Academic staff use, perception and expectations about
Open-access archives.
A survey of Social Science Sector at Brescia
University
Biblioteca Centrale Interfacoltà
Università degli studi di
Brescia
2003
Abstract
This study
surveyed the academic population of the faculties of Economics and Law of the
University of Study of Brescia, Italy.
The survey sought
to determine knowledge and use of Open-Access archives in the different
disciplines, and to verify the conditions stated by the authors to participate
in an Institutional Open-Access initiative. Other related issues, such as
authors’ attitudes towards publishers’ copyright policies and role of the
library, were investigated.
Research methods
were based on triangulation approach, and consisted in a Literature Review,
Semi-structured interviews and a Questionnaire survey.
The response rate
to the questionnaire was 57,9% (62 authors).
Results show that
44 percent (25/57) of the authors knows about the existence of Open-Access
initiatives and archives.
Among the people
who answered that they were aware of the existence of Open-Access archives,
only 4 percent (1/25) affirmed they had already used them to deposit papers,
while 33 percent (16/48), among those who declared to use materials free
available on the web, affirmed to have used an Open-Access disciplinary
archive.
Sixty-one percent
(41/62) of the respondents answered they were prepared to personally archive
their own scientific or educational material on an institutional repository,
once the conditions that they request have been fulfilled
There is no
statistically significant association between faculties of origin, professional
status and knowledge about Open-Access initiative or personal availability to
self-archiving. Statistically significant association between years of work in
academia and personal availability to self-archiving is not present, either.
Only the
association between years of working in academia and knowledge about
Open-Access archives and initiatives reveals a leaning towards statistical
significance (p=0.06).
From the study
emerges the crucial role that authors play in the process of diffusion of
Open-Access initiatives, the need to compare the results of this study with
researches in other disciplinary fields and the role that libraries can play
for the enhancement of Scholarly Communication.
1 The
“Anomalous Picture” in Scholarly Communication
The “anomalous
picture” described in an important contribution by Stevan Harnad (Harnad 1998) is a fine example of the critical point in
which scholarly communication lies.
Ever increasing journal prices, perceptions of inadequacies in the
journal system, along with a consistent reduction in library resources and the
advent of new technologies thus creating new opportunities have all contributed
to a ferment of innovative ideas and projects for enhancing or replacing the
present scholarly communication system (Pelizzari 2002).
In an important paper, Peter Suber analyses the
critical phase the academic community is in regarding the process of diffusion
of scientific works underlining that this crisis has entered a second phase (Suber 2003).
1.1 The
Serials Crisis
The first phase is called the “Serials price
crisis”. It has lasted four decades and new technologies, such as the Internet,
has not as librarians had hoped, contributed to abating it. On the contrary, it has exasperated the
situation giving footing to publishing policies that have determined further
price rises in order to be able to guarantee both the electronic and printed
versions of them.
1.2 The Permission Crisis
The second phase, which has
lasted a decade, has, as yet, no name. Suber suggests calling it the
“permission crisis”; it is the result of a growing number of legal and
technological barriers used to limit the use libraries can make of those
journals they have, in any case, paid dearly for. In short, the permission
crisis derives from the following four elements: licences, contracts, hardware
and software.
Therefore, if the price
crisis results in intolerable prices that libraries must pay for subscriptions
to journals, the permission crisis means that, even when they pay, libraries
are hindered, either by contractual obligations or by technological barriers
that forbid them from using electronic journals at least in the same way in
which now they use printed journals. Whilst the price crisis hits both printed
and electronic journals, the access crisis actually hits only the latter.
The natural and, by now, unacceptable
consequence of the present situation is the concrete hampering of the
development of scientific research which regards not only teaching staff and
researchers but also health, progress, culture and civilization and which
reflects, therefore, not only on authors and researchers, but on society as a
whole.
1.3 Resolving the Anomalous
Picture: the Open-Access Strategy
The first response to this crisis
has come from the LIS community. After an initial reactive phase, characterized
by cancelling subscriptions and
increasingly intensive adoption of the “just
in time” strategy, it has resulted in a number of initiatives with the
goal of modifying the scholarly communication process, “freeing” scientific
literature from the “chains” of lucrative commercial publishers.
Open-Access initiatives are perhaps the most interesting response
that the scientific community has tried to give to this problem.
What does
the word “open” mean in the context of digital libraries? At least two
different interpretations are possible - both of them working towards the
enhancement of scholarly communication, though from different points of view –
and they are represented by the Self-archiving Initiative and by the Open
Archives initiative.
Even though at the centre of
an extensive and intense debate, the so-called “Open-Access” strategy is
still characterised by certain ambiguousness and perhaps it is preferable to
clarify. First of all, it is necessary to throw light on the term ‘Open-Access’.
What, in fact, is often passed for a philological distinction, is, actually and
above all, a crucial political distinction.
The distinction falls between a technical and neutral notion of Open,
which can be intended as “inter-operable”, and an essential notion of Open
as freedom without barriers (economic ones in particular) to have access to
scientific literature. We could ‘re-translate’ the difference as “Open by right vs. Open de facto”. It is
clear that without the first, the second cannot be offered, but librarians –
and, one assumes, also the majority of researchers and authors – are interested
in accessing the documents materially and not only in principle.
Losing the fundamental
political side of the term Open would open the way to both theoretical
and operative ambiguity, which represent an obstacle to a new model for the
diffusion of scientific works.
1.3.1 The
Self-archiving Initiative
Speaking
about Self-archiving essentially means speaking about Steven Harnad, one of the
most enthusiastic upholders and supporters of the ‘movement for the liberation
of scientific literature’. From his
point of view, “open” means “free accessibility through the Web to the contents
of refereed articles”.
In his
criticism of the traditional scholarly communication system, Harnad has been
resetting his initial intuition of an electronic-only model of scholarly
publications (Duranceu 1999). Perhaps the most complete view of his
model is outlined in the paper in which he presents his idea and contrasts
supporters of opposing views (Harnad 2000).
Through
Harnad’s vision the model now applies only to refereed journal literature, not to other types of scholarly
communication. The first essential distinction he poses is between
“non-give-away” literature and “give-away”
literature. In the latter, authors do not seek fees for their work; they
only seek research “impact” on the scientific community (also for career
reasons). Until now dissemination has been guaranteed by publishers, who
recover costs restricting access to those who can pay (academic and research
libraries). Harnad claims that in an electronic-only environment, the costs can
be drastically reduced and recovered by authors (or by other actors) rather
than subscribers, so that users can access scientific literature free of charge
on the Internet.
However,
Harnad himself recognizes that his “original ‘subversive proposal’ to free the
refereed literature through auto self-archiving fell largely on deaf ears
because self-archiving in an anonymous FTP archive or a web home page would be
unsearchable, unnavigable, irretrievable, and hence unusable. Nor has
centralized archiving, even when made available to other disciplines, been
catching on fast enough either” (Harnad 2001).
1.3.2
The Open Archives Initiative
The term “Open” has a different
meaning in the Open Archives Initiative, as is declared by their
promoters: “Our intention is ‘open’
from the architectural perspective – defining and promoting machine interfaces
that facilitate the availability of content from a variety of providers. Openness does not mean “free” or “unlimited” access to the information
repositories that conform to the OAI-PMH”.
The Open
Archives Initiative has provided the metadata tagging standards that enable the
content of distributed archives to be interoperable.
In this
sense the Self-Archiving Initiative is devoted to opening access to the
refereed research literature online, providing free software for institutions
to create OAI-compliant archives, interoperable with all other open archives
through the OAI-Protocol for Metadata
Harvesting.
Both the price crisis and the
access crisis can be solved through the Open-Access strategy, at
least as it is understood for the purposes of this work; that is to say, by the
integration of the Self-archiving strategy with
the potentiality offered by the inter-operability promoted by the Open Archives
Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting,
precisely the integration of the potentiality of the first offered by making
scientific works available on-line and the capacity of the second to
interconnect and permit the recovery of this material, otherwise lost in a sea
of more or less authoritative – but actually unsearchable - sites and web
pages.
It seems to be evident that OAI initiative has a
strong correlation with the self-archiving initiative, although the ambiguity
of the terminology still contributes to generate some confusion (Brown 2002).
We will use in the following of this work the
expression “Open Archives” to indicate OAI-compliant e-prints repositories.
Theoretical, philosophical, economic, technological
conditions and requirements both for “freeing” the scientific literature, both
to create interoperability among on-line archives already exist. Nevertheless
the process that was predicted to be rapid and inevitable is proceeding slower
if compared with the previsions of they promoters. Moreover, problems remain
related to long-term preservation, copyright and quality control issues, among
others.
The aim of
this work is to contribute to the efforts now in progress to improve scholarly
communication, investigating the factors that could facilitate and the barriers
that could obstacle the acceptance of Open-Access archives philosophy and
practice among academic professors and researchers of the Faculty of Economics
and Law at the University of Brescia, Italy.
Objectives of the work were identified as follows:
o To verify the authors’ general attitudes
towards electronic publications
o To investigate the knowledge about
Open-Access initiatives and use or non-use of Open-Access archives inside the
academic community
o To explore authors’ attitudes towards
copyright
o To verify whether the differences in
scientific fields influence perception, behavior and use of Open-Access
Archives
o To explore under which conditions would
the authors agree to participate in an Institutional Open-Access archive
project
o To verify which organizational unit, in
the authors’ opinion, should manage an Institutional Open-Access archive
project.
3 The Fieldwork
The University of Brescia, is a small university with
approximately 12.500 students. It consists in four faculties with three
libraries.
The faculties are: Medicine, Engineering, Economics and Law, the latter
founded in 1996. Both the faculties of Medicine and Engineering have their own
central libraries, whilst there is a single library - the Economics and Law Central Inter-faculty Library, BCI,
(where the researcher works) - serving more than 5.800 users, including
students and academic staff, for the other two faculties.
Verifying the concrete behavior of the authors
connected to the Faculties of Economics and Law with regard to putting their
scientific works freely available on-line seemed useful to the purposes of this
study.
It has not been possible to investigate authors’
behavior regarding teaching material as this is offered at a number of sources
(from departmental pages to the teachers’ personal web pages), and furthermore,
in a non-systematic way.
On the contrary, analysis of scientific works and
their availability was possible due to the introduction from the year 2000, of
an evaluation unit relative to the University’s scientific works. The analysis
here shown was carried out using the data provided by this service.
3.1 Scientific Production by Department
The data referred to cover years 2000-2001. They
regard scientific works in the five departments in the two examined faculties,
as follows:
The aim was to verify availability of scientific
works for institutional users, distinguishing between internal and external
accessibility. A total of 108 authors contributed to such production.
Scientific production in the two faculties for the
examined years consisted of 489 items (subdivided into twenty-six categories
according to the scheme offered by the evaluation unit). With exception of
Business Management Department (which represent 34.5% of the total production) there are no great
differences between the departments.
3.2 Scientific Production Availability and
Accessibility
Scientific works were grouped on the basis of their availability for
institutional users.
It was considered useful to subdivide the
accessibility of local scientific works into direct accessibility (that is:
guaranteed on a local level – libraries or departments, using the respective
web sites - on paper or electronically) and intermediary accessibility (that
is: guaranteed through the inter-library loan service).
Scientific works were grouped according to
main subject typology following normal procedure for existing open archives, in
order to verify the “weight” of every single typology of scientific works in
the two faculties and their availability for the academic community. Scientific
articles represent the most prominent output (242, equal to 49.5%), followed by
internal publications and research reports (67, equal to 13.7%) and
contributions in conference proceedings (64, equal to 13.1%). Less importance
had other type of scientific production (chapters in books, translations,
essays and so on).
Accessibility of scientific works in the two
faculties was investigated ensuring the elimination of overlapping between
different forms of the same item (see the column: ‘Total local availability’,
as illustrated in Table 1).
Tab. 1 Freely available scientific works in the faculties of Economics
and Law. Years 2000-2001
|
Paper (Library) (%) |
Electronic (Library)
(%) |
Paper (Department) (%) |
Electronic (Department) (%) |
Total local
Availability (%) |
DD/ILL
(%) |
|
172 (35.2) |
21
(4.3)
|
23 (4.7) |
31 (6.3) |
220*
(45.0) |
140
(28.6) |
*Excluding overlapping in more than one format
Of the 489 items produced in the years 2000-2001 by
the two faculties, only 220 (equal to 45%) are freely accessible and of these,
only, 193 are accessible in the library (17 on paper, equal to 35.2%; only
4.1%, equal to 21 items, are, instead, available electronically). It is
possible to consider another 140 items available through the local
inter-library loaning service. A negative reading would indicate that 269 items
(equal to 55%) are not available (or in any case, that no information is to be
found either in the library catalogues or in the departmental sites) in any
format and 129 (26.4%) are not available at all, not even resorting to the
document delivery service.
The conclusion that can be drawn is that the present
system of diffusion of scientific works in the two faculties is heavily penalising, both for the users (who finds it
impossible to access the majority of local scientific works), and for the
authors who notice extreme limits in diffusion (and therefore in impact on the
scientific community) of what they produce.
Trigonometric model of triangulation approach was
adopted. This paradigm indicates that a combination of methods is necessary in
order to gain a picture of the relevant phenomenon (although not necessary a
fuller picture). In Kelle’s
opinion, trigonometry model holds the greatest promise for conceptualising the
combination of qualitative and quantitative methods (Kelle 2001).
Given the almost total lack of researches about the
perceptions and the use of open archives by academic staff in the social
science field, it was considered that the broad statistical information
provided by a quantitative approach would be more appropriate. A relatively
small qualitative aspect was included in order to explore some key topics that
emerged from the literary review in order to use them to prepare the
quantitative survey. The research followed therefore a “dominant-less dominant”
design advocated by Creswell, in which the dominant paradigm was quantitative,
with a small qualitative component (Creswell 1994).
Considering the sample population (all the scholars
of the faculties of Economics and Law), a self-completion questionnaire has
been considered the most appropriate quantitative data collection
instrument. As quantitative data have
been sought from questionnaire respondents, semi-structured interviews have
been considered the most appropriate qualitative data collection instrument. In addition, an extensive literature review
carried out throughout the study informed the study.
The adopted methods were therefore:
o A literature search (carried out
throughout the study)
o Semi-structured interviews
o Questionnaire
4.1 Semi-structured Interviews
Differently from other types, semi-standardized
– or semi-structured – interviews “use a series of predetermined questions that
are systematically asked of each respondent exactly as written on an interview
schedule” (Mutchnick and Berg
1996).
An interview scheme was therefore prepared
and the questions asked to the selected subjects.
4.1.1 Selection of Interview
Subjects
Semi-structured interviews best develop their
potential when used with key informants, or elites. As stated by
Marshall and Rossman: “An elite interview is a specialized case of interviewing
that focuses on a particular type of interviewee. Elite individuals are
considered to be the influential, the prominent, and the well-informed people
in an organization or community and are selected for interviews on the basis of
their expertise in areas relevant to the research” (Marshall and Rossman 1995).
For these reasons eight key-informants were selected:
the five Departments directors, the Deans of the Faculties of Economics and Law
and the Pro-Rector. We judged that they should be very important both to
collect relevant data, useful for a deeper understanding of the perception and
attitude of academic staff towards open archives, both to contribute to the
construction of the survey questionnaire. Another reason was the possible help
that could came from these subjects to stimulate professors and researcher to
fill the questionnaires and, perhaps, in future, to support the project of a
local Institutional Open- Access archive.
Given the small number of persons involved, the
format for each interview was one-to-one. Each session lasted from a minimum of
25 to a maximum of 75 minutes. Prior arrangement was taken with the subjects,
which were then interviewed in their workplace.
Among the recommended ways of recording interviews,
audiotape recording was preferred. Permission to record the interview was asked
and recorded.
Key informants were also asked to incentive their
colleagues to fill in and return the questionnaire.
The literature suggests a lot of ways to analyse
rough data collected in a qualitative research. After deep evaluation the
researcher opted for the transcription of the interviews, preserving anonymity,
which was obtained omitting names and places and other elements that could
permit to individuate interviewee’s identity.
Analytic procedures were followed to analyse the
data. Following Marshall and Rossman opinion, categories of meaning were
generated from the reading of the transcriptions. Internal convergence and
external divergence were annotated, identifying the salient categories of
meaning held by participants during the interviews. (Marshall and Rossman
1995).
Through logical reasoning, classification schemes –
constructed in a matrix form using a computer – were crossed with one another
in order to stimulate insight and new typologies for further exploration.
The results of interviews are not presented in this paper;
they will be however integrated in the conclusions section.
4.2 Questionnaire-based Survey
Descriptive survey was the approach the researcher
decided to be appropriated to the research. It is concerned with gathering
facts, describing the current situation and uses both quantitative and
qualitative data, providing evidence to support the description.
The population potentially involved in our study was
the full number of scholars (professors and researcher) of the faculties of
Economic and Law. The total number al 31/12/2002 was 118 scholars, 81 of the
Faculty of Economics and 37 of the Faculty of Law. After checking with the
Departments, the number was reduced to 107.
We consider that this number was sufficiently little
to allow us to try to collect data from the entire population.
4.2.2 Questionnaire Design
The chosen survey instrument was a self-administered
questionnaire. The researcher, on the basis of a previous online survey
emanated from the UK RoMEO project, designed it. Being the aims of that survey
(“To ascertain and address the rights issues relating to self-archiving”,
asking academic authors for their view in this limited subject) different from
those of this study, the questionnaire was re-designed in order to relate the
questions to the study’s objectives.
The total number of question was 25.
4.2.3 Data Collection
A single cross-sectional survey was performed,
collecting the data at one point in time, during March and April 2003.
The questionnaire was mailed directly to the
scholars’ offices via the internal mail service of the University, with a covering
letter, inviting respondents to use the same way to return it, with a
pre-addressed envelop for the purpose.
4.2.4 Data Analysis
Albert Goodman summarised the data analysis
multi-stage process (Goodman, 1999).
Data were processed using the statistical software
package SPSS 1.0 for Windows (SPSS, Inc. Chicago, USA). Frequencies of questionnaire responses are
presented. The association between use of Open archives, knowledge of the
Open-Access initiatives, willingness to ask the publisher to retain the
copyright, willingness to self-archiving and professional category (professors
and researchers), department of origin (Economics or Law faculties) and years
working in the Academia was assessed using Chi square or Fisher’s exact test,
as appropriated. The chose level of significance was 5% and the p values
described were two-tailed.
5.1 Responses
A total of 107 Professors and Researchers of the
Faculties of Economics and Law of the University of Brescia constituted our
study sample.
The results of questionnaire responses are presented
in Table 2.
Population size
|
107 |
|
Total number of
questionnaires (Appendix 3) sent out |
107 |
|
Number returned
by initial deadline |
33 |
|
Response to
reminder letter (Appendix 5) |
29 |
|
Total number of
questionnaires returned by final deadline |
62 |
|
Response rate
(as percentage of population) |
57.9% |
|
Number of
invalid questionnaires returned after final deadline |
1 |
The initial deadline was 15th March 2003,
15 days from the date of posting. The final deadline was 7th April.
The response rate was 57.9%. This can be considered more than satisfactory
given that it refers to the entire population.
The highest return rate was obtained from the
Department of Quantitative methods (76.9%), the lowest from Jurisprudence
(46.8%).
Of the 62
questionnaires returned, the highest return rate was received from Associate
Professors (72.4%) and Full professors (66.6%), who also had the highest index
amongst the various classes. No questionnaires were received from supply
Professors.
The return rate was progressively higher in relation
to the number of years the interviewees have been working in the academic
field, varying from 11.5% for those who have been working for 5 years or fewer,
up to 41% for those who have been working in the academic field for more than
15 years.
5.2 Results
Questions in this and in the next
section tried to explore general attitudes and behaviour of academic authors
towards electronic publishing in general.
5.2.1.1
Attitude Towards Copyright
Sixty respondents (96.8%) answered the question.
Whilst 70% declared they ceded copyright to the publisher willingly or
reluctantly, 30% affirms that the publisher they work with does not require
transfer of the copyright. No author claimed to request to retain the
copyright.
5.2.1.2
Alternative Behaviour Regarding Transfer of Copyright
Only 21 respondents declared to use alternative
procedures regarding transfer of the copyright. Amongst them, signing
publishers’ exclusive licence agreement was dominant with 15 responses, equal
to 71.4% of the valid responses.
5.2.1.3
Material Made Available on the Web by the Authors
All the 62
respondents replied to the question. Fifty-six percent declared that they
already had scientific or teaching material freely available on the web, while
43% declared not to have anything freely available on the web.
The distribution of the material made available on
the web by the 35 persons who answered affirmatively was the following:
teaching material 77.1%, scientific material 65.7%.
5.2.1.4 Preferred Publication Site
The question
allowed for more than one reply.
There were 53
replies for the 35 respondents, some of whom had made their material available
on more than one site. More than 65% declared that their preferential
publication site was their pertaining department web site followed by personal
sites or web pages (37.1%). Almost all of the respondents who answered ‘elsewhere’
indicated an institutional organism or association site as publication site.
Only 1
respondent (2.9%) claimed to have deposited material in the Open-Access
archives. This is important to the aim of this study, demonstrating that there
is practically no habit by authors to deposit works in these archives.
A question
aimed to investigate the level of acquaintance with the topic within the
academic community in the Faculties of Economics and Law.
Fifty-seven
respondents (91.9%) replied to the question. The majority of them (56.1%)
declared they were not acquainted with Open-Access initiatives.
The principal source of information was colleagues
(56%), followed by professional literature (32%). There were two ‘Other’
replies (8%) that specified the Central Inter-faculty library as the source of
information.
5.2.1.6
Acceptable Uses for Authors’ Works
Two questions aimed at discovering what the authors
considered acceptable uses, the conditions and restrictions specified for
material eventually made freely available on the web. The picture that emerges
is even clearer if compared with the use considered acceptable by the authors
for material made available by other authors.
Table 3 groups
the types of use considered acceptable.
|
Activity |
…freely (%) |
…with limits or conditions (%) |
…not at all (%) |
Total (%) |
Non respondents (%) |
|
Display |
49 (87.5) |
6 (10.7) |
1 (1.8) |
56 (100.0) |
6 (9.7) |
|
Print, save,
copy |
29 (52.7%) |
23 (41.8) |
3 (5.5) |
55 (100.0) |
7 (11.3) |
|
Modify |
3 (6.1) |
13 (26.6) |
33 (67.3) |
49 (100.0) |
13 (21.0) |
|
Excerpt |
34 (65.4) |
16 (30.8) |
2 (3.8) |
52 (100.0) |
10 (16.1) |
|
Annotate |
12 (24.0) |
21 (42.0) |
17 (34.0) |
50 (100.0) |
12 (19.4) |
|
Aggregate |
12 (24.5) |
28 (57.1) |
9 (18.4) |
49 (100.0) |
13 (21.0) |
The
non-respondents vary, depending on the options, from a minimum of 9.7% to a
maximum of 21% as illustrated in the last column of the table.
The most widely accepted was free vision of the
material, which reached 87.5% (49/56) of the valid answers (but there are also
10.7% of authors who set conditions and a curious 1.8% that exclude it
completely…), followed by the possibility to print, save and copy which just
exceeds 50% (29/55). The two “determined conditions” uses chosen that have the
highest percentage are the possibility to print, save and copy and that of
adding comments and notes. The usage that reached the highest percentage of
refusal (33/49, equal to 67.3%) was the possibility by other people to modify
the material deposited.
5.2.1.7
Restrictions for Use of Authors’ Works
More than 98%,
equal to 61 respondents, chose at least one option. The percentages for each
reply are shown in Table 4.
|
Restrictions |
Frequency |
Percentage (n. 61) |
|
No restrictions |
5 |
8.1 |
|
Personal use |
12 |
19.6 |
|
Use by certain
groups |
8 |
13.1 |
|
For certain
purposes |
40 |
65.5 |
|
For a certain
period of time |
6 |
9.8 |
|
Exact replicas
of the original |
40 |
65.5 |
|
Same format as
the original |
22 |
36.0 |
Non-respondents:
1 (1.6%)
This was a question that allowed more than one
answer; it had a total of 133 replies. Only 5 people (8.1%) answered that they
required no restrictions at all for using their material. The most widely
requested restrictions were “Use for certain purposes” and that the copies
should be exact reproductions of the original, which were both chosen in 65.5%
of cases. The authors were, instead, less interested in setting restrictions
regarding use by certain groups or for a limited period of time.
Fifty-three
authors out of the respondents (85.4%) choose at least one condition they would
like to see implemented relative to the use of their material (Table 5). More
than 26% does not require conditions at all, more than 40% asks for
registration of the user to be necessary in order to access the materials and
almost 50% would like all use to be traceable.
|
Conditions |
Frequency |
Percentage (n. 53) |
|
No conditions |
14 |
26.4 |
|
Users must
register |
22 |
41.5 |
|
Usage tracking |
26 |
49.0 |
|
Other |
1 |
1.8 |
Non-respondents:
9 (14.5%)
The entire number of respondents replied to the
question if they have used other authors’ free available works. In total 77.4%
declared that they have used material freely available on the web against over
22.6% who affirm that they have never made use of it.
5.2.2.1
Sources Used to Access Other Authors’ Works
More than one
answer was possible for this question too. Forty-eight respondents replied,
equal to 77.4%, giving a total of 102 responses. The main source used is
represented by archives managed by institutions (81.3%), followed by the
author’s web sites and pages (60.4%), by Departmental sites (37.5%) and, lastly
(33.3%) by subject based archives; those most clearly identifiable as connected
to the Open-Access initiatives.
5.2.2.2
Reason for Use of Freely Available Material
Of the 48
respondents who declared they use freely available material on the web, 81.2%
stated that they had used it to prepare articles and 72.9% for teaching
purposes; 41.6% affirmed that use was for personal and cultural interests and
approximately 10% for other uses, dominated by professional activities and
thesis preparation.
5.2.2.3 Expected
Uses for Other Authors’ Works
Many respondents have not indicated any of the options. As the final
column Table 6 shows, the rate of non-response varies from 14.5% to 29%. The
uses most frequently expected regard the possibility to view, print, save, copy
and quote the material found. Sixty-six percent (29/44) does not expect to be
able to modify the material in any way and 40.4% (19/47) to add notes and
comments.
|
Activity |
…freely (%) |
…with limits or conditions (%) |
…not at all (%) |
Total (%) |
Non-respondents (%) |
|
Display |
48 (90.6) |
5 (9.4) |
0 |
53 (100.0) |
9 (14.5) |
|
Print, save,
copy |
28 (52.8) |
23 (43.4) |
2 (3.8) |
53 (100.0) |
9 (14.5) |
|
Modify |
2 (4.6) |
13 (29.5) |
29 (65.9) |
44 (100.0) |
18 (29.0) |
|
Excerpt |
28 (57.2) |
18 (36.7) |
3 (6.1) |
49 (100.0) |
13 (21.0) |
|
Annotate |
9 (19.2) |
19 (40.4) |
19 (40.4) |
47 (100.0) |
15 (24.2) |
|
Aggregate |
12 (25.5) |
24 (51.1) |
11 (23.4) |
47 (100.0) |
15 (24.2) |
5.2.2.4
Restrictions and Conditions Expected for the Use of Other Authors’ Works
Table 7 indicates that only a minority of 58 who
replied expects to find no conditions at all for use of other authors’ works,
whilst over 65% of the authors expects limited use for certain purposes and
that the copies made must be exact replicas of the original. Less importance
was given to format, personal use or use limitation to certain groups
|
Restrictions |
Frequency |
Percentage (n. 58) |
|
No restrictions |
5 |
8.6 |
|
Personal use |
17 |
29.3 |
|
Use by certain
groups |
14 |
24.1 |
|
For certain
purposes |
38 |
65.5 |
|
For a certain period
of time |
6 |
10.3 |
|
Exact replicas
of the original |
38 |
65.5 |
|
Same format as
the original |
19 |
32.7 |
Non-respondents:
4 (6.4%)
Table 8
illustrates the responses received from 49 respondents in relation to the
conditions expected for the use of material made freely available by other
authors. The condition most frequently expected (53%) is that of keeping a
trace of the use of materials accessed. Over 40% of the replies indicate that
having to carry out some form of registration to access the archives is a condition
to be expected.
These results do not substantially
differ from those in Tables 2, 3 and 4, demonstrating a substantial coherence
in the limits and conditions the authors would like to see implemented for the
material they publish on the web and that they expect to find for the use of
other authors’ works.
|
Conditions |
Frequency |
Percentage (n. 49) |
|
No conditions |
14 |
28.5 |
|
Users must
register |
20 |
40.8 |
|
Usage tracking |
26 |
53.0 |
Non-respondents:
13 (20.9%)
This section
aimed at investigating whether academic authors were prepared to participate in
an institutional open archive project, the conditions they required, their
preferences regarding the material to be held in the archive, the type of
archive preferred and who should manage it. Each author’s willingness to
archive his/her material personally was also investigated once all of the
conditions that he/she had stipulated had been respected.
5.2.3.1
Conditions for Participating in an Open-Access Initiative
All the respondents replied to this question (Table
9). Only 6.4% expressed their willingness to participate in an open archive at
no conditions, on the contrary, affirming that they would be happy to
participate.
The most frequent conditions stated were: the
possibility to continue publishing using traditional channels (82.3%), the
integrity of their work guaranteed (79.0%) and protection devices against plagiarism
(71%). Almost 60% of the respondents forwarded the request that the material
should be indexed in some way to ensure against its irretrievability.
Interoperability
with other archives was not seen as essential, although of a certain
importance, as it was chosen by more 37%, whilst the aspect that was regarded
as the least important was the long-term preservation of the work deposited,
chosen by 22.6% of the respondents.
|
Conditions |
Frequency |
Percentage out of respondents (N. 62) |
|
No conditions |
4 |
6.4 |
|
Works’
integrity |
49 |
79.0 |
|
51 |
82.3 |
|
|
Protection from
plagiarism |
44 |
71.0 |
|
Long time
preservation |
14 |
22.6 |
|
Indexing |
37 |
59.7 |
|
Interoperability |
23 |
37.1 |
5.2.3.2
Material to Be Hosted in an Institutional Archive
There was a
96.8% response rate to this question (Table 10). Depositing teaching material
obtained the highest approval with over 70%, followed by material that had
already passed through a quality control test with over 60%, pre-prints follow
with more than 50%. There was less agreement for material that had not passed
through a quality control test or that the material should be accepted by an
appropriate body.
|
Typology |
Frequency |
Percentage (n. 60) |
|
Not passed
through a quality control process |
19 |
31.7 |
|
Passed through
a quality control process |
38 |
63.3 |
|
Teaching
material |
43 |
71.7 |
|
Pre-prints |
32 |
53.3 |
|
Accepted by a
body |
10 |
16.7 |
|
Other |
4 |
6.6 |
Non-respondents:
2 (3.2%)
5.2.3.3
Willingness to Ask to Retain Copyright
Willingness to
ask to retain copyright is seen as a key condition for self-archiving and
therefore for any initiative that wishes to create freely available full text
archives.
Four
respondents did not express their choice. Amongst the 58 who replied, over 36%
were prepared to negotiate with the publisher in order to retain copyright for
themselves in order to permit publication in an institutional archive. More
than 56% chose the option “I don’t know”, whilst 4 authors (6.9%) firmly
refused.
The high
percentage of “I don’t know” could be due to both the lack of widespread
knowledge of the Open-Access strategy and also the authors’ perplexities
regarding the implications of such an operation in terms of personal
involvement, its results, and efficacy.
5.2.3.4
Typology of Archive Preferred
The great
majority of respondents (everyone answered the question, possibly confirming
interest in the initiative) expressed a preference for a subject-based
subdivision of the archive, whilst only 8 (12.9%) opted for the possibility of
an inter-discipline based archive.
This reply,
added to the high number of requests for indexing of the material would seem to
indicate the authors’ serious concern about retrieving the contents of the
archives.
5.2.3.5
Responsibility for Archive Management
Over 70% of those who replied singled out the library
as the structure to be appointed to manage an eventual institutional archive
and consequently widely surpassing the other hypotheses.
The “Other” replies can be divided into two
categories: those who declare they are not interested or expert in the matter
and those that underline the need for cooperation between the structure that
manages the archive (whoever that should be) and the Departments.
Of the 62
respondents, almost 20% affirmed they are completely willing to undertake
self-archiving, once the conditions they requested have been fulfilled (Table
11). If added to the 46.8% who declared they would be willing if adequately
supported, we obtain over 66% of respondents who declare to be willing to
archive their works personally in an institutional archive.
Almost 20% of
respondents are undecided and claim they need further information and about 16%
state their unwillingness to do so.
This unwillingness is not directed at the initiative itself;
authors rather request other people (singled out as members of the Department
administrative offices or the organisation that would manage the archive)
archive their works.
|
|
Frequency |
Percentage (N. 62) |
|
Yes, willingly |
12 |
19.4 |
|
Yes, if
adequately supported |
29 |
46.8 |
|
Need further
information |
11 |
17.7 |
|
No |
10 |
16.1 |
|
Total |
62 |
100.0 |
5.3 Associations
In order to verify associations, authors pertaining
Department was combined to the aspects considered most meaningful in relation
to the Open-Access archives, precisely:
As far as the “Use of Open archives” variable is
concerned, it is necessary to forward these words of caution:
It is possible that the respondents who answered they
use “archives managed by an institution” had in mind the freely accessible
archives in large institutions and international associations (such as Unesco,
Fao etc.) rather than the institutions and archives classified as part of the
Open-Access strategy as defined by this study.
We have considered this as “use” for the following
reasons:
a)
The
“opening” characteristic of an initiative is not guaranteed by its name, but
rather by the effective free availability of material; therefore it goes beyond
the motivations and knowledge of the users themselves.
b)
The
“opening” conditions of such repositories makes them, in reality, potential
partners of OAI, able to guarantee their interoperability with other archives
by means of ’OAI-PMH.
On the basis of these factors, therefore we have
created our variable “Use of Open-Access archives”.
5.3.1
Association Between Department and Use of Open-Access Archives
There are no
meaningful differences in the use of Open Archives between departments,
excluding the Department of Economics where the percentage of those who claim
to use them in some way, either for publishing or accessing material is over
90%. For the others Departments the percentage for positive answers are:
Business management 53.8% (7/13); Quantitative methods 60% (6/10);
Jurisprudence 59.1% (13/22); Social studies 66.7% (2/3).
There is also
no relevant difference between the various Departments regarding knowledge of
the Open-Access initiatives and archives. Non-respondents were 5 (8%). The
best-informed Department is Quantitative methods (66.7%), followed by Business
management (50%), Jurisprudence (45%); the least informed is Economics (76.9%
not informed).
This apparently contradictory data regarding Economics is probably explained by the above-mentioned criteria for the creation of the “Use of freely available archives” variable.
The percentage
of positive replies regarding willingness to ask to retain copyright for
publication of the authors’ own works in an institutional archive is not
considerable. Of the 58 respondents, 56.9% responds “I don’t know”, with the
highest value, in this sense, expressed by the Department of Business
Management (61.5%).
The level of firmly negative replies is, however,
very low for a total of 4 respondents, equal to 6.9%.
5.3.4 Association Between Department and Willingness
to Self-Archiving
In order to examine possible associations between
pertaining departments and personal commitment to self-archive, a comparison
was made by comparing the positive replies (“Yes” e “Yes, if supported”) with
the negative or uncertain replies (“No” and “Don’t know”), obtaining the
following Table 12.
Tab. 12
Association between Department and willingness to self-archive
|
Department |
Willing (%) |
Not willing, Don’t know (%) |
Total (%) |
|
Business management |
8 (61.5) |
5 (38.5) |
13 (100.0) |
|
Quantitative
methods |
6 (60.0) |
4 (40.0) |
10 (100.0) |
|
Economics |
12 (85.7) |
2 (14.3) |
14 (100) |
|
Jurisprudence |
14 (63.6) |
8 (36.4) |
22 (100.0) |
|
Social studies |
1 (33.3) |
2 (66.7) |
3 (100.0) |
|
Total (%) |
41 (66.1) |
21 (33.9) |
62 (100.0) |
The Department
of Economics (85.7%) shows the greatest willingness to become personally
involved whilst the greatest number of doubts and negative replies (wanting
works to be archived by others) are fairly uniformly distributed amongst the
various departments, with the exception of the Department of Social Studies
where, however, the number of cases is too limited to allow for assumptions or
generalisations
5.4 Statistically Significant Associations
The final
operation carried out was to search for statistically significant associations
between the variables considered the most relevant.
These two
variables were compared with the pertaining Faculties (grouping the various
departments), the stability of working conditions, and the number of years
spent in the academic field, dividing the respondents into only two categories:
those who have been for the university for 1-10 years and those who have been
working there for over 10 years.
The following tables illustrated were obtained from
the intersection of these variables.
|
Faculty |
Knowledge (%) |
No knowledge, no reply (%) |
Total (%) |
p value |
|
Economics |
19 (47.5) |
21 (52.5) |
40 (100.0) |
1,0 |
|
Law |
11 (50) |
11 (50) |
22 (100.0) |
|
|
Total (%) |
30 (48.4) |
32 (51.6) |
62 (100.0) |
5.4.2 Faculty
and Willingness to Self-archiving
There is also no
statistically significant association between pertaining Faculty and
willingness to self-archive (p=0,78). For Economics, those willing make
up 67.5% and those unwilling to do so 32.5%; percentages that do not differ
much from those in the faculty of Law (Table 14).
|
Faculty |
Willing (%) |
Not willing Don’t know (%) |
Total (%) |
p value |
|
Economics |
27 (67.5) |
13 (32.5) |
40 (100.0) |
0,78 |
|
Law |
14 (63.6) |
8 (36.4) |
22 (100.0) |
|
|
Total (%) |
41 (66.1) |
21 (33.9) |
62 (100.0) |
Other association to be considered was that between
job title and knowledge of the Open-Access initiatives (Table 15). To create
the first variable, the various titles were grouped into two categories: those
with steady work in the University or Professors (“Full” and Associate
Professors) and those who are experiencing greater instability (Contract
Professors and Researchers).
5.4.3 Job
Title and Knowledge of Open-Access Initiatives
|
Job Title |
Knowledge |
No knowledge No reply |
Total |
p value |
|
Permanent
employment |
21 (48.8) |
22 (51.2) |
43 (100.0) |
0,59 |
|
Non permanent employment |
11 (57.9) |
8 (42.1) |
19 (100.0) |
|
|
Total (%) |
32 (51.6) |
30 (48.4) |
62 (100.0) |
5.4.4 Job Title and Willingness to Self-archiving
The same conclusions can be drawn regarding
willingness to self-archiving (Table 16).
Even though there is a difference between the two
groups, it does not constitute a significant statistic (p=0,24).
|
Title |
Willing (%) |
Not willing Don’t know (%) |
Total (%) |
p value |
|
Steady
employment |
26 (60.5) |
17 (39.5) |
43 (100.0) |
0,24 |
|
Non steady
employment |
15 (78.9) |
4 (21.1) |
19 (100.0) |
|
|
Total (%) |
41 (66.1) |
21 (33.9) |
62 (100.0) |
The final associations investigated were those based
on the years of work in the academic field. Results are shown in Tables 17 and
18.
5.4.5 Years of
Work and Knowledge of Open-Access Initiatives
|
Years |
Knowledge (%) |
No knowledge Don’t know (%) |
Total (%) |
p value |
|
<= 10 years |
6 (30.0) |
14 (70.0) |
20 (100.0) |
0,06 |
|
> 10 years |
24 (57.1) |
18 (42.9) |
42 (100.0) |
|
|
Total (%) |
30 (48.4) |
32 (51.6) |
62 (100.0) |
There is, instead, no statistically significant association
between years of work and willingness to self-archive (p=0,78) (Table
18).
|
Years |
Willing (%) |
Not willing Don’t know (%) |
Total (%) |
p value |
|
<= 10 years |
14 (70.0) |
6 (30.0) |
20 (100.0) |
0,78 |
|
> 10 years |
27 (64.3) |
15 (35.7) |
42 (100.0) |
|
|
Total (%) |
41 (66.1) |
21 (33.9) |
62 (100.0) |
One general
comment can be made regarding of the last two tables, which is the greater
willingness of those who have worked for fewer years at the university to take action,
even if those who have worked there for longer have better knowledge of the
subject.
The aim of this study was to
contribute to the efforts made in various sectors towards improving the
diffusion of scholarly literature, investigating factors that could facilitate
and barriers that could hinder acceptance of open archives philosophy and
practice among academic professors and researchers. The field of study were the Faculties of Economics
and Law at the University of Brescia.
Conclusions drawn from the findings are discussed in
relation to the six objectives of the study.
Examining the local context,
little propensity to electronic publishing was noted as far as academic authors
in the faculties of Economics and Law are concerned, mainly in relation to
their habit to make material freely available on the web. Examination of
scientific academic works produced in 2000-2001 had in fact revealed that of
the 489 contributions produced by a total of 108 authors, 220 (equal to 45%)
were available locally; only 21 of them (equal to 4.3%) were available
electronically through the Central Inter-faculty Library and 31 (6.3%) on the
various departments’ web sites and web pages. The great majority of scientific
works resulted inaccessible electronically.
The conclusion that we drew
was that the present system used to divulge scientific works in the two
faculties heavily penalises both the user, who has difficulty in accessing the
material produced in the two faculties, and the authors, who note great
difficulty in divulging what they produce (and therefore also limiting impact
in the scientific community).
This situation could,
possibly, be attributed to the transition underway, (as is well illustrated by
Howard Besser), from the traditional to the digital library (Besser 2002). The
distinction that Clifford A. Lynch makes between ‘scholarly publishing’ and
‘scholarly communication’ is important: “‘scholarly publishing’ is a very specific,
circumscribed example of ‘scholarly communication’… For example, the definition
I propose for an institutional repository does not call for a new scholarly
publishing role for universities, only one of dissemination of scholarly
communication” (Lynch 2003). This distinction, not yet adopted by the
scientific community, seems particularly adapt.
It should, however, be noted
that the figures we examined refer to the two years preceding this research,
and it is, therefore, possible that, in the meantime, the authors from the two
faculties have to some extent changed attitude. One Department Director
provided a particularly meaningful response when asked if he thought that an
institutional repository could increase the impact of his scientific works:
“Up
till now, it wouldn’t have changed anything…Now, in my opinion, it is ever more
frequent that a person’s work is also accepted on sites. But I think this is a
relatively recent phenomenon…If you had asked me this question two years ago, I
would have said no….. but now, it’s true, this is how matters stand”.
This changing attitude
towards electronic publishing of scientific works is, also noticeable in the
questionnaire results.
More than fifty-six percent
of the 62 respondents in fact declared that they had already made some of their
scientific or teaching material available on the web (the latter constitutes
the majority), even if this procedure does not yet seem consolidated, given the
high value of those who declared not to have ever done it (43.5%). It emerged
from more than one interview that the department site seems to be a popular
place for publication, also due to the contribution of departmental technical
and administrative personnel. The number of respondents that claim to have
already used other authors’ works freely available on the web is much higher
reaching almost 80%. Over 80% of those who had replied positively claimed to
have used this material for writing articles. Even though the practise of
habitually making one’s own work available electronically is still to be
reinforced, it is much more customary to use the web to find information.
Distrust in this means of
communication (which also emerged during some of the interviews) can also be
noted in some of the replies given regarding expected uses and conditions
relative to use of materials on the web produced by the authors themselves and
by other authors.
As a percentage, the expected
uses both of one’s own material and others’ material are roughly equal; the
percentages vary greatly, however, for the different possible uses and for
means of accessing such material. Whilst there is almost unanimous agreement
over freedom to visualise material, the replies become more cautious regarding
the possibility to intervene on it, and there are relatively higher numbers of
non respondents, that for some questions exceed 20%, and reach 29% of
non-responses, relative to the possibility to modify documents obtained on the
web.
Only 8% of the respondents
declares not to require any restriction at all for the use of their own
material nor to expect any restrictions for the use of other authors’ material,
whilst a high percentage (over 65% in both cases) asks for – or expects – that
materials can be used only for certain purposes and that the copy made should be
an exact replica of the originals.
An extremely cautious
attitude, therefore which is well summed up by another Department Director:
“Unfortunately,
I still regard the instrument [the
web] as very weak, because, in our field, as far as I can see, there would be
limits to that life blood which is, in my opinion, the most interesting, the
most innovative, which has the greatest intuitive force and which is our young
professors and researchers for whom, what counts, what really counts is where
they publish…In any case, the Minister himself when elaborating criteria that
evaluation commissions must respect also specifies: ‘also evaluate where they
have published’. So…”.
This type of perception
perhaps also explains the preference given to publishing teaching rather than
scientific material electronically.
6.2 Users and
Non-users’ Knowledge of and Attitudes Towards Open-Access initiatives and
Archives
Various questions at
different points in the questionnaire aimed at verifying levels of knowledge,
use and more general behaviour of academic authors regarding the Open-Access
initiatives.
The most direct question was
the following:
“If you already
know of the Open-Access initiatives, can you say how you knew of them?”
Fifty-six percent of the 57
people who replied to this question declared they knew nothing of the
Open-Access initiatives; 44% declared that they had already heard of them. This
information, which is to be considered predictable given the above-mentioned
general behaviour regarding electronic publication, is however, meaningful.
Notwithstanding the proliferation of international campaigns and initiatives
since the late 90s, the majority of authors interviewed declared to be in the
dark regarding the initiative. Researcher’s impression is that the Open-Access
question has been understood, studied and explored by the more advanced members
of the scientific and LIS communities, the former concerned about the impact of
scientific works and the latter about the ever-increasing cost of journals.
There seems to have been scarce awareness, instead, of strategic role played by
the authors, truly responsible for the success or failure of this strategy.
Little attention, on one hand, has been paid to what are the real needs and
expectations and, on the other, to the strategies necessary to completely
involve them, as the almost total absence of relative studies reveals.
For example, of the 25
authors who declared they knew of the Open-Access initiatives, 14 (equal to
56%) declared they were informed by colleagues, 8 by professional literature, 1
by non-professional literature and 2 by other sources. Two respondents who
replied “other” received information from the library. These replies seem on
one hand to demonstrate the role played by informal communication (and
therefore the importance in singling out convinced promoters of the initiative
within local academic communities) and, on the other, the lack of informative
and promotional activity carried out by the library.
As regards, John MacColl and
Stephen Pinfield affirm: “One of the key ways of winning over researchers is by
demonstrating that e-print repositories can provide access to the quality
literature. There are widely held views that free literature on the web is
normally of poor quality and that Open-Access repositories are not an
appropriate medium for publishing peer reviewed research” (MacColl and Pinfield
2002).
If the data relative to
knowledge of the Open-Access initiatives is moderately important, those
relative to effective use of the Open Archives is critically so.
Only one author out of the 35
who affirmed that they made their material freely available on the web declared
having put material in a freely accessible disciplinary archive. Sixteen
authors out of 48 (33.3%) respondents declared instead to have obtained
material from a disciplinary archive. The authors’ fairly passive attitude is
confirmed. They are more prepared to use material produced by others than to
commit themselves personally to making their own scientific works freely available.
Also the interviews with key informants revealed that only 2 out of 8
interviewees had withdrawn material from the Open-Access Archives.
There are very few studies
available to date with which to compare these results. Ibironke Lawal includes
the results of a survey of a population of 240.000 doctoral scientist and
engineers employed in academia across the United States and Canada. The sample
size was 473 calculated from the total population. The survey sought to
determine use and non-use of e-print archives in different disciplines. Results
showed that 18% of the researchers use at least one archive while 82% do not
use any (Lawal 2002).
The survey, refers to the
year 2002, and also offers motivations regarding use and non-use of such
archives. As far as non-use is concerned, a large number of respondents
answered that e-print archives were not relevant to them. Another reason for
the non-use of e-prints archives was due to publishers’ policies, while a
relatively small number named technology constraints as a barrier to use.
The data from the Arno
Project also offer few possibilities for comparison, even if the purposes and
aims of the project are, in part, similar to this study. The objective of one
of the ‘core work packages’ was, in fact to identify “conditions for author
participation” in an Open archive initiative with the aim “to design strategies
to convince academic staff to make their output available through archive
servers” (Bentum et al. 2001). These results will be discussed further on as
they regard expectations more than effective use of the archives.
On examining the poor use of
the Open archives more carefully, it does not seem to be connected to mistrust
so much as to the quality of the material they hold (even if this is certainly an
important aspect). Whilst presenting the results we in fact learnt that by
combining the Open-Access users with those who claimed they had used material
from “Archives run by an institution” we obtained a positive reply rate equal
66%. This can perhaps be considered a sign that non-use of the Open Archives
is, essentially, linked to lack of relative knowledge rather than a prejudiced
attitude towards them.
Behaviour towards copyright
can be considered a sub-aspect of more general behaviour towards the
Open-Access initiatives. As has been frequently underlined during this study,
the authors’ willingness to ask to retain copyright is a key aspect for any
strategy that aims to create free accessible institutional archives.
The results of both the key
informants and the questionnaire revealed a rather contradictory attitude
towards these themes
Four out of eight of the key
informants declared that this issue is either not discussed with the publisher
or admit that they have never really considered the question. Behaviour capable
of creating legal difficulties for the authors emerged:
“I indicate where it has been
published [the work] and I insert it [on the Department site]. I made this in
an informal way, as I have never asked for authorisation or anything like that…
but the matter regards Italian scientific journals that don’t have electronic
formats and so I don’t think I am creating any problems in, as much as no-one
has ever commented this”.
It emerged from the questionnaire
that although over 63% of respondents habitually ceded their copyright
willingly to the publisher, 30% declared “Publishers do not ask for copyright
assignment”. When asked what other procedures were adopted when the copyright
is not transferred to the publisher, only one author declared to “Amend the
publishers’ copyright assignment” (but a good 66% did not answer the question).
Investigating the authors’
willingness to ask to retain copyright in order to deposit their material in an
institutional open archive confirms how critical both the problem and how the
problem should be faced are. If only 4 authors (6.9%) actually declare the
unwillingness to such an initiative, 21 (36.2%) claim to be ready to face it.
Thirty-three respondents (56.9%) answer the question with an “I don’t know”.
This, as we commented, is a
potentially risky situation, probably owing to consolidated procedures on one
hand – characterised by a certain superficiality – in relationships with
publishers and, on the other hand, by the relative novelty of the web as a
complementary means of publication. Intervention is necessary in this situation
through information campaigns and support, because internationalisation of
studies – as well as the turbulent growth of the web as parallel publication
channel – is bound (as it is, in any case, already happening internationally)
to make aspects concerning copyright even more pressing and critical.
The crucial nature of this
aspect is confirmed on different points by the IFLA in its “Manifesto on
Open-Access to Scholarly Literature” (Byrne 2003).
6.4 Influence of the Scientific
Field in Perceptions, Attitudes, Use and Non-use of Open-Access Archives
One of the aims of this study was to verify the
existence of different approaches to and uses of the Open Archives according to
the authors’ different subject fields. This is a subject that frequently
emerges in literature; a particularly meaningful contribution is by Kling and McKing,
who claim that the variety of practices are related to specific
fields, based on particular work products, and that “communicative
heterogeneity” will persist in the next years (Kling and McKim 2000).
The data that emerges from
our work does not allow us to affirm any clear-cut differences in approach
either by the faculties studied as a whole or the various departments.
Relevant differences in use
of the Open Archives, for example between the Departments, did not emerge, if
we exclude the Department of Economics where the percentage of those who claim
to use them in some way, either publishing or accessing material, exceeds 90%.
No significant difference
between the various Departments is found relative to declared knowledge of the
Open-Access archives or initiatives or lack of such knowledge. The Department
which emerges as the best informed is Quantitative methods (66.7%).
Greatest willingness to
become personally involved in Self-archiving activities is registered in the
Department of Economics (85.7%) whilst the main perplexities and negative
replies (in as much as they would like the material to be archived by others)
are fairly evenly spread throughout the various departments.
Adding data on the Faculties
does not change the results.
There are, for
example, no statistically significant associations between the respondents’
faculty and knowledge of Open-Access initiatives. The positive and negative
values for both faculties are around 50%. The percentage of authors connected
to the Faculty of Economics that declare knowledge of Open-Access initiatives
is 47.5% compared to the 50% in the Faculty of Law.
The same lack of
statistically significant association has been registered regarding pertaining
Faculties and willingness to self-archive. For Economics the level of
willingness is 67.5% and unwilling/don’t know 32.5%; these percentages are not
dissimilar to those in the Faculty of Law (63.6% willing against 36.4%
unwilling/don’t know).
These results could be
explained by the extreme homogeneity of the subject areas examined. In fact,
other studies seem to confirm the existence of this problem of considerable
dimensions. In the quoted study by Ibironke Lawal, for example, the difference
between subject areas taken into consideration was evident, demonstrating major
use in Physics/Astronomy (54.2%), followed by Mathematics/Computer Science
(27.7%), Engineering (7.4%), Biological Sciences (3.7%) e Cognitive
Science/Psychology (1.8%). As can be seen, these differences are considerable.
This affirmation is the authors’ conclusion: “Not all the disciplines are up to
speed with using e-print archives partly due to the culture of information use
in the various disciplines and partly due to the low awareness level” (Lawal
2002).
Bentum and colleagues, on the
other side, summarize the results of their study as follows: ”Perceptions of
research managers and authors regarding electronic publishing and the use of an
archive server as parallel publication channel vary among the disciplines. It
is hard to conclude that all or most of the scientific managers or authors are
positive or negative about electronic publishing, such conclusion can neither
be drawn about their attitude towards a university archive server. This implies
that programs and materials for encouraging the use of university archive
servers should be tailored to accommodate for these differences between
disciplines” (Bentum et al. 2001).
Such conclusions regarding
the influence of different subject areas over perceptions, use and non-use of
the open archives can also be applied to our research.
6.5 Conditions
Placed by Authors for Participating in an Institutional Open-Access Archive
Project
A series of
questions was asked in order to investigate the needs and expectations of the
authors who undertook the questionnaire which aimed at discovering on one hand,
the conditions they required in order to participate in and open archive
project and on the other, which material they believed could be held in the
archive and how it should be structured.
As already
stated, all of the 62 respondents expressed their opinions. Four of them stated
their unconditional willingness to participate. However, the importance given
to the other options proposed was different.
The two main questions were:
It should also be noticed
that all 62 respondents answered the question, proving strong interest in the
subject.
The condition
that obtained the greatest agreement (over 80%) was the possibility for authors
to continue publishing their works in the journals of their choice, respecting
the traditional model of publication. This information is of considerable
importance as not only it establishes a need that cannot be ignored but also
because it should be considered in relation to the philosophy adopted for the
Self-archiving strategy proposed by Harnad, which now refers only to scientific
products that have passed a quality control process. Almost 80% instead,
requested protection of the integrity of their works and, this too is of
importance as it has been made possible by the software at present used
principally to create the Open Archives. Even though chosen by a small minority
of people, it seems important to underline from the beginning that 37% of
respondents specify inter-operability with other archives as a condition for
their participation in an eventual Institutional Open Archives project. As this
work has repeated on various occasions, this is the concrete possibility
offered at present by the OAI-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. Sensitivity to
this theme should be further developed with relevant information initiatives
and used as important grounds for stimulating support for Institutional
Open-Access archives projects.
The request
for protection against plagiarism from over 70% of the respondents seems less
important. The researcher believes that this risk is ever present, if not more
so for printed publication, although this concern too needs to be considered
and discussed with the authors.
The
respondents show little concern, instead – and quite surprisingly – for the long-term preservation of the
works they deposit, a matter strongly felt in literature. Even though not
indicated by the authors as among the priorities, this aspect cannot be ignored
by the archive management; new initiatives, such as OAIS, now allows this to be
faced within the Open-Access strategy (Hirtle 2001).
Indexing the
contents of the archives, requested by 59% of the respondents, expresses
wide-spread concern about the ‘recoverability’ of the material deposited, a
worry that is expressed also in the replies given about what structure eventual
archives should have. Only 13% asks for an inter-disciplinary archive, whilst
sub-division of the contents according to subject or typology obtain
respectively 79% and 30% approval.
Also the
replies regard to which material should be accepted for the archives, although
not offering univocal replies, is extremely interesting. Partially in contrast
– or, at least, complementary to the self-archiving strategy objectives - the
majority of the respondents’ preferences are for teaching material (indicated
by almost 72%). This would suggest that academic authors have another view
point and tend to see the institutional open archive as a place where all the
material produced within the institution can be deposited and on hand. The more
operative rather than strategic role of the archive and the prestige factor
offered to the institution rather than the more general outcome of “freeing”
scientific works resulted also from the answers to some interviews. The two
issues certainly do not clash, however, but answers seem to confirm the
“prestige factor” underlined by Raymond Crow, according to whom institutional
digital repositories will lead to significant increase in the prestige of the
institutions that build them (Crow 2002).
The problem of
material typology is beginning to emerge in literature. William J. Nixon,
describing the open archives project “Dedalus” at the University of Glasgow
reports the choice to focus on published papers, preprints and theses, using a
range of Open Source and freely available software solutions (E-prints,
D-space, Virginia Tech ETD-db).
The request
that only material accepted by an evaluation group could be deposited (16.7%)
would seem to be contrary to the principles of the Open-Access philosophy
itself, and perhaps reveals the “conservative” side to the academic body, but
it is also, perhaps, a misunderstanding whereby the initiative is interpreted
more as an Academic Press than an Open-Access Archive.
The results
and remarks are considerable close to the results from survey carried out by
the Arno Project and quoted in Bantum and colleagues’ work. The methodology
adopted in the survey they describe is, however, different from the one used in
this study. The survey consisted, in fact, of structured interviews with
research managers and focus group interviews or structured interviews with
individual authors.
Twenty-six research managers
were interviewed and 45 authors. Even if the results are presented in
descriptive form (there is no quantitative analysis) some of them deserve to be
referred. Authors comment as follows regarding the scientific field we have
examined: “For social sciences, economics, law and humanities managers the main
obstacle for the use of an archive server is the possible impediments to
traditional publishing… Authors from the socials sciences and humanities prefer
traditional publishing mainly because of the guaranteed quality control… Some
authors distinguish between types of document. They think that journal articles
should be published in traditional ways, whereas congress papers are regarded
as suitable for electronic publishing…” (Bentum et al. 2001).
As can be noted, there are
various points of convergence. What emerged regarding scholarly outputs
different from journal articles is of particular importance. These themes,
based on the practice of academic departments publishing their own locally
controlled series of working papers, technical reports, research memoranda etc,
are beginning to establish themselves within the debate on improvement of
scientific communication. This is demonstrated, other than by the quoted work
by Nixon, (Nixon 2003)[1], also in the
proposal for a new model forwarded by Kling and colleagues: the Guild Model,
dedicated, in fact, to this particular type of scientific production (Kling et
al. 2002).[2]
A high percentage of positive
replies were obtained regarding the very author’s personal willingness to
self-archive once his requests have been satisfied. By adding together those
who declare themselves willing unconditional and those who are willing if
adequately supported, we obtain over 66% of authors willing to self-archive and
at least part of the 20% who require more information to be able to express a
choice could be added to this total.
Correct information regarding
the purposes and the characteristics of Open-Access initiatives emerges, once
again, as the main problem as well as its direct implications on the author’s
daily activity. A substantial part of the 16% who declared their unwillingness
to self-archive do so, not so much as a refusal of the initiative but rather as
a request that others carry out the activity of archiving the material produced
by the authors (generally, departmental or faculty technical/administrative
personnel are mentioned).
The only statistically
significant association that emerged during analysis of the results should be
commented. Whilst those who have been working in the academic field for more
than 10 years have greater knowledge of the Open-Access initiatives (over 57%
has some knowledge), willingness to self-archive in this category does not
correspond. Over 70% of those who have been at the University for fewer than 10
years are willing to self-archive compared to 30% who are unwilling or do not
comment. This behavioural inversion could, possibly indicate “the young’s’”
greater willingness to invest personal energy in an eventual project, also if,
those at the university for longer, demonstrate greater knowledge of and
attention to the problem.
This seems to be information to keep in mind in order
to elaborate appropriate strategies when proposing the creation of an
institutional Open- Access archive.
6.6 Organizational Unit Devoted to Implementation and Management of an
Institutional Open-Access Archive
The question regarding the
most suitable structure for the implementation and management of and
institutional archive could seem of little importance. The researcher does not
agree for a two-fold series of reasons.
The answer to this question,
which is almost never faced in literature, can, on one hand, be vital to the
faith that authors place in the successful outcome of an eventual initiative,
thus motivating greater commitment to it and, in any case, it is a question
that cannot be neglected. On the other hand, it contributes to understanding
the library’s future role in this process, on the basis of what the academic
authors declare. Interviews to the key informants had already singled out the
Library as the organizational unit that should take charge of and eventual
Institutional Open-Access initiative, with some specifications and
clarifications.
This opinion is confirmed by
the questionnaire results. The importance of the data is further evidenced by
the fact that 58 of the 62 respondents answered the question. Amongst these,
almost 71% singled out the Central Inter-faculty Library as the structure
proposed to manage the archive, followed by 10% who think that an appropriate
structure should be created and by 7% who ask for a structure in some way
connected to their departments or their faculty. Of the 5 people who chose the
“other” option, two did not feel the problem regarded them, whilst three
thought that management should be shared between the library and departmental
or faculty structures.
It therefore seems that
academic authors recognise a central role for the library, a role which is
further confirmed by the fact that 60% specify that a fundamental condition for
their participation in an Open Archive initiative is that the works they
deposit should undergo a scrupulous indexing in order to guarantee their
‘retrievability’, which is a typical library function. Furthermore, researches
have demonstrated that with appropriate indexing and search mechanisms in
place, Open-Access on-line articles have appreciably higher citation rates than
traditionally published articles (Richard 2002).[3]
In the same way, the key role
to be played by libraries in starting up institutional archives can be
identified both by the requests for further information on the initiative and
willingness to participate if adequately supported.
Certainly, the main problem
does not seem to be technical but rather the inertia of the traditional
publishing paradigm, an inertia the academic faculties are particularly
affected by.
The needs and perceptions
that emerge from this community are different and partly contradictory: the
necessity to give greater impact to their research and perplexities over the
risk of plagiarism, the necessity to speed up the process of divulging
information and concern about lowering of quality standards, free transfer of
copyright to publishers and suspicion regarding the possibility to intervene
and modify published material offered on the web, to mention only the most
obvious of the contradictions that emerged from this study. Accommodating the
faculty needs and perceptions and demonstrating the relevance of an
interoperable institutional archive in achieving them seems to be a central
aspect to convince academic staff to make their output available through
institutional open archives but also to content policies and implementation
plans.
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