Analysis and news
Geographic trends in attitudes to open access Donald Samulack presents some highlights from a report on the different approaches to the biggest change in research availability in decades
We have been monitoring author perspectives on academic publishing since 2013, when we first conducted a global survey looking at the challenges East Asian authors face in trying to get published in international English- language journals, versus the perceptions of journal editors regarding East Asian manuscript submissions. In this study, we identified gaps in how authors self- report their needs and understandings of publishing processes, versus how editors of journals perceive the authors’ understanding of publishing processes, based upon the manuscript submissions they receive. In October 2018, we released the
results of a much larger landmark study about author perspectives. The Author Perspectives on Academic Publishing; Global Survey Report 2018 looked at responses from almost 7,000 respondents (85% self-identifying as authors) from over 100 countries. This study showed that authors with low English proficiency found manuscript preparation substantially more challenging and frustrating than others, and particularly were highly challenged with respect to framing the research question and selecting a journal for publication. Most survey respondents expressed unhappiness with the long turnaround times of journals and believed that a manuscript should ideally take less than six months to be published, from the time of submission. This latter report then led to a sister
report, released in December, Geographic Trends in Attitudes to Open Access, where a closer assessment was taken of the findings from the Editage Global Survey Report – specifically looking into what researchers from different geographies think about open access (OA) publishing. The report on author attitudes to OA
showcased the views of authors from the seven most represented countries in the Editage Global Survey Report: Brazil (B), China (C), India (I), Japan (J), South Korea (SK), the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US), and provided insights
42 Research Information April/May 2019
“The report showcased the views of authors from the seven most represented countries”
on: geographic differences in the level of OA awareness, country-specific trends in researchers’ stated reasons for choosing or refraining from OA journals, and specific perspectives of Chinese researchers toward the OA publishing model. In the OA report, when asked whether
authors had ever published in an OA journal, the majority of researchers from each country responded affirmatively (B, 68% of 1,133 respondents; I, 57% of 213; J, 59% of 708; UK 60% of 111; US, 51% of 419), except for China (34% of 2,085) and South Korea (44% of 409; roughly equal, yes verses no). Overall, across all survey respondents, with Yes at 45% and No at 35%, OA advocates may feel comfortable that the pendulum is swinging in the right direction. However, there are some striking differences in the geographic profiles of whether or not an author chooses to
publish in an OA journal, with an overall 9% of responding authors indicating that they don’t know what OA publishing is. For example, in response to why
respondents chose to publish in an OA journal, more than 60% of authors in almost all geographic areas responded “I wanted my paper to be read by a larger audience” (B, 60% of 766; C, 69% of 710; I, 64% of 121; J, 64% of 415; UK, 63% of 67; US, 60% of 215), however in South Korea, only 37% of 181 authors responded in such a manner, and instead, 71% of 181 authors indicated that “I chose the journal that was the best fit for my paper and it happened to be OA”. This was in striking contrast to authors in the UK, for which the “best fit being OA” response was only indicated by 31% of 67 authors. Notably, when authors in the UK who had “never” published in an OA journal were asked why, 65% (of 34) said “I chose the journal that was the best fit for my paper and it happened to be a subscription journal”. So, while authors in the UK who have published in an OA journal acknowledged that they preferred the OA model of publishing (54% of 67), and that they wanted the paper to be read by a larger audience (63% of 67), if UK authors had “not” published in an OA journal the reasons for doing so were that they could not afford the article processing charges (56% of 34), or the journal of best fit for their paper happened to be a subscription journal (65% of 34). Notably, in the group of UK respondents that had never published in an OA journal, none of them indicated that they didn’t understand OA publishing. This latter point was very telling. Of the
UK respondents, the message of why to publish in an OA journal was understood, yet one-third of the UK respondents (34 of 101) seemed to choose not to publish in an OA journal, or felt shut out because of the cost of article processing charges; other reasons given were that they doubted the quality of OA journals (9%), or they didn’t see any/adequate benefits of OA publishing (12%). Also striking, was the difference in
reporting that the author’s institute or funding body mandated OA publishing. In the UK, 37% of 67 reporting authors who
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