What do author insights tell us? : Of Schemes and Memes Blog

" ... The latest Author Insights survey from Nature Publishing Group continues this trend and provides a host of fascinating insights into researcher attitudes. The survey repeats some questions from their 2014 and 2013 surveys, including open access topics, allowing changes to be tracked, but also covers the new topics of journal reputation and how researchers value publisher services. Over 22,000 researchers completed the survey, with the analysis based on the 21,377 respondents that had published at least one paper in the last 3 years. These active authors included researchers from STM and HSS (humanities and social science) fields, though numerically dominated by STM respondents (86%). The extent to which open access has become normal is shown by the 59% of researchers that had published at least 1 OA paper in the last 3 years (47% with an APC; 27% without). This proportion only grew a little compared to 2014, though, with what growth there was concentrated in HSS. A small minority (7%) published exclusively OA; these fans tended to be younger and more likely to be based in Asia (13%). On the other hand this still leaves 40% not publishing OA, rising to 43% in the physical sciences and 58% in HSS. This wasn’t because authors were unaware of OA options: only 6% cited this as a reason. The highest-ranked obstacle to publishing OA was concern about the perceived quality of OA journals, showing this issue remains potent, particular for older researchers and those in N America. After quality concerns, cost issues dominated, with around a third saying they were unable or unwilling to pay APCs. Funder policies are acknowledged to be a major influence on the growth of open access, but researchers in this survey were poorly informed about their funders’ requirements ..."