Academic publisher Taylor & Francis has released the fourth in a series of press releases on the themes and findings of the Open Access Survey. In this survey, Taylor & Francis explores authors' perceptions regarding the advantages and disadvantages of open access (OA).
Popular opinion is reflected in the fact that a strong majority of authors felt that OA journals offer wider circulation (71percent). However, when asked to think more specifically, only a slim majority (55 percent) would agree that OA journals offer wider visibility; less than half (45 percent) said they resulted in a wider readership; and only a quarter thought that papers published in OA journals were cited more often (25 percent) than subscription content. This last finding seems to correlate to research on the citation advantage of OA published by Davis et al and Bjork and Solomon, but goes against the findings of other studies, such as that of Xia et al.
Authors' views are fairly evenly split when asked about the quality and production standards of OA journals, when compared to subscription journals. Only a third (36 percent) of respondents believe that OA journals drive innovation in research, with another third (38 percent) remaining neutral on the question. There is still, however, a clear sentiment that OA does have some advantages, with 60% of respondents disagreeing with the statement that OA has 'no fundamental benefits' - half of whom 'strongly disagree'.
The basic results from the full survey and a copy of the questionnaire can be found here and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution licence:
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pdf/open-access-survey-march2013.pdf.
