PAYING FOR OPEN ACCESS: THE AUTHOR'S PERSPECTIVE

How are authors of journal articles paying Open Access (OA) fees or Article Processing Costs (APCs)?  What is the administrative burden for authors? And do their research organisations have an accurate overview of all these payments?

This report aims to share a better understanding of authors’ perspectives on APC payments. This will support the development of an optimal communication and administrative strategy in order to encourage the use of existing APC funding mechanisms by authors. 

To address these research questions, Knowledge Exchange has carried out a study among authors of six research organisations. In total, 1,069 researchers participated in online surveys about their articles published either in OA journals or in subscription journals that offer the option to publish individual articles on OA for an additional fee (so-called hybrid journals).

The aim of this abridged report is to provide a bird’s eye view of the study outcomes. The focus is on the results of a survey of authors in three large, multidisciplinary universities with rather contrasting OA policies:

• University of Helsinki
• University of Göttingen
• University of Glasgow.

For brevity’s sake, the results of the other three participating research organisations (Roskilde University, Technical University Eindhoven and Inria – the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation) will only be mentioned if relevant.

The complete results of the study – including references to relevant literature – are published in a separate report: LINK TO BE ADDED