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.