It’s all about choice… when it comes to open access

“'It’s all about choice' is the slogan for an ongoing campaign to improve understanding about how researchers can meet the open access requirements of their funding agencies. You probably already know that the Canadian Tri-Agencies (NSERC, SSHRC, and CIHR) have officially adopted a new open access policy - one that resembles that of other funders around the world. Federally funded researchers in Canada will be required to comply with the new policy for all grants awarded from May 1, 2015 onward. And, you may recall that the draft policy was presented some time ago. Around that time, we conducted a survey of Canadian researchers’ publishing attitudes and behaviours, which sought, among other things, to understand researchers’ thoughts on Open Access.  As a leading scientific/scholarly publisher in Canada we were very eager to know and share information about how the implementation of this policy would impact research communities and scholarly journals.   From that 2014 survey we learned a few key things: [1] Researchers agree with the principle, not the cost, of open access [2] Journal reputation is still a very important deciding factor [3] Researchers (at that time) were unaware of funding agency support for open access [4] Peer review, reach, and discoverability are considered most important journal features Use of repositories differs widely across disciplines ..."