Researchers' green open access practice: a cross-disciplinary analysis

• Published in: Journal of documentation 2013-05, Vol.69 (3), p.334-359
• Main Authors: Spezi, Valérie, Fry, Jenny, Creaser, Claire, Probets, Steve, White, Sonya
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Academic Libraries; Attitudes; Authors; Behavior; Behavior Patterns; Behavioural; Communication (Thought Transfer); Culture; Design engineering; Exact sciences and technology; Humanities; Information and communication sciences; Information Needs; Information science. Documentation; Institutional repositories; Interdisciplinary subjects; Libraries; Library and information science. General aspects; Life sciences; Management Systems; Mathematics; Medical research; Norms; Open access; Open access publishing; Periodicals; Polls & surveys; Psychological Patterns; Readers; Repositories; Researchers; Scholarly communication; Scholarly publishing; Sciences and techniques of general use; Social sciences; Strands; Studies; Subscriptions; Working groups; Workshops
• ISSN: 0022-0418; 1758-7379
• DOI: 10.1108/JD-01-2012-0008

Purpose - This paper aims to report on the findings of the second phase of the Behavioural strand of the EC-funded PEER project (http: www.peerproject.eu ). The paper seeks to explore authors' and readers' behaviours in relation to authors' peer-reviewed accepted manuscripts in open access repositories.Design methodology approach - The research was undertaken using a mixed-method approach, involving the distribution of a survey by the 12 participating publishers to their authors in selected journal titles and a participatory workshop with European researchers from selected disciplinary areas.Findings - Researchers' attitudes towards versions of published journal articles made open access via open access repositories may vary depending on whether researchers report behaviours from the perspective of an author or a reader. The research found that disciplinary cultures, norms and traditions shape authors' self-archiving behaviour and readers' use of those versions of journal articles held in repositories.Research limitations implications - One of the limitations of the research is that it was impossible for the research team to gauge the representativeness of the survey compared to the actual disciplinary distribution of the population of EU researchers, as such population information is not available in an aggregated and consistent format.Originality value - The PEER Observatory is an unprecedented large-scale collaboration between publishers, researchers and repositories to investigate the effects of self-archiving at European level. The paper provides a disciplinary reading of the findings and augments the understanding of how disciplinary culture and norms shape authors' and readers' behaviours in relation to self-archiving.