Faculty attitudes toward Open Access publishing : library-led action and outreach

Abstract

The authors distributed a survey to faculty in all academic ranks and in all Colleges of Oregon State University (OSU) to learn the extent to which they currently make their research openly available, ascertain their awareness of Open Access (OA), their support for OA and their preferences for achieving it. In total, 261 surveys were completed for a response rate of 10.3%. Most faculty demonstrated at least an introductory awareness of OA, so our subsequent outreach focused on more nuanced issues such as the monopolistic nature of key academic publishers and how rising publishing costs interacted with our institutional goals of sustainability and public good. Additionally, faculty members tended to have a strong grounding in the potential values of OA, but few had a strong sense of our libraries' budget or how much was devoted to subscription costs. Future outreach will address this knowledge gap with a more explicit explanation of our operational reality.