Towards a system of open access to publications
Summary
Driven by a digitization of society, the academic publishing industry has undergone major changes in the past two decades, with online articles replacing paper-printed articles as the main example. Furthermore, in November 2013 the Dutch government formulated the aim to reach a system of full open access to publications (OAP) by 2024 and in May 2016 the Competitiveness Council of the EU took important decisions to achieve immediate OAP by 2020. Clearly, a transition towards OAP has been initiated, reflected by the establishment of a remarkable number of open access (OA)-journals.
Nevertheless, publishers of OA-journals face major challenges. To overcome these challenges and establish a successful introduction to the market, the innovation of OAP has to fulfil customer’s needs and be superior to alternatives. Therefore, an understanding of potential customers and the factors influencing their decision to adopt the innovation, is important. This research focuses on the scientist as the customer of OAP, because a scientist decides where to submit his/her paper and therefore whether or not to publish in OA. Previous research has explored the challenges posed to OAP by examining the awareness of, experience with and attitude among scientists towards OAP and has aimed to uncover factors influencing a scientist’s decision whether or not to adopt OAP. However, the factors identified remain limited. This research identified the factors scientists employed by Dutch universities perceive as incentive or barrier in their adoption-decision process for OAP. In doing so, this research complemented the range of factors influencing a scientist’s decision whether or not to adopt OAP.
In order to identify these factors, interviews with librarians and scientists were conducted and an online survey was sent out to Dutch scientists. Fifteen interviews with librarians were conducted to provide a general overview of the OA-policy of the VSNU universities. The subsequent four interviews with scientists provided a first insight into the factors they perceive as barrier or incentive during their adoption-decision process regarding OAP. Finally, the online survey tested for these factors on a large scale. Eventually, six incentives and four barriers were identified. Personal and societal perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use of OAP, peer usage, valuation of OAP in the scientific discipline and the presence of OA-information sessions were identified as incentives in the adoption-decision with regard to OAP. The scientist’s age, a scientist’s career position, a large percentage of non-OA publications compared to OA-publications in the research output of a scientist and a mono-disciplinary nature of the discipline were identified as barriers in forming a positive attitude towards OAP.
Information sessions at the universities turned out to be a great way to disseminate information to scientists and will therefore contribute to the creation of awareness of OAP. In conclusion, services to stimulate OAP should at first focus on younger and/or lower-positioned scientists from multi-disciplinary fields. In order to increase the perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of OAP such services should be organized in a way that provides as much clarity and information as possible about the process of OA-publishing.