**Apologies for cross posting**

OAPEN-UK Update: http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/

Dear Colleagues,

The survey of HSS researchers (as both authors and readers) to explore their opinions and attitudes towards the value of monographs, publishing and open access is closing this Friday 27 April. We have had a great response so far with over 840 responses but we would love to have around 1000. Any help you can provide us in sending out the link for the survey to your researchers / authors would be really welcomed.

Open access is such a hot topic at the moment but the focus is primarily on STEM subjects and journals. OAPEN-UK is focusing on monographs in HSS - the survey will help raise the profile of OA in HSS subjects and provide us with data to explore the major challenges and issues that need to be addressed in moving towards an open access publishing model for monographs.

So that's my rousing call to action! Here is the link to the survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/oapenukresearcher and there is an incentive - we have three £100 vouchers, three £50 vouchers and three £25 vouchers available to win to those that complete the survey.

It's probably bad practice to share stats from a survey that is still running, but hey, if you can keep in mind that the results will probably change as more responses are received, then here are some little snippets for you.

81% of researchers that have responded so far work in the UK.

The biggest group to respond so far has been PHD candidates (22%) followed by Professors / Readers (18%).

Only 8% of respondents are not aware of open access. That's pretty good! 38% of respondents are familiar with open access and 53% are aware but not familiar with open access.

60% know what a creative commons licence is but confidence about publishing using a CC licence drops to about 30% and 15% say that they wouldn't publish under a CC licence as they don't know enough about it.

Financial compensation is ranked the least important motive in by 70% of respondents. Releasing information for social progress and knowledge in society is currently ranked highest with over 41% of responses.

Out of a long list of services publishers provide, marketing & promotion and distribution & sales are currently ranked as very important with about 48% each.

Responses to the question 'would you consider self-publishing an academic book (for example, using Amazon CreateSpace or Kindle Direct Publishing)?' show a clear divide with 32% saying yes and 42% saying no. It will be interesting to analyse this further.

The predominant way in which respondents are finding the last book (36%) they read is by searching on metadata (quality and accurate metadata is essential) and after they became aware of the book they obtained it from......

40% said their university library and 39% said they bought it. Will this change as we get more responses come in...who will win this race?

And that's all I'm going to give you right now. There are many more questions in the survey which I haven't mentioned that are going to be so interesting to look at and inform our next phase of research in the project. Until then, please do keep promoting the survey!

Kind Regards
Caren
Caren Milloy
Head of Projects
JISC Collections

E: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
T: 02030066003
W: www.jisc-collections.ac.uk<http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk>
Twitter: carenmilloy


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