Open Access News

Objectives: We aimed to assess journal authors' current knowledge and perceptions of open access and author-pays publishing.

Design: An electronic survey.

Setting: Authors of research papers submitted to BMJ, Archives of Disease in Childhood, and Journal of Medical Genetics in 2004.

Main outcome measures: Familiarity with and perceptions of open access and author-pays publishing.

Results: 468/1113 (42%) responded. Prior to definitions being provided, 47% (222/468) and 38% (176/468) reported they were familiar with the terms `open access' and `author-pays' publishing, respectively. Some who did not at first recognize the terms, did claim to recognize them when they were defined. Only 10% (49/468) had submitted to an author-pays journal. Compared with non-open access subscription-based journals, 35% agreed that open access author-pays journals have a greater capacity to publish more content making it easier to get published, 27% thought they had lower impact factors, 31% thought they had faster and more timely publicaitons, and 46% agreed that people will think anyone can pay to get published. 55% (256/468) thought they would not continue to submit to their respective journal if it became open access and charged, largely because of the reputaiton of the journals. Half (54%, 255/468) said open access has `no impact' or was `low priority' in their submission decisions. Two-thirds (66%, 308/468) said they would prefer to submit to a non-open access subscription-based journal than an open access author-pays journal. Over half thought they would have to make a contribution or pay the full cost of an author charge (56%, 262/468).

Conclusions: The survey yielded useful information about respondents' knowledge and perceptions of these publishing models. Authors have limited familiarity with the concept of open-access publishing and surrounding issues. Currently, open access policies have little impact on authors' decision of where to submit papers.

Comment. Also see the similar studies by Schroter and Tite in BMJ for January 2005 and February 2006. Schroter and Tite write in the current article that "the term 'author-pays' reflects the shift in the cost of publishing from the reader to the author. In reality, though it is the authors' funding body that is expected to cover the costs on the authors' behalf. Some author-pays journals waive fees in cases of author economic hardship." However, they used the term "author-pays" without these qualifications when interviewing subjects. They did define the term during interviews but their definition (in Box 1 of the article) doesn't mention that the fees are usually paid by funding agencies or waived. They acknowledge that 35% of their interview subjects had never heard the term before. Those subjects probably answered interview questions under the false and harmful impression that the fees were to be paid by authors out of pocket. Many interview subjects who had heard the term before probably had the same false idea of its meaning and implications. It also appears Schroter and Tite, while eliciting the useful information that their interview subjects believed that OA journals charging author-side fees compromised peer review, did nothing to correct this false belief before continuing with the interview. Nor did Schroter and Tite apparently inform their subjects that fewer than half of all OA journals charge any author-side fees and that a greater percentage of subscription-based journals than OA journals charge such fees. In short, the study is based on interviews with subjects who had critical misconceptions about OA journals, some of which were inculcated or subtly ratified by the authors. Either the authors should recast the study as showing the effects of these misleading beliefs or redo the interviews.