French researchers in favour of a move towards open science, provided it does not drastically change their habits | OpenAIRE Blog

Couperin publishes the results of the survey on the publication and open access practices of French researchers conducted in 2019. Thanks to its unique scope, number of respondents (approx.12,000, i.e. 10% of the scientific community) and variety of disciplines, this survey helps to shed light on the way French researchers regard current scientific communication in journals and to grasp their views on open access. The richness of the survey rests largely on the verbatim reports (more than 11,500), which have been fully exploited. The survey entitled "Your publication and open access practices" was disseminated and relayed by scientific institutions and social networks. It consisted of 4 parts comprising 42 closed questions and 8 open comment areas (list of questions in the appendix): practice in academic publications, the experience of open archives, the preprints experience, the perception of the research evaluation criteria.

Overall, researchers are in favour of open access and apprehend what is at stake, namely the free dissemination of scientific results. This objective, however, is to fulfilled effortless, in a simple and legible way, without any direct funding by the research laboratories and without any disruption to the conventional journals landscape in their own discipline(s).

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