New Evidence Summary: "There are Discipline-Based Differences in Authors' Perceptions Towards Open Access Publishing"

Objective – To determine reasons authors choose to publish in open access (OA) education journals, which provides readers with unrestricted free online access to published articles, and investigate ways in which publishing practices in the discipline of education affects authors’ willingness to publish in these journals.

Design – Web-based survey questionnaire.

Setting – The survey was conducted over the Internet through email invitations.

Subjects – A total of 309 authors who published in OA journals in education participated in this survey for a response rate of 27.9%.

Methods – Researchers surveyed authors who published in selected education journals from 2007 to 2008. The journal titles where generated from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). All chosen journals were peer- reviewed and published either original research or overviews of research results. In addition, all were in English and published in the United States. A total of 1,107 authors were invited to participate via email. The survey was delivered through commercial online survey tool SurveyMonkey and consisted of multiple choice and open-ended questions. It was open from early March to April 16, 2009.

Read the Complete Evidence Summary ||| PDF Version (3 pages)

See Also: Additional Articles and Evidence Reviews in September, 2011 Issue of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice.