Awareness and attitude of Spanish medical authors to open access publishing and the "author pays" model.

Abstract

Open access publishing (OAP) aims to provide complete and free electronic access to scientific research articles [1]. Such access may be achieved via (1) open access journals (i.e., journals permitting free access to online content), currently around 2% of the total corpus of articles in science, technology, and medicine [2]; or (2) self-archiving on institutional or personal Websites, which provides free access to post- or preprint manuscripts. In addition to universal access to scientific knowledge, the OAP model may result in considerable savings for libraries [3] and the potential benefit for authors of greater exposure to their works. However, to date, citations to OA journals have only slightly increased compared to subscription-based journals [4]. With respect to funding, nearly 20% of OAP articles have been produced by charging authors (or indirectly, their organizations) through so-called “publication fees” or “author fees” [2]. The success of such journals greatly depends on authors' willingness to submit their research to such journals despite publication fees ranging between $350 and $1,000 USD. It is unclear whether authors, especially first-time and social science authors, are reluctant to back OAP journals because the journals are not considered sufficiently prestigious or because the authors consider the costs involved too high [5, 6]. Moreover, the “author pays” model also poses a significant financial obstacle for researchers or their institutions in low-income countries [7]. Certain OAP journals discretionally waive charges to such researchers. Little is known about how this model, first introduced in English-speaking countries, will be adopted in a country as culturally different as Spain. This research sought to evaluate the extent of familiarity with OAP of biomedical authors who publish in Spanish and their attitudes toward the author-pays model.

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