Shook | Faculty Perceptions of Open Access Publishing: Incentives for Adoption | Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication

Abstract:  Libraries’collections budgets are becoming less effective in covering subscriptions due to inflation and stagnation, requiring creative solutions to providing research materials to the campus. This investigation sought to determine an institution’s faculty tolerances for publishing in and using open access (OA) materials, as well as to identify the mechanisms that would shift perceptions of OA publishing to a more favorable light, thereby fostering adoption in faculty research and teaching. METHODS Anonymous electronic survey of 468 faculty members with a response rate of 34%. RESULTS Respondents indicated a mixed set of adoption, with equal distribution in willingness to use open access. Quality of OA publications, combined with concerns for tenure and promotion, holds faculty back in utilizing OA journals and publications for their own researchand in the classroom. CONCLUSION Library employees and faculty alike would benefit from understanding one another's work. Faculty would benefit from both an understanding of various OA models and how to distinguish among them, as well as how to evaluate the quality of publications. An institution-wide understanding of Open Access should be created and adopted with significant input from faculty and librarians. Finally, faculty should be provided a course buyout or similar incentive to become an editor for an OA journal to build trust in the quality of open access publishing. The perceptions should be tracked regularly through further deployment of surveys to ensure progress.