Attitudes, willingness, and resources to cover article publishing charges: The influence of age, position, income level country, discipline and open access habits

Segado-Boj, Francisco, Prieto-Gutierrez, Juan-Jose and Martín-Quevedo, Juan Attitudes, willingness, and resources to cover article publishing charges: The influence of age, position, income level country, discipline and open access habits. Learned Publishing, 2022, vol. 35, pp. 489-498. [Journal article (Paginated)]

[thumbnail of Text in english]
Preview
 Text (Text in english)
Learned Publishing - 2022 - Segado‐Boj - Attitudes willingness and resources to cover article publishing charges The.pdf - Published version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial.
Download (1MB) | Preview

English abstract

The rise of open access (OA) publishing has been followed by theexpansion of the Article Publishing Charges (APC) that moves the finan-cial burden of scholarly journal publishing from libraries and readers toauthors. We introduce the results of an international randomly selectedsampled survey (N = 3,422) that explores attitudes towards this pay-to-publish or Gold OA model among scholars. We test the predictorrole of age, professional position, discipline, and income-level countryin this regard. We found that APCs are perceived more as a globalthreat to Science than a deterrent to personal professional careers.Academics in low and lower-middle income level countries hold themost unfavourable opinions about the APC system. The less experi-mental disciplines held more negative perceptions of APC compared toSTEM and the Life Sciences. Age and access to external funding stoodas negative predictors of refusal to pay to publish. Commitment to OAself-archiving predicted the negative global perception of the APC. Weconclude that access to external research funds influences the accep-tance and the particular perception of the pay to publish model,remarking the economic dimension of the problem and warning aboutissues in the inequality between centre and periphery.

Item type: Journal article (Paginated)
Keywords: article publishing charges, gold OA, open access
Subjects: I. Information treatment for information services > IE. Data and metadata structures.
Depositing user: Juan José Prieto-Gutiérrez
Date deposited: 26 Oct 2025 07:59
Last modified: 26 Oct 2025 07:59
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/47232

References

Aasheim, J. H., Ahlborn, B., Ambler, C., Andrae, M., Apel, J., Becker, H.-G., Bertelmann, R., Beucke, D., Blume, P., Blumtritt, U., Boccalini, S., Bollin, S., Braun, K., Broschinski, C., Buoso, P., Buschhart, C., Busjahn, D., de Castro, P., Cozatl, R., … Young, P. (2019). Datasets on fee-based open access publishing across German institutions. Bielefeld University. https://doi.org/10.4119/UNIBI/ UB.2014.18

Al-Khatib, A., & Teixeira da Silva, J. A. (2017). What rights do authors have?. Science and Engineering Ethics, 23, 947–949.

Asai, S. (2020). An analysis of revising article processing charges for open access journals between 2018 and 2020. Learned Publishing, 34(2), 137–143. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1334

Björk, B., Welling, P., Laakso, M., Majlender, P., Hedlund, T., & Guðnason, G. (2010). Open access to the scientific journal litera- ture: Situation 2009. PLoS One, 5(6), e11273. https://doi.org/10. 1371/journal.pone.0011273

Boukacem-Zeghmouri, C., Dillaerts, H., Lafouge, T., Bador, P., & Sauer-Avargue, A. (2018). French publishing attitudes in the open access era: The case of mathematics, biology, and computer sci- ence. Learned Publishing, 31(4), 345–354. https://doi.org/10. 1002/leap.1169

Clarke, R. (2007). The cost profiles of alternative approaches to jour- nal publishing. First Monday., 12. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm. v12i12.2048

Crawford, W. (2018). GOAJ3: Gold open access journals 2012–2017. Cites & Insights Books.

Creaser, C., & White, S. (2008). Trends in journal prices: An analysis of selected journals, 2000–2006. Learned publishing, 21(3), 214– 224. https://doi.org/10.1087/095315108X323866

Dalton, E. D., Tenopir, C., & Björk, B.-C. (2020). Attitudes of north American academics toward open access Scholarly Journals. Libraries and the Academy, 20(1), 73–100. https://doi.org/10. 1353/pla.2020.0005

Eger, T., Schufen, M., & Meierrieks, D. (2015). The determinants of open access publishing: Survey evidence from Germany. European Journal of Law and Economics, 39, 475–503. https://doi.org/10. 1007/s10657-015-9488-x

Goyanes, M., & Demeter, M. (2021). Dr. Excellent: The systemic and personal conditions for being an academic star in communication studies. KOME, 65–80. https://doi.org/10.17646/KOME. 75672.64

Guédon, J. C. (2004). The “green” and “gold” roads to open access: The case for mixing and matching. Serials Review, 30(4), 315–328. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2004.09.005

Gunther, A. (1991). What we think others think: Cause and conse- quence in the third-person effect. Communication Research, 18(3), 355–372. https://doi.org/10.1177/009365091018003004

Halevi, G., & Walsh, S. (2021). Faculty attitudes towards article processing charges for open access articles. Publishing Research Quarterly, 37, 384–398. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-021- 09820-x

Hamadeh, N., Van Rompaey, C. & Metreau, E. (2021). New World Bank country classifications by income level: 2021-2022, https:// blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/new-world-bank-country- classifications-income-level-2021-2022

Joung, K. H., Rowley, J., & Sbaffi, L. (2019). Medical and health sci- ences academics' behaviours and attitudes towards open access publishing in scholarly journals: A perspective from South Korea. Information Development, 35(2), 191–202. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0266666917736360

Khoo, S. (2019). Article processing charge hyperinflation and price insensitivity: An open access sequel to the serials crisis. LIBER Quarterly, 29(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10280

Kieńć, W. (2017). Authors from the periphery countries choose open access more often. Learned Publishing, 30(2), 125–131. https:// doi.org/10.1002/leap.1093

Krauskopf, E. (2021). Article processing charge expenditure in Chile: The current situation. Learned Publishing, 34(4), 637–646. https:// doi.org/10.1002/leap.1413

Langham-Putrow, A., Bakker, C., & Riegelman, A. (2021). Is the open access citation advantage real? A systematic review of the citation of open access and subscription-based articles. PLoS One, 16(6), e0253129. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253129

McKight, P. E., & Najab, J. (2010). Kruskal-Wallis test. The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology. 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1002/ 9780470479216.corpsy0491

Mekonnen, A., Downs, C., Effiom, E. O., Razafindratsima, O., Stenseth, N. C., & Chapman, C. A. (2021). What costs half a year's pay for African scholars? Nature, 596, 189. https://doi.org/10. 1038/d41586-021-02173-7

Nicholas, D., Watkinson, A., Boukacem-Zeghmouri, C., Rodríguez- Bravo, B., Xu, J., Abrizah, A., Świgo, M., & Herman, E. (2020). Does the scholarly communication system satisfy the beliefs and aspira- tions of new researchers? Summarizing the harbingers research. Learned Publishing, 33(2), 132–141. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap. 1383

Nobes, A., & Harris, S. (2021). Open access in low- and middle-income countries: Attitudes and experiences of researchers [version 1; peer review: 2 approved with reservations]. Emerald Open Research, 1, 17. https://doi.org/10.35241/emeraldopenres.13325.1 Pavan, C., & Barbosa, M. C. (2018). Article processing charge (APC) for publishing open access articles: The Brazilian scenario. Sci- entometrics, 117, 805–823. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018- 2896-2

Prieto-gutierrez, J. (2022). Frequency of strategies to cover APCs. Fig- share. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19102265.v1 Prosser, D. (2004). The next information revolution-how open access repositories and journals will transform scholarly communications. LIBER Quarterly, 14(1), 23–36.

Ripley, B., Venables W., Bates, D. M., Hornik, K., Gebhardt, A., & Firth, D. (2018). MASS: Support functions and datasets for venables and Ripley's MASS. [R package]. https://cran.r-project.org/ package=MASS.

Rodríguez, J. (2014). Awareness and attitudes about open access pub- lishing: A glance at generational differences. The Journal of Aca- demic Librarianship, 40(6), 604–610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. acalib.2014.07.013

Rowley, J., Johnson, F., Sbaffi, L., Frass, W., & Devine, E. (2017). Aca- demics' behaviors and attitudes towards open access publishing in scholarly journals. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 68(5), 1201–1211. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi. 23710

Ruiz-Pérez, S., & Delgado-López-Cózar, E. (2017). Spanish Researchers' opinions, attitudes, and practices towards open access publishing. El Profesional de la Información, 26(4), 722–734. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2017.jul.16

Schöpfel, J., Ferrant, C., André, F., & Fabre, R. (2016). Ready for the future? A survey on open access with scientists from the French National Research Centre (CNRS). Interlending & document supply, 44(4), 141–149. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILDS-06-2016-0023

Segado-Boj, F., Martín-Quevedo, J., & Prieto-Gutiérrez, J. J. (2018). Attitudes toward open access, open peer review, and altmetrics among contributors to Spanish scholarly journals. Journal of Schol- arly Publishing, 50(1), 48–70. https://doi.org/10.3138/jsp.50.1.08

Segado-Boj, F. (2022). Survey on article processing charges and schol- arly piracy. Figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare. 19121444.v1

Siler, K., & Frenken, K. (2020). The pricing of open access journals: Diverse niches and sources of value in academic publishing. Quan- titative Science Studies, 1(1), 28–59. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_ a_00016

Solomon, D., & Björk, B. C. (2016). Article processing charges for open access publication—The situation for research intensive uni- versities in the USA and Canada. PeerJ, 4, e2264. https://doi.org/ 10.7717/peerj.2264

Solovey, M. (2020). Social science for what? Battles over public funding for the other sciences at the National Science Foundation. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12211.001.0001

Tenopir, C., Dalton, E., Christian, L., Jones, M., McCabe, M., Smith, M., & Fish, A. (2017). Imagining a gold open access future: Attitudes, behaviors, and funding scenarios among authors of academic scholarship. College and Research Libraries, 78(6), 824–843. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.78.6.824

University of Cambridge. (2018). How much do publishers charge for open access? www.openaccess.cam.ac.uk/publishing-open- access/how-much-do-publishers-charge-open-access. University of Cambridge. (2021). Informing the Elsevier negotiations: Dominic dixon on the work of the data analysis working group. https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=3018

Xu, J., He, C., Su, J., Zeng, Y., Wang, Z., Fang, F., & Tang, W. (2020). Chinese researchers' perceptions and use of open access journals: Results of an online questionnaire survey. Learned Publishing, 33 (3), 246–258. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1291

Zhu, Y. (2017). Who support open access publishing? Gender, disci- pline, seniority and other factors associated with academics' OA practice. Scientometrics, 111(2), 557–579. https://doi.org/10. 1007/s11192-017-2316-z


Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item
Contact us
Send email Sponsors
Sponsor: AIMS Sponsor: D&P Sponsor: UniNa CAB Get connected
Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Linkedin LinkedIn RSS RSS