Authors’ Awareness and Attitudes Toward Open Access Repositories

Abstract

This article investigates the awareness of scholarly authors toward open access repositories and the factors that motivate their use of these repositories. The article reports on the findings obtained from a mixed methods approach which involved a questionnaire returned by over 3000 respondents, supplemented by four focus groups held across Europe in the summer 2009. The research found that although there was a good understanding and appreciation of the ethos of open access in general, there were clear differences between scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds in their understanding of open access repositories and their motivations for depositing articles within them. This research forms the first part of a longitudinal study that will track the changing behaviors and attitudes of authors toward open access repositories.

Keywords:

• open access
• repositories
• self-archiving
• behavior
• attitudes
• PEER project
• disciplinary differences

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the PEER Executive for funding this work, as part of the PEER Observatory project (http://www.peerproject.eu/). The authors would also like to thank Chris Armbruster for his comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

1. http://www.opendoar.org/index.html

2. http://roar.epritns.org

3. http://www.epritns.org/openaccess/policysignup/

4. http://www.peerproject.eu

5. A list of participating journal publishers can be found at http://www.peerproject.eu/about/

6. Respondents could mark more than one answer to this question.

7. http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/projects/sherparomeo.html