There is a danger in reading too much into the Executive summary of this report, in which the authors may have over-interpreted their own results. Better to read the results in Appendix 3 first hand. This shows that the project was trying to discover what authors did rather than what they think. It also shows the results to be more nuanced than the summary suggests, and therefore more useful too. I would urge readers to go there and draw their own conclusions.
Steve Hitchcock
WAIS Group, Building 32
School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: [log in to unmask]
Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevehit
Connotea: http://www.connotea.org/user/stevehit
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 9379 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 9379
On 11 Oct 2011, at 14:08, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> ** cross-posted **
>
> On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 5:45 AM, Bayer-Schur, Barbara
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> PEER Behavioural Research: Final Report on authors and users vis-a-vis
>> journals and repositories
>> http://www.peerproject.eu/reports/
>>
>> The specific aim of the behavioural research was to understand the extent to
>> which authors and users are aware of Open Access (OA), the different ways of
>> achieving it, and the (de)motivating factors that influence its uptake.
>
> Up-to-date evidence of author/user beliefs and practices is always
> welcome, but it has to be pointed out that what we keep learning from
> survey after survey of this sort is the same thing, over and over:
>
> 1. Authors and users are moderately aware of OA, how to achieve it and
> what its benefits are.
>
> 2. But users cannot get OA if authors don't provide it, and authors
> have been providing OA spontaneously in insufficient numbers (about
> 15-30%) throughout the two decades it has been possible to provide it.
>
> 3. The current growth rate of spontaneously provided OA still remains
> far too slow to expect 100% OA to be reached for another two decades.
>
> 4. Authors and users constantly conflate and confuse author
> self-archiving of articles published in subscription journals (green
> OA) with authors publishing in OA journals (gold OA), with most
> assuming that OA means gold OA (publishing).
>
> 5. Most journals (and almost all the top journals in every field) are
> subscription journals; gold OA journals are a small minority, mostly
> not the top journals; the few top journals among them charge authors
> for publication; there is little extra money to pay for gold OA
> publication because so much money is locked into paying for
> institutional access to subscription journals.
>
> 6. Most authors are hesitant about green OA self-archiving because
> they are afraid it is complicated and time consuming, or illegal, or
> it means giving up publishing in their preferred, top journals.
>
> 7. Most authors haven't the funds to pay for gold OA, nor do they wish
> to give up publishing in their preferred top subscription journals.
>
> 8. The solution is known, and has been tried, tested and demonstrated
> to be successful in accelerating the growth of OA to 60-70% within 1-2
> years, and approaching 100% within a few years thereafter.
>
> 9. The solution is for universities and research funders to mandate
> green OA self-archiving by their employees and fundees.
>
> 10. It would be far better for the growth of OA if -- instead of just
> continuing to survey what authors and users believe, and what they are
> or are not doing -- their institutions and funders were instead guided
> on what needs to be done to ensure that researchers provide it.
>
> Here are some comments on the PEER reports "Key Conclusions":
>
>> Key conclusions:
>>
>> *Over the period of Phases 1 and 2 of the behavioural research the increase
>> in the number of researchers who reported placing a version of their journal
>> article(s) into an Open Access Repository was negligible.
>
> This confirms, yet again, what has been shown and known by multiple
> surveys in the past decade.
>
>> *Researchers who associated Open Access with 'self-archiving'
>> were in the minority. Open Access is more likely to be associated with
>> 'self-archiving' (Green Road) by researchers in the Physical sciences &
>> mathematics and the Social sciences, humanities & arts, than those in the
>> Life sciences and Medical sciences who are more likely to associate Open
>> Access with Open Access Journals (Gold Road).
>
> This confirms, yet again, what has been shown and known by multiple
> surveys in the past decade.
>
> What is needed is not to keep surveying but to remedy both the
> persistent misunderstandings through university and funder green OA
> mandates.
>
>> *There is anecdotal evidence that some researchers consider making journal
>> articles accessible via Open Access to be beyond their remit.
>
> This confirms, yet again, what has been shown and known by multiple
> surveys in the past decade: authors can't afford gold OA, don't want
> to give up their preferred top journals, and will not provide green
> OA unless it is mandated by their universities and funders (as
> publishing itself is).
>
>> *Authors tend to be favourable to Open Access and receptive to the benefits
>> of self-archiving in terms of greater readership and wider dissemination of
>> their research, with the caveat that self-archiving does not compromise the
>> pivotal role of the published journal article.
>
> This confirms, yet again, what has been shown and known by multiple
> surveys in the past decade: authors know that OA increases article
> usage and impact, but they are not prepared to give up publishing in
> their preferred top journals for the sake of providing (gold) OA.
>
>> *Readers have concerns about the authority of article content and the extent
>> to which it can be cited when the version they have accessed is not the
>> final published version. These concerns are more prevalent where the purpose
>> of reading is to produce a published journal article, and are perceived as
>> less of an issue for other types of reading purpose.
>
> Users prefer having access to the published version of record. When
> surveyed, they will always confirm this preference.
>
> But what surveys like this always fail to ask is whether users prefer
> (1) access denial (because their institutions cannot afford a
> subscription to the journal in which an article that they seek was
> published) or (2) access to the author's peer-reviewed, accepted final
> draft (green OA).
>
> If this question were asked, clearly and directly, the user response
> would be overwhelming: rather the author's final draft (green OA) than
> no access at all (as now).
>
> (The same is true of authors: They do prefer users to have access to
> the publisher's version of record, but they would overwhelmingly
> prefer users to have access to the peer-reviewed, accepted final draft
> [green OA] rather than no access at all.)
>
>> *Academic researchers have a conservative set of attitudes, perceptions and
>> behaviours towards the scholarly communication system and do not desire
>> fundamental changes in the way research is currently disseminated and
>> published.
>
> Researchers want to continue publishing in their preferred top
> peer-reviewed journals. That much is true. The rest of this summary is
> vague interpretation: Neither authors nor users want access-denial.
> Both recognize the benefits of OA. And the vast majority of authors
> can and do provide (green) OA, *willingly* -- if and when it is
> mandated by their institutions or funders.
> http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/
>
>> *Open Access Repositories are perceived by researchers as complementary to,
>> rather than replacing, current forums for disseminating and publishing
>> research.
>
> Correct: Green OA is a supplement to peer-reviewed journal publishing,
> not a substitute for it.
>
> But green OA repositories remain 70-80% empty of their target content
> until and unless researchers' institutions and funders mandate green
> OA self-archiving.
>
> The most relevant, concrete and practical finding of the PEER survey
> is not listed among its "Key Conclusions":
>
> "if institutions were to enforce mandates then researchers would feel
> compelled to prioritise their employer’s mandate..."
>
> See:
>
> "Success of U Liege Open Access Mandate Accelerated by Link to
> Performance Assessment"
> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/737-guid.html
>
> and
>
> "Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates: What? Where? When? Why? How?"
> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
>
> SUMMARY: With the adoption of Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates
> worldwide so near, this is the opportune time to think of optimizing
> how they are formulated. Seemingly small parametric or verbal variants
> can make a vast difference to their success, speed, and completeness
> of coverage:
> What to mandate: The primary target content is the author's
> final, peer-reviewed draft ("postprint") of all journal articles
> accepted for publication.
> Why to mandate self-archiving: The purpose of mandating OA
> self-archiving is to maximize research usage and impact by maximizing
> user access to research findings.
> Where to self-archive: The optimal locus for self-archiving is
> the author's own OAI-compliant Institutional Repository (IR). (It is
> highly inadvisable to mandate direct deposit in a Central Repository
> (CR) -- whether discipline-based, funder-based, multidisciplinary or
> national. The right way to get OA content into CRs is to harvest it
> from the IRs (via the OAI protocol).)
> When to self-archive: The author's final, peer-reviewed draft
> (postprint) should be deposited in the author's IR immediately upon
> acceptance for publication. (The deposit must be immediate; any
> allowable delay or embargo should apply only to the access-setting,
> i.e., whether access to the deposited article is immediately set to
> Open Access or provisionally set to Closed Access, in which only the
> author can access the deposited text; in either case, the article's
> metadata are immediately accessible webwide, allowing users to request
> eprint copies by email from the author immediately and
> semi-automatically during any embargo period).
> How to self-archive: Depositing a postprint in an author's IR
> and keying in its metadata (author, title, journal, date, etc.) takes
> less than 10 minutes per paper. Deposit analyses comparing mandated
> and unmandated self-archiving rates have shown that mandates (and only
> mandates) work, with self-archiving approaching 100% of annual
> institutional research output within a few years. Without a mandate,
> IR content just hovers for years at the spontaneous 15% self-archiving
> rate.
>
> Stevan Harnad
> EnablingOpenScholarship (EOS)
> http://www.openscholarship.org
