From: "Wright, Victoria" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:01:35 +0100

Apologies for cross posting

Oxford, April, 2013

The Open Access Dichotomy among authors in Taylor & Francis survey

Authors agree that publication should not be limited by the ability to
pay, but all research outputs should be free to read online.  In the
fifth in a series of Press Releases on the themes and findings of the
Open Access Survey, Taylor & Francis investigates authors’ attitudes
and values relating to the communication of research when publishing
in Open Access Journals.

Respondents were asked about their level of agreement with statements
concerning the communication of their research. Findings from the
survey confirmed agreement that, ‘the publication of research should
not be limited by the ability to pay’, as affirmed by 86% of authors
surveyed.  However, 66% of respondents agree that ‘all research
outputs should be free for everyone to read online’. This is evidence
of the ‘Open Access Dichotomy’ - a tension between aspirations and
reality – publication of research does incur costs (even in OA
journals which don’t charge authors to publish within them); so how
can this tension be addressed?

77% of respondents agree that publishers are an essential part of the
research communication process and significantly contribute to the
dissemination of research. One respondent notes by contrast that it is
the researcher’s output which is the lifeblood of a publisher:

‘Publishers are fantastic at disseminating research, but without
researchers, their value is substantially reduced’.  Associate
Professor in Business and Economics

Another respondent voices a concern around the curation of knowledge
in a post-subscription world:

‘I worry about who will maintain the journals if there is not a
subscription base of income to support the work.  PDF will not be the
archival medium for all time so who will pay to convert the existing
knowledge base to any new format? I think we have yet to work out a
lot of the details of an effective archival system for systematic
knowledge storage and recovery.’  Professor in Environmental Science

Taylor & Francis charge article publishing charges (APCs) for those
authors wishing to take the gold OA route to publication, which cover
the costs of OA publication. We do, however, offer waivers for authors
in developing countries and are also an active participant in a number
of development initiatives offering free or reduced price access to
research for those in the developing world. 94.5% of our journals now
comply with the author mandates for those funded by Research Councils
UK and the Wellcome Trust.

Regional and Subject Differences

Biological Sciences, Public Health and Social Care appear consistently
in the top three subjects most committed to the ideals surrounding the
freedom of data, namely that ‘all research outputs should be free for
everyone to read online’, ‘the dissemination of research is a common
good that should not be monetised in any way’ and ‘there should be no
restrictions on research outputs’.  Additional, Biological Science
authors also show the highest level of agreement that ‘publication of
research should not be limited by ability pay’.

At a regional level, agreement with the above statements was
consistently highest in either Latin America or Africa.

Business and Economics stands out as the subject with the highest
level of agreement for the statements ‘researchers have access to most
of the articles they need’ and ‘free access to data matters more to me
than free access to research articles’.  In the case of free access to
data – the level of agreement in Business and Economics (39%) is 50%
higher than the next most supportive subjects, Politics, International
Relations and Geography (26%).

Worldwide, as many authors agree (37%) as disagree (38%) that they
have access to the articles they need.  One could be forgiven for
thinking those at either end of the spectrum were likely to be from
very different regions of the globe.  However, examining the level of
agreement for each region reveals a surprising degree of homogeneity.

The subject and regional breakdowns relating to the distribution of
licence preferences can be found here:

www.tandf.co.uk/journals/explore/open-access-survey-supp4.pdf

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:
www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pdf/open-access-survey-march2013.pdf

For more information, please contact:
Victoria Wright, Communications Manager, Taylor & Francis Group Journals
email: [log in to unmask]

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About Taylor & Francis Group

Taylor & Francis Group partners with researchers, scholarly societies,
universities and libraries worldwide to bring knowledge to life. As
one of the world’s leading publishers of scholarly journals, books,
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