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Why some authors self-archive their articles
- Alma P Swan (16 May 2005)
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Re: Why some authors self-archive their articles
- James E. Till (18 May 2005)
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Alma P Swan, Director Key Perspectives Ltd, 48 Old Coach Road, Truro, UK, TR3 6ET
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Peter Suber's comments on open access, impact and demand (BMJ, 14 May 2005) highlighted some key issues with respect to author self-archiving and raised a number of interesting questions. We have recently collected data in a large-scale survey that can further inform this debate and go some way towards producing a coherent appraisal of author self-archiving behaviour (1). We know, for example, that 49% of authors have undertaken some form of self-archiving behaviour, placing copies of their articles on their personal or departmental websites (27% of authors have done this), in their institutional repository (20% of authors have done this) or in a subject-based repository (12% of authors have done this). We know, too, that the number of people doing these things has grown in the last year since we carried out a previous, similar, survey: for example, the 20% of authors who have now deposited a published article in their institutional repository compares to only 10% twelve months ago. The proportion of authors now who are not aware of the possibility of providing open access through self-archiving is 31%. There is obviously a job to do there in raising their awareness of the issue. Institutions have their own formal advocacy activities which help, but our data show that of all the sources of information about self-archiving, word-of-mouth from peers was the most common (23% of authors found out about the practice that way). This suggests that as time goes on the good-news message about increased impact and citations for open access articles filtering further through the research community will have its own outcome in increased self -archiving activity. That still leaves the authors who are aware of the possibility of self-archiving, but not actually doing it, to be encouraged to take that step. They are presently discouraged mainly because they think it will take up time or that it will be technically difficult. Data from authors who do self-archive show that it takes a few minutes to deposit an article in a repository and that once this has been done for the first time only 9% of authors subsequently find any degree of difficulty with the process at all. Both Jonathan Wren's original study (BMJ 14 May 2005) and Peter Suber's commentary discuss the fact that authors in high impact journals tend to provide open access to their work more readily by self-archiving than those who publish in lower-imapct journals. Our study adds another dimension: there is a positive correlation between the number of papers authors publish per year and the level of their self-archiving activity. Some authors - very productive authors - are extremely determined to get their work out there and are seizing this simple and effective opportunity to get it noticed. (1) Swan, A and Brown, S. (2005) Open access self-archiving: an author study. To be published by the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), May 2005. Competing interests: None declared |
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James E. Till, Senior Scientist Emeritus Ontario Cancer Institute, University Health Network, Toronto, Canada M5G 2M9
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Alma Swan's interesting finding, that "… of all the sources of information about self-archiving, word-of-mouth from peers was the most common (23% of authors found out about the practice that way) …", reminds me of Everett Rogers' comment: "A common saying is that technology transfer is a body contact sport. Technologies are transferred through interpersonal networks ...". See page 331 in "The Nature of Technology Transfer", EM Rogers, Science Communication 2002; 23(3), 323-341. (An abstract of this article is at: scx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/23/3/323).
Competing interests: None declared |
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