication.
Peer review remains an extremely emotive topic in the world of
scholarly communications. For many, peer review has for many years
been seen as the bedrock of the system and where the traditional
publishing process really adds value, filtering out poor quality
information so that only the very best and most reliable work is
published. For others, peer review is a biased and expensive system
that adds little value, and is increasingly irrelevant in a world where the
cost barriers of publishing content have reduced from high (print-
based) to low (online-based).
Open Access is sometimes caught up in this argument and therefore
OA publishers need to have a clear policy on their particular stance on
peer review and ensure transparency. It is legitimate to operate under
a light peer review system (much like PLoS ONE); it is also legitimate to
operate under a peer review system that is more traditional and in-
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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depth in nature. The point is that OA publishers need to be clear on
their particular approach and communicate that effectively.
These research results show there is a clear demand from authors to
retain a reasonably in-depth pre-publication peer review system so
that they feel their work has been evaluated by someone reputable
and the subsequent production quality is then high. They may feel this
more strongly when they pay themselves for publication and they also
may feel this more strongly for books rather than journals, where quality
may be given more prestige (with a journal article if the quality suffers
but the citations are high, authors will still be happy, perhaps less so
with a book).
Author Attitudes Towards Open Access TBI Communications on behalf of InTech
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