Insight into Faculty Open Access Perceptions: A Quantitative Analysis among UAE Faculty

Abstract

Open access (OA) publishing presents university librarians, administrators, and faculty researchers with a paradox of both opportunities and challenges. For faculty researchers in particular, the decision of whether to pursue OA publication of their scholarship is driven by their perceptions of the credibility and quality of OA publishing. While there is a variety of extant literature broaching these perceptions, there are few quantitative analyses with an n greater than 100 respondents, and a notable lack of research in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This study mitigates this gap in scholarship regarding OA publishing, offering a quantitative analysis of a survey sample of 134 UAE faculty researchers. We find statistically significant findings regarding the relationship between one’s position on OA and length of publishing career and professorial rank. Similarly, we find that those with favourable views of OA publishing are more likely to believe that OA journals are peer reviewed, increase likelihood of being cited, allow authors to repost content, and are a more principled alternative to traditional publishers. Those who believe that their research should be freely available to all readers or that OA publishing broadens their research impact were also highly likely to hold favourable views of OA publishing. Finally, our findings suggest that support for OA publishing at the departmental and institutional level remains ambiguous, with findings yielding contradicting results on the matter. The study contributes to content regarding scholarship, library science, and university administration.

Keywords:

• Academic publishing
• faculty perceptions
• library science
• open access publishing
• scholarship

Declaration of interest/statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Notes

1 This prompt read: “In open access publishing, hybrid journals are subscription journals that offer authors the option to make their individual articles open access for a fee. Other articles in the same journal issue are not freely available and can only be read by subscribers. Regarding hybrid journals…”

2 This prompt read: “Fully open access journals are completely funded by author fees, there is no subscription cost. Which of the following is true of fully open access journals?”

3 This prompt read: “In open access publishing, hybrid journals are subscription journals that offer authors the option to make their individual articles open access for a fee. Other articles in the same journal issue are not freely available and can only be read by subscribers. Regarding hybrid journals…”

Additional information

Funding

The work in this paper was supported, in part, by the Open Access Program from the American University of Sharjah. This paper represents the opinions of the authors and does not mean to represent the position or opinions of the American University of Sharjah.