Survey Report on Research Activities and Open Access, a study from the Committee on International Scholarly Communication (a.k.a. SPARC Japan), the Japan Association of National University Libraries, and Japan's National Institute of Informations (dated March 2006 but apparently released on June 13). (Thanks to Shinji Mine.) From the executive summary:
The aim of this survey, carried out in December 2005, was to investigate trends in
Japanese researchers’ research activities, their use of databases, their awareness of new
Open Access (OA) possibilities such as open access journals (OAJ) and self-archiving,
and their concerns about this form of publishing. 613 faculty members (researchers) at
National University Corporations or Inter-University Research Institution
Corporations responded to the queries. The results of the survey suggested that
Japanese researchers are, in general, still hardly aware of or prepared to cope with OA,
although their counterparts in developed countries are knowledgeable about OA.
29% replied that they were aware of OA, while according to A. Swan’s JISC Report
(2004), over 60% of those who have not published through OAJ were aware of the
concept. This evidences that Japanese researchers do not have enough knowledge
concerning OA.
Only 17% of the respondents answered they have plans to publish through an OAJ in
the next three years. The primary reason for more than half of those respondents who
choose an OAJ is a belief that the principle of free access to research information is
important.
In contrast, those who answered that they do not plan to publish through an OAJ (21%)
stated that the most important reason for not doing so is that they are not familiar
enough with OAJs in their fields to be motivated to submit to them. These findings are
consistent with the tendency reported in A. Swan’s JISC Report (2004).
Most researchers feel that the author’s fee should be subsidized by research grants.
More than two thirds (69%) of the respondents said that, if publishing their work in an
OAJ were a condition prescribed by the contract with grant-awarding bodies, they
would accept the condition.
About 20% of the respondents expressed concern about the possible breakdown of the
conventional scholarly communication system which the proliferation of OA might bring
about, while over 40% stated they could not make any judgment concerning this subject.
Regarding researchers’ self-archiving, only 20% of the respondents have self-archived at
least one article during the last three years....A. Swan’s 2nd report (2005) states
that almost half (49%) of the author population has self-archived at least one article in
the past three years. Most Japanese researchers are still unaware of the possibility of
providing open access to their work by self-archiving.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/22/2006 07:51:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
