Faculty attitudes toward Open Access publishing: library-led action and outreach

[Versió catalana]


Zach Welhouse

Oregon State University

Michael Boock

Oregon State University

Abstract

The authors distributed a survey to faculty in all academic ranks and in all Colleges of Oregon State University (OSU) to learn the extent to which they currently make their research openly available, ascertain their awareness of Open Access (OA), their support for OA and their preferences for achieving it. In total, 261 surveys were completed for a response rate of 10.3%. Most faculty demonstrated at least an introductory awareness of OA, so our subsequent outreach focused on more nuanced issues such as the monopolistic nature of key academic publishers and how rising publishing costs interacted with our institutional goals of sustainability and public good. Additionally, faculty members tended to have a strong grounding in the potential values of OA, but few had a strong sense of our libraries' budget or how much was devoted to subscription costs. Future outreach will address this knowledge gap with a more explicit explanation of our operational reality.

Resum

Els autors van distribuir una enquesta al personal acadèmic de tots els rangs i a totes les facultats de la Universitat Estatal d'Oregon (OSU, en anglès) per saber fins a quin punt fan la seva investigació disponible de manera oberta en l'actualitat, determinar el seu coneixement de l'accés obert (OA, en anglès), el seu suport a l'OA i les seves preferències per aconseguir-ho. En total, es van recollir 261 enquestes per una taxa de resposta del 10,3 %. La majoria dels professors van demostrar almenys un coneixement introductori de l'OA, de manera que la nostra divulgació posterior es va centrar en temes més matisats com el caràcter monopolístic dels editors acadèmics de referència i com els creixents costos de publicació han interactuat amb els nostres objectius institucionals de sostenibilitat i servei públic. A més, els membres del cos acadèmic tendien a tenir molt clars els valors potencials de l'OA, però pocs tenien coneixement del pressupost de les nostres biblioteques o quina quantitat es dedica als costos de subscripció. La divulgació futura abordarà aquesta bretxa de coneixement amb una explicació més explícita de la nostra realitat operativa.

Resumen

Los autores distribuyeron una encuesta al personal académico de todos los rangos académicos y a todas las facultades de la Universidad Estatal de Oregón (OSU, en inglés) para conocer hasta qué punto hacen que su investigación esté disponible abiertamente en la actualidad, para determinar su conocimiento del acceso abierto (OA, en inglés), su apoyo al OA y sus preferencias para lograrlo. En total, se completaron 261 encuestas con una tasa de respuesta del 10,3 %. La mayoría de los profesores demostraron al menos un conocimiento introductorio sobre la OA, por lo que nuestra posterior divulgación se centró en temas más matizados como la naturaleza monopolística de los editores académicos de referencia y cómo el aumento de los costes de publicación ha interactuado con nuestros objetivos institucionales de sostenibilidad y servicio público. Además, los miembros del cuerpo docente tendían a tener muy claros los valores potenciales del OA, pero pocos tenían conocimiento del presupuesto de nuestras bibliotecas o cuánto se dedica a los costes de suscripción. La divulgación futura abordará esta brecha de conocimiento con una explicación más explícita de nuestra realidad operativa.

 

 

1 Introduction

Oregon State University, a land/sun/sea/space grant institution, recently received its second Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, "a designation that acknowledges OSU's commitment to community engagement and engaged scholarship among Oregonians statewide". As a land grant, the University is committed to the broadest possible impact and readership of outputs produced by the university's students and faculty. Every thesis and dissertation produced at the University is available at the ScholarsArchive@OSU Open Access (OA) repository. In 2013, the Faculty Senate unanimously passed an OA policy that retains author copyright to, at minimum, the post-peer reviewed, pre-final publisher version of articles and allows for the OA availability of those articles in repositories immediately upon publication.

Building on these efforts, OSU leadership charged an Open and Sustainable Scholarship Committee to engage the OSU community in discussions about sustainable access to scholarly communication. This committee, which included members of the library faculty and faculty from OSU's academic colleges, decided to focus its efforts on articulating open and sustainable scholarship principles that librarians could use in negotiations with publishers and vendors. The principles are intended to result in the automatic OA availability of final versions of articles, provide for more inclusive access to the University's research, protect OSU authors' rights to their own work and eliminate confidentiality clauses and NDAs that prevent librarians from sharing information about publisher negotiations with their communities. To gain community input on these principles, the Committee distributed a survey to OSU faculty in 2021 to gather data about their OA awareness and preferences.

2 Literature review

Prior studies on North American faculty attitudes toward OA generally show strong ideological support for Open principles, but implementing sustainable infrastructure is often hindered by material realities, including Open publications' role in promotion and tenure processes, perceived quality of existing Open journals and cost. This paper builds on previous Open literature by presenting an example of library outreach that has led to a successful Faculty Senate vote endorsing strong, specific language for library-publisher negotiations.

Xia (2010) provided a longitudinal study of scholars' attitudes toward OA publishing from 1991-2008, concluding, "although an increase in the publishing and awareness rates of scholars with regard to OA journals has been observed, scholars have been consistently concerned with the low prestige of such journals and their lack of peer review, which is not the case in practice". Even as scholars from around the world and across disciplines learn about and use Open materials, persistent myths impede their participation.

2.1 Author needs and awareness

Faculty authors have many different needs to balance when considering publishing, including widespread dissemination of their research, the editorial value of peer review and building their scholarly reputations (Creaser, Fry, Greenwood, Oppenheim, Probets, Spezi & White, 2010). The most important audience is researchers at other institutions (Tenopir et al., 2016). Faculty awareness of Open practices and opportunities is positive but varies by discipline (Schroter & Tite, 2006; Machovev, 2019; Odell, Palmer & Dill, 2017). Lower levels of faculty familiarity, especially when compounded by a lack of institutional support, can lead to uncertainty about aspects of Open publishing including the legitimacy and prestige of publishing in Open journals (Hahn & Wyatt, 2014; Peekhaus & Proferes, 2015).

In many cases where faculty are supportive toward the ethos of Open publishing, they are still hindered by disciplinary conventions, promotion and tenure requirements that prioritize publication in high-impact factor journals and mistrust of existing Open publishing routes (Creaser, Fry, Greenwood, Oppenheim, Probets, Spezi & White, 2010; Solomon & Bjork, 2011; Peekhaus & Proferes, 2015; Nicholas, Rodríguez-Bravo, Watkinson, Boukacem-Zeghmouri, Herman, Xu, Abrizah & Swigon, 2017). As a result of these factors, awareness of OA does not strongly correlate with its use (Kaba & Said, 2015; Lwoga & Questier, 2015; Serrano-Vicente, Melero & Abadal, 2016). However, strong institutional support can build on high levels of awareness to dispel myths and promote usage (Creaser, Fry, Greenwood, Oppenheim, Probets, Spezi & White, 2010; Edge, Martin, Rudgard & Thomas, 2011).

2.2 On-campus partnerships

Librarians are well-suited to be OA leaders in cross-campus partnerships due to their established relationships and expertise with scholarly publishing (Mullen & Otto, 2017). Importantly, they should not be the sole drivers of Open outreach: centers for teaching excellence, IT and Faculty Senate are key partners (Bond, Huddleston & Sapp, 2021). Faculty Senate is a particularly ripe organization for establishing consensus and university-wide policies, especially when primed with leadership and examples from the library (Cohen, Smale, Cirasella, Tobar & Daniels, 2013; Fruin & Sutton, 2016). Especially valuable forms of leadership include informal information sharing, departmental presentations, Faculty Senate briefings, and buy-in from upper administration (Emmet & Peterson 2010).

2.3 Access mechanisms

Compared to the European Open publishing landscape, North American academic libraries must wrestle with more sources of potential funding (Machovec, 2019). As a result, transformative agreements prove especially challenging. Transformative agreements such as Read & Publish promise much, including greater transparency than traditional journal licenses, enhanced copyright protections for authors, and more manageable workflows for authors (Borrego, Anglada & Abadal, 2020). Supporters also paint transformative agreements as one route toward an equitable publishing ecosystem and a step forward in transitioning to OA (Farley, Langham-Putrow, Shook, Sterman & Wacha, 2021; Rodríguez-Bravo, Fernandez-Ramos, De-la-Mano & Vianello-Osti, 2021). However, detractors suggest that transformative agreements may introduce new financial imbalances between institutions, maintain publisher profits, and obfuscate publishing costs (Machovec, 2019; Farley, Langham-Putrow, Shook, Sterman & Wacha, 2021; Grogg, Price, Rickards, Rouhi, Young & Kati, 2021; Butler, Matthias, Simard, Mongeon & Haustein, 2023).

Institutional repositories often support Open policies, either as an alternative to publishing in OA journals or as an additional option (Brown 2010). However, limited user awareness often leads to spotty adoption (Mischo & Schlembach, 2011; Hahn & Wyatt, 2014). As Cullen and Chawner (2011) explain, "The 'build it and they will come' philosophy that libraries have adopted has not, as yet, been justified."

3 Methodology

In March 2021, the authors distributed a survey to faculty in all academic ranks and in all Colleges of the University to learn the extent to which OSU faculty currently make their research openly available, ascertain their awareness of OA, their support for OA, and their preferences for achieving it (Appendix A). The survey was disseminated to all faculty member ranks, including professorial positions (assistant, associate, and full professors), as well as support faculty such as faculty research assistants (FRAs), research associates, and instructors. The Qualtrics software was used to create the web-based survey. The survey included a total of twenty questions, three of which were demographic questions: Academic Unit/Affiliation, Professorial Rank, and Number of Articles Published. Matrix scales were used for four of the questions. The remainder were multiple choice with responses ranked on a 3 or 5-part Likert scale. The final question asked respondents to provide additional, open-ended comments.

Before distribution, the authors obtained significant feedback from faculty serving on the 2020-2021 OSU Faculty Senate Library Committee and members of the OSU Open and Sustainable Scholarly Communication Committee to refine aspects of the survey structure, flow, and question design. The survey was distributed to all faculty members at OSU — a total of 2,520 individuals — using two email lists: Inform-C8 includes all OSU instructors, research associates/assistants (1,236) and Inform-C9 includes all OSU professors, associate professors and assistant professors (1,284). Invitations to participate were sent to the population twice in the period between March 8 and March 31, 2021. In total, 261 surveys were completed for a response rate of 10.3%.

4 Findings

4.1 Demographics

Seventy-two percent of respondents identify as Assistant Professor (24%), Associate Professor (23%) or Full Professor (25%). Seventeen percent of the respondents are in the Research Assistant/Associate ranks. Most of the respondents who selected "Other" identify as Instructors.

Respondents were asked how many journal articles or conference proceedings (as an author or co-author), including those that are in-press, they have published in the past 3 years (Table 1) in order to be able to compare responses based on publishing activity. Most of the respondents have published either between 1 and 5 articles in the last 3 years (31%) or between 6 and 10 articles (33%) compared to authors responsible for publishing between 11 and 20 articles (18%) and those who have published 20 or more (13%) in the past 3 years.

Articles
Count
%
20 or more
27
12.6%
11 – 20
38
17.8%
6 – 10
70
32.7%
1 – 5
67
31.3%
None
12
5.6%

Table 1. Articles published by individuals. Source: own creation

To identify differences between colleges, the survey asked respondents to identify their primary college affiliation. Unfortunately, a relatively small number of responses from individuals from many of the colleges meant that findings comparing responses by college were not able to be discerned. No meaningful differences were found between tenure and non-tenure respondents for any of the survey questions.

4.2 Open Access familiarity

A majority of respondents answered "Very familiar" (44%) or "Somewhat familiar" (32%) when asked how familiar they are with Open Access. 212 of the 214 total respondents said that they are at least familiar with OA with fewer than 1% of respondents indicating that they are "Not familiar at all" (Table 2).

Familiarity
Count
%
Very familiar
95
44.4%
Somewhat familiar
69
32.2%
Moderately familiar
34
15.9%
A little familiar
14
6.5%
Not familiar at all
2
0.9%

Table 2. Familiarity with Open Access. Source: own creation

Respondents were asked to indicate how familiar they were with three separate statements, the first two of which relate to the cost and availability of journal subscriptions and the third of which relates to the OA policy passed by Faculty Senate in 2013 (Table 3). Most respondents have at least some familiarity with how much the library pays for journal subscriptions (76.1%) and even more have at least some familiarity with the fact that subscription prices for scholarly journals are rising faster than the rate of inflation (82.7%). On the other hand, almost exactly half of the respondents are not at all familiar that the OSU Faculty Senate passed an OA policy in 2013.

Statement
Yes, I am familiar
Yes, to some degree I am familiar
No, I am not familiar
The library pays approximately $3.5 million per year for serials (journal subscriptions) which is roughly 60 percent of the total collections budget.
72
(33.6%)
91
(42.5%)
51
(23.8%)
The subscription prices of scholarly journals have been increasing at a rate faster than the inflation rate for several decades.
125
(58.4%)
52
(24.3%)
37
(17.3%)
Oregon State University Faculty Senate passed an Open Access policy in 2013.
53
(24.9%)
52 
(24.4%)
108
(50.7%)

Table 3. Familiarity with Oregon State serials landscape. Source: own creation

4.3 Open Access preferences

The survey asked respondents to rank how important it is for 7 different cohorts to access their research articles (Table 4). Ranked by the degree of importance, the cohorts are:

  1. Researchers/faculty at other research-intensive academic institutions. 98% of respondents believe it is very important or important for members of this group to have access to the respondent's research articles.
  2. Researchers or faculty at teaching-focused academic institutions. 91% of respondents believe it is very important or important for members of this group to have access to the respondent's research articles.
  3. Funding agencies. 84% of respondents believe it is very important or important for members of this group to have access to the respondent's research articles.
  4. Practitioners around the world. 79% of respondents believe it is very important or important for members of this group to have access to the respondent's research articles.
  5. Policy makers. 78% of respondents believe it is very important or important for members of this group to have access to the respondent's research articles.
  6. Practitioners in Oregon. 74% of respondents believe it is very important or important for members of this group to have access to the respondent’s research articles.
  7. The general public. 66% believe it is very important or important for members of this group to have access to the respondent's research articles.
Cohort
Very important
Important
Less important
Not important
Researchers/faculty at other research-intensive academic institutions
88.6%
9.1%
0.9%
1.4%
Researchers or faculty at teaching-focused academic institutions
61.2%
29.7%
7.7%
1.4%
Policy-makers
44.0%
34.4%
19.8%
5.8%
Funding agencies
52.4%
31.6%
10.7%
5.3%
Practitioners in Oregon
45.7%
27.9%
20.7%
5.8%
Practitioners around the world
44.7%
34.0%
17.0%
4.3%
The general public
27.0%
34.3%
34.3%
4.4%

Table 4. Importance of access for particular cohorts. Source: own creation

Respondents were asked to indicate how many journal articles they have paid to access over the previous twelve months to learn the degree to which they are unable to access the articles they need via library subscriptions, OA availability of articles, interlibrary loan or other means such as requesting articles directly from authors (Table 5). The commanding majority (92%) of respondents answered that they paid to access zero articles. Sixteen respondents (8%) answered that they have paid to access one or more articles in the past twelve months.

Articles paid for
Count
%
0
197
92.1%
1
4
1.9%
2
7
3.3%
3
1
0.5%
5 or more
4
1.9%
Not applicable
1
0.5%

Table 5. Number of articles paid to access over the previous twelve months. Source: own creation

Respondents were asked what percentage of their research articles were made available OA through different publication and deposit mechanisms. Relatively few respondents made articles available OA in the ScholarsArchive@OSU institutional repository, a disciplinary repository, or a personal, departmental, or college website. Publication in an OA journal and publication in a subscription journal with optional fees for OA are far more common, as is making research articles available via a research networking website (Table 6).

Venue
Count
%
Publication in Open Access journal
110
51.9%
Publication in subscription journal with fee paid for Open Access
84
38.7%
Institutional repository
46
21.3%
Disciplinary repository
56
25.9%
Personal, departmental or college website
49
22.7%
Research networking website
57
26.2%

Table 6. Articles made Open Access in the last three years. Source: own creation

Respondents were also asked if they or their co-authors paid OA fees (Table 7) and, if so, whether the fees were paid from their own personal funds, their labs, their department, grant funds, library or research office, or from other funds. Fifty-two percent of respondents indicate that they have paid fees to publishers so that their articles are available OA and 46% have not.

Paid for OA
Count
%
Yes
109
52.4%
No
95
45.7%
Other
4
1.9%

Table 7. Paid Open Access fees. Source: own creation

Respondents paid OA fees from a variety of sources (Table 8). Of the 108 respondents who have paid OA fees, they most often used research funding (31%) and/or funds from their own or their partners' labs (35% combined). Other notable sources of funding for OA fees include personal funds (18% combined), department funds (6%) and library or research office funds (4%).

Source
Count
%
Research funding/granting agency
63
30.7%
Lab
38
18.5%
Co-authors' lab
35
17.1%
Personal funds
24
11.7%
Co-authors' personal funds
13
6.3%
Department
12
5.9%
Fund at library or research office (mine or co-authors')
9
4.4%
Not sure
7
3.4%
Other
4
2.0%

Table 8. Source of funds for Open Access fees. Source: own creation

In addition to paying OA fees, 50% of respondents also have been responsible for paying other publication charges, especially a variety of page charges (57%) (Table 9).

Source
Count
%
None
90
50.0%
Page charges
31
3.3%
Page charges, Color
19
17.2%
Submission
8
3.9%
Color
7
3.9%
Page charges, Submission
7
0.6%
Other
6
4.4%
Page charges, Color, Submission
6
10.6%
Page charges, Color, Submission, Image rights
2
3.3%
Color, Submission
1
0.6%
Image rights
1
0.6%
Page charges, Color, Submission, Reprints
1
1.1%
Page charges, Image rights
1
0.6%

Table 9. Other publication charges. Source: own creation

The authors asked respondents to indicate whether they would use new funding for publishing articles in OA journals, publishing articles OA in subscription journals and for their students to do the same (Table 10).

Funding use
Yes
Maybe
No
Publishing their own articles in Open Access journals.
139 
(72%)
45
(23%)

(5%)
Publishing their student’s articles in Open Access journals.
121 
(65%)
44
(24%)
21
(11%)
Publishing their own articles Open Access in subscription journals.
139
(72%)
39
(21%)
15 
(8%)
Publishing their student’s articles in Open Access journals.
122
(65%)
42
(22%)
23
(13%)

Table 10. "Faries servir un nou finançament per al pròxim article?". Font: creació pròpia

Asked whether they would appreciate having the right to deposit the final published version of articles to the ScholarsArchive@OSU institutional repository, respondents were overwhelmingly in favor (Table 11). Seventy-seven percent of respondents would like this at least somewhat, with only 2% disliking the option.

Value
Count
%
Like a great deal
102
53%
Like somewhat
45
24%
Neither like nor dislike
38
20%
Dislike somewhat
3
1%
Dislike a great deal
3
1%

Table 11. Value the right to deposit the final published version to ScholarsArchive@OSU. Source: own creation

Respondents overwhelmingly agreed with each of 6 distinct statements pertaining to whether OA publication or the availability in an OA repository increases readership, increases impact, and supports OSU's land grant mission (Table 12). Fifty-four percent say they strongly agree with the statement that publishing an article in an OA journal increases its readership. Twenty-eight percent say they somewhat agree. Only 6% either somewhat disagree (5%) or strongly disagree (1%) with the statement. Similarly, respondents believe that making their article available in a repository increases its readership, with 49% saying they strongly agree, 34% somewhat agreeing and only 3% either somewhat disagreeing (2%) or strongly disagreeing (1%).

Asked whether article availability in an OA journal increases the impact of an article, the majority of respondents either strongly agree (47%) or somewhat agree (22%). Most respondents also agree that making an article available in an OA repository increases its impact, with 70% of respondents either strongly agreeing (39%) or somewhat agreeing (31%). It should be noted that 22% of respondents neither agree nor disagree that publishing in an OA journal increases the impact of an article, and 25% neither agree nor disagree that making an article available in a repository increases its impact.

There is even more agreement among respondents that OA supports OSU's land grant mission. Eighty percent believe that publishing an article in an OA journal meets OSU's land grant mission and 78% believe that making an article available in a repository does so.

Statement
Strongly agree
Somewhat agree
Neither agree nor disagree
Somewhat disagree
Strongly disagree
Publishing my article in an Open Access journal in-creases its readership.
115
(54%)
59
(28%)
15
(7%)
5
(2%)
1
(0.5%)
Making my article available in an Open Access repository increases its readership.
95
(49%)
67
(34%)
27
(14%)
4
(2%)
2
(1%)
Publishing my article in an Open Access journal in-creases its impact.
93
(47%)
43
(22%)
44
(22%)
13
(7%)
4
(2%)
Making my article available in an Open Access repository increases its impact.
76
(39%)
60
(31%)
48
(25%)
9
(5%)
1
(0.5%)
Publishing my article Open Access in a journal supports OSU’s land grant mission.
128
(66%)
28
(14%)
28
(14%)
4
(2%)
7
(4%)
Making my article available in an Open Access repository supports OSU’s land grant mission.
120
(62%)
31
(16%)
34
(18%)
3
(2%)
5
(3%)

Table 12. Other publication charges. Source: own creation

Respondents were also asked to what extent they agree or disagree with different ways the library could support the payment of OA fees, in lieu of paying for some journal subscriptions or delivering content via Interlibrary Loan (Table 13). Responses here are far more mixed and elicit a substantial number of additional comments. Slightly more respondents (44%) either strongly agreed (15%) or somewhat agreed (29%) when asked whether they support the library paying individual author fees to OA journals instead of paying for some journal subscriptions. Thirty percent of respondents either somewhat disagreed (19%) or strongly disagreed (11%) with this method. Notably, 26% of respondents neither agreed nor disagreed. We find that those who said they were very familiar with OA fees agreed more with this statement than those who had less familiarity. It seems possible that respondents either do not understand the difference between OA journals and article OA via subscription journals or that this difference is not important. Respondents answered almost exactly the same way to the question of whether they would support the library paying individual author fees to publish OA in subscription journals instead of paying for some journal subscriptions as they did to the previous question.

Respondents are slightly more supportive of the library delivering journal articles via Interlibrary Loan instead of via library journal subscriptions if some of that money is instead used to pay OA fees for OA journals than they are with canceling subscriptions.

Statement
Strongly agree
Somewhat agree
Neither agree nor disagree
Somewhat disagree
Strongly disagree
Would you support the library paying individual author fees to Open Access journals instead of paying for some journal subscriptions?
29
(15%)
56
(29%)
50
(26%)
36
(19%)
22
(11%)
Would you support the library paying individual author fees to publish Open Access in subscription journals instead of paying for some journal subscriptions?
31
(16%)
54
(28%)
45
(23%)
41
(21%)
21
(11%)
Receiving published research articles via Interlibrary Loan instead of via library journal subscriptions is ac-ceptable if some journal subscriptions money is used instead to pay Open Access fees for Open Access journals.
63
(12%)
66
(34%)
29
(15%)
20
(10%)
16
(8%)
Receiving published research articles via Interlibrary Loan instead of via library journal subscriptions is ac-ceptable if some journal subscriptions money is used instead to pay Open Access fees to subscription journals. Subscriptions are acceptable if some journal subscriptions money is used instead to pay Open Access fees to subscription journals.
56 
(29%)
67
(35%)
29
(15%)
23
(12%)
16
(8%)

Table 13. Alternatives to journal subscriptions. Source: own creation

5 Discussion

Respondents believe that while it is most important that faculty at other research institutions have access to their scholarship, access is also valuable for practitioners in Oregon and around the world. Fittingly for an institution of higher education, many faculty also noted the importance of students having access to their scholarship. OSU faculty members' priorities are similar to those at other universities (Tenopir et al., 2016), in that they prioritize communication with professional peers but also wish to communicate with broader audiences. OA would ensure more equitable access to research, rather than limit it to institutions that are able to purchase a subscription.

Faculty recognizes that publishing an article OA or making it available in an OA repository increases its readership; fewer viewed OA as a means to increase an article's impact. This ambivalence could be the result of Morris and Thorn's observation that many academics are more supportive of OA principles than practice them (2009). Many faculty are concerned about the quality of Open journals in their discipline. Well-known journals provide reassuring impact factors and limit the possibility of publishing in a predatory journal. These findings are in line with Yang and Li's (2015) survey of Texas A&M Universities faculty. They indicated the "responding TAMU faculty are willing to consider publishing in OA publications", but show resistance to OA mandates. Yang and Li's suggestion to provide professional development opportunities to dispel misconceptions and highlight existing resources is well-taken and we will no doubt continue to do so in the future.

While many faculty are interested in making their articles Open through our institutional repository, the process is still commonly viewed as out-of-sync with faculty needs. Cited reasons for not using the institutional repository include the amount of time it takes, ease of using other sites and grant requirements that their research be shared to a disciplinary repository. As a result, OSU respondents follow the trend of academic faculty depositing articles to social networking sites and to departmental, college, or personal websites rather than institutional repositories (Cullen & Chawner, 2011; Mischo & Schlemback, 2011; Hahn & Wyatt, 2014). In spite of these perceived drawbacks, OSU faculty are interested in having the right to share the final, published version of their articles in the repository rather than pre-prints, which are currently covered by our OA policy.

Many faculty are familiar with the financial costs of OA. More than half of the respondents have paid OA fees. Moreover, nearly 30% have paid page fees. Faculty members who have published in OA journals and subscription journals that charge OA fees have used a variety of sources for funding. The most common sources are grant funds, lab funds, and personal funds. For faculty in less funded disciplines, OA publishing may incur stiff personal costs. Taken together, these findings suggest faculty would prefer an outcome where OA publishing is free or paid for by the library.

Like the respondents to Tenopir et al. (2017), who included 2,121 academics across four North American research-intensive universities, OSU faculty are generally supportive of library engagement with funding OA publishing funding. If the library or another department made funds available to publish OA articles, many OSU faculty members would be interested in using them. They are equally interested in using these funds to publish in OA journals and publishing Open articles in subscription journals, although not all respondents were sure of the difference. Regardless of the destination, many faculty believed that as long as the final form of the published article was freely available, it met OSU's land grant mission.

6 Conclusion

As most faculty demonstrated at least an introductory awareness of OA, our subsequent outreach focused on more nuanced issues such as the monopolistic nature of key academic publishers and how rising publishing costs interacted with institutional goals of sustainability and public good. Faculty response to these updated presentations encouraged us to further expand our focus on probable data monopolies, academic publishers' shifting portfolios and the future of Big Data. Rather than regularly re-introducing the basic tenets of OA, we were able to explore how this is especially significant in confronting institutional challenges and the moral imperatives of our university.

While faculty members tended to have strong backgrounds in the potential values of OA, few had a strong sense of OSU Libraries' budget or how much was devoted to subscription costs. Future outreach will address this knowledge gap with a more explicit explanation of OSU Libraries' operational reality. Preliminary presentations that drew on this approach have been successful at demystifying library work by focusing on our capabilities and budgetary challenges.

While the survey data has already demonstrated its value locally, it also has gaps. The 10.3% response rate and uneven distribution of respondents across disciplines limits our claim that the data speaks for the entire campus. Faculty members with a strongly negative view of OA could have self-selected out of the survey, skewing the results. Related studies reported similar issues with 11% and 14% response rates (Yang & Li, 2015; Tenopir et al., 2017). Both surveyed groups match our findings that respondents are generally knowledgeable and supportive of broad OA principles but also value flexibility in applying OA to their own research. Xia's longitudinal study provides one model for larger scale assessment by combining data sets (2010).

The research in this report was followed by action, which led to major changes at OSU. Following the outreach and survey sessions, Faculty Senate voted to endorse strong, specific language in library-publisher negotiations. As a result, the Libraries confidently asserted OSU's priorities with Elsevier and when they determined that future negotiations would not be productive, they paused negotiations and allowed their ScienceDirect contract to lapse. Conversations that grew from these efforts have lit campus discussions on OSU's role in perpetuating unsustainable publishing practices.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Tyler Stevenson for his work on the survey data analytics. We are also thankful to Anne-Marie Deitering, Kerri Goergen-Doll, CJ García, and the Open and Sustainable Scholarship Committee Faculty Advisory Committee for assistance with the survey text and their tireless promotion of Open scholarship.

Appendix A: survey

  1. How many journal articles or conference proceedings (as an author or co-author), including those in-press, have you published in the past 3 years?
  • None
  • 1 - 5
  • 6 - 10
  • 11 - 20
  • 21 or more
  1. Please select your current position and/or rank.
  • Professor (including Extension, Senior Research, and Clinical)
  • Associate Professor (including Extension, Senior Research, and Clinical)
  • Assistant Professor (including Extension, Senior Research, and Clinical)
  • Research Assistant
  • Research Associate or Post-Doc (including Research Associate, Fellow, etc.)
  • Other (Please specify)
  1. Please select your primary unit of affiliation. If your primary work unit is in a research center, institute, or with the Extension Service or an Experiment Station, please select the College that most closely represents the type of research that you do.
  • College of Agricultural Sciences
  • College of Business
  • College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science
  • College of Education
  • College of Engineering
  • College of Forestry
  • College of Liberal Arts
  • College of Pharmacy
  • College of Public Health and Human Services
  • College of Science
  • College of Veterinary Medicine
  • University Libraries
  • Other (Please specify)
  1. Please rank how important it is to you that the following groups are able to access your research articles (Very important, Important, Less important, Not important).
  • Researchers/faculty at other research-intensive academic institutions
  • Researchers/faculty at different types of academic institutions (e.g. teaching-focused)
  • Policy-makers in government or non-government organizations
  • Funding agencies
  • Practitioners in Oregon
  • Practitioners around the world
  • The general public
  1. Please list any other groups for whom you consider access to your research publications to be important.
  2. In the last 12 months, how many journal articles have you paid to access?
  • 0
  • 1
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5 or more
  1. How familiar are you with Open Access publishing?
  • Very familiar
  • Somewhat familiar
  • Moderately familiar
  • A little familiar
  • Not familiar at all
  1. How familiar are you with each of the following statements? (Yes, To some degree, no).
  • The library pays approximately $3.5 million per year for serials (journal subscriptions), which is roughly 60% of the total collections budget.
  • The subscription prices of scholarly journals have been increasing at a rate faster than the inflation rate for several decades.
  • Oregon State University Faculty Senate passed an Open Access policy in 2013.
  1. Approximately what percentage of your research articles in the last three years did you make Open Access through:
  • … the ScholarsArchive@OSU institutional repository
  • … publication in an Open Access journal?
  • … publication in a subscription journal with optional fees for Open Access?
  • … a subject-based repository (e.g. arXiv, PubMed Central, SSRN, RePEC, etc.)?
  • … a personal departmental or college website?
  • … a researcher social networking site (e.g. ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.)?
  1. Have you or your co-authors paid Open Access fees from your own personal funds or through your institution, grant, or other funds?
  • Yes
  • No
  • Other (Please specify)
  1. What sources of funds have you used to pay Open Access fees? Check all that apply.
  • My personal funds
  • My lab
  • My co-authors' personal funds
  • My co-authors' lab
  • Research funder/granting agency
  • A fund at my (or my coauthors') library or research office
  • My department
  • Not sure
  • Other (Please specify)
  1. Within the last three years, when submitting to and/or publishing in a journal, have you paid fees, other than Open Access fees, for any of the following? Check all that apply.
  • Page charges
  • Color
  • Submission
  • Image rights
  • Reprints
  • None
  • Other (Please specify)
  1. Please list any other groups for whom you consider access to your research publications to be important.
  2. If new funding were made available for these things, would you use it? (Yes, Maybe, No).
  • Publishing articles in Open Access journals.
  • Your students publishing articles in Open Access journals.
  • Publishing Open Access articles in subscription journals.
  • Your students publishing Open Access articles in subscription journals.
  1. The Open Access policy passed by Faculty Senate allows you to deposit and make Open Access a post-peer reviewed, pre-publisher formatted version of your articles to ScholarsArchive@OSU immediately upon publication. How much would you value having the right to instead deposit the final published version?
  • Like a great deal
  • Like somewhat.
  • Neither like nor dislike.
  • Dislike somewhat.
  • Dislike a great deal.
  1. Please indicate your level of agreement with each of the following statements (Strongly agree, Somewhat agree, Neither agree nor disagree, Somewhat disagree, Strongly disagree).
  • Publishing my article in an Open Access journal increases its readership.
  • Making my article available in an Open Access repository increases its readership.
  • Publishing my article in an Open Access journal increases its impact.
  • Making my article available in an Open Access repository increases its impact.
  • Publish my article Open Access in a journal supports OSU's land grant mission.
  • Making my article available in an Open Access repository supports OSU’s land grant mission.
  1. Would you support the library paying individual author fees to Open Access journals instead of paying for some journal subscriptions? (Strongly agree, Somewhat agree, Neither agree nor disagree, Somewhat disagree, Strongly disagree).
  2. Would you support the library paying individual author fees to publish Open Access in subscription journals instead of paying for some journal subscriptions? (Strongly agree, Somewhat agree, Neither agree nor disagree, Somewhat disagree, Strongly disagree).
  3. Receiving published research articles via Interlibrary Loan instead of via library journal subscriptions is acceptable if some journal subscriptions money is used instead to pay Open Access fees for Open Access journals. (Strongly agree, Somewhat agree, Neither agree nor disagree, Somewhat disagree, Strongly disagree).
  4. Receiving published research articles via Interlibrary Loan instead of via library journal subscriptions is acceptable if some journal subscriptions money is used instead to pay Open Access fees to subscription journals. (Strongly agree, Somewhat agree, Neither agree nor disagree, Somewhat disagree, Strongly disagree).
  5. Do you have any additional comments related to Open Access at OSU?

 

 

Temària's articles of the same author(s)

Welhouse, Zach, Boock, Michael

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