Open Access author survey 2014

Earlier this year Taylor & Francis carried out a worldwide survey of their authors (ie those who had published with T&F* in 2012), with the aim of exploring journal authors’ views on open access. The results have been published along with responses from their 2013 survey. Comparisons give an indication that positive attitudes towards open access have increased.

In 2014 81% of authors agree or strongly agree with the statement “Open access offers wider circulation than publication in a subscription journal”, compared with 71% in 2013.

Some of the finer detail on attitudes to licences is interesting. A significant number of authors agreed it is acceptable for others to translate their work, yet the most preferred licence is shown to be the Creative Commons Non-Commercial No-Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND). With the no-derivatives clause, a translation can’t be made without the copyright holder’s permission. The Europe PMC blog has more discussion on possible contradictions in responses.

Rigorous peer review continues to be the most important service authors expect when paying for open access.

Looking to the future, significantly more authors intend to publish more open access articles (either green or gold) than in 2013.

Charts from the survey are available from Figshare

Access the full 2014 Taylor & Francis Open Access Survey (pdf)

*Note T&F publishes more Social Sciences and Humanities titles than Science and Technology, so the results may be biased towards these disciplines.