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Researchers on Open Access Practices (2023)

Researchers on Open Access Practices

October 23, 2023

Researchers on Open Access Practices

As we transition to a more open world, what do researchers really think about open research? We recently surveyed over 600 authors in 97 countries to gain insights into changing attitudes to open practices.

 Open Access

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75% of respondents had published their work open access in the past three years. That’s up from 44% in a similar survey we ran in 2021.

85%

85% agree that publishing an article open access increases the impact of their work. That’s compared to 77% who agreed in 2021.

86896-RSAPC, RSWOAA-B2C-MIS, Aware-RS_JPM-OR survey content - 2

47% of respondents say that typically, funders require them to publish gold open access in either afully open access journal or any peer-reviewed journal offering an open access option.

Funding is still a challenge

70% say finding funding for open access publishing is challenging.

82% of those who have never or rarely published open access say lack of funding for Article Publication Charges is the biggest obstacle.

Are transformational agreements the solution? 75% agree that they’re currently the answer to making research findings more openly available.

And 77% of authors would submit their article open access if the APC was paid by their institution or funder.

Open Practices are Growing

Percentage of authors engaging in open practices compared to 2021

Many open research behaviors, including open access, open data and open peer review, have high participation rates.

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Open Data

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Open Peer Review

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Open Peer Recognition

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Open Collaboration

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Registered Reports

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Preprint Servers

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‘Benefits-based’ reasons are more important motivators than ‘requirements’ in driving open research behaviors. When asked why they engage in each open research activity, respondents most often chose ‘Visibility and Impact’, followed by ‘Public Benefit’ and ‘Transparency and Reuse’.

Motivators for those publishing open access:

86896-RSAPC, RSWOAA-B2C-MIS, Aware-RS_JPM-OR survey content - 2

Visibility and Impact

86896-RSAPC, RSWOAA-B2C-MIS, Aware-RS_JPM-OR survey content - 2

Public Benefit

86896-RSAPC, RSWOAA-B2C-MIS, Aware-RS_JPM-OR survey content - 2

Transparency and Reuse

 

Visibility and impact seems to be a greater motivation when publishing gold (65%) over green (36%).

Supporting the Transition to Open Research

86896-RSAPC, RSWOAA-B2C-MIS, Aware-RS_JPM-OR survey content - 2

As of August 2023 we have 79 transformational agreements in place, with more in negotiation.

These agreements give researchers from 2,500+ institutions the opportunity to publish open access and benefit from their research being made publicly available to all.

That's 72,000+ articles that will be open access thanks to transformational agreements!

 Research4Life

We partner with Research4Life, making the benefits of open access publishing available to authors in low- and lower-middle income countries. The Article Publication Charges on articles publishing in our gold open access portfolio are:

Waived for 91 countries

Discounted for 41 countries

In 2022 Wiley waived the APCs for 2,348 articles.

Authors in Research4Life countries engage in open access practices at about the same rate as authors globally.

                            

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