2015 Ethos survey launched: chance to win a Kindle

The British Library Ethos service has just launched a new user survey. Just go to the website http://ethos.bl.uk and the survey should pop up automatically. Ethos are offering respondents the chance to win a Kindle.

Ethos is a national thesis service that is designed to maximise the usability and visibility of UK doctoral theses.

"EThOS aims to provide:

• A national aggregated record of all doctoral theses awarded by UK Higher Education institutions
• Free access to the full text of as many theses as possible for use by all researchers to further their own research." Ethos http://ethos.bl.uk/About.do

Back in 2013 Ethos ran a similar survey, which can be found here. Some highlights for the previous survey were:

• 40% of Ethos users are postgraduates.
• 87% of users reported that Ethos materials had helped them in their research.
• The majority of Ethos users are undertaking academic research, and 80% of the respondents said they are from Higher Education.

Ethos are running the survey again, with similar questions to last time in order to gauge trends, but there are also some new questions, including questions regarding authors' views on open access theses.

Nature survey finds attitudes towards open access are changing

(NPG), Nature Publishing Group (2015): Author Insights 2015 survey. figshare.http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1425362

Each year Nature Publishing Group and Palgrave Macmillan conduct an Author Insights Survey, the aim of which is to track changes in behaviours and attitudes towards publishing. The survey, which was published under a CC BY licence on Figshare, is available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1425362.

Overall the survey found that attitudes towards open access are softening, but there is still a lot of misunderstanding about funder open access policies.

(NPG), Nature Publishing Group (2015): Author Insights 2015 survey. figshare.http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1425362

Question 9: Reasons for not publishing OA?
The survey asked authors who had chosen not to publish OA in the past 3 years to provide their reasons for not doing so. The most common reason for deciding against OA (totalling 27% of the answers) was fear about the perceived quality of open access papers. Although this is perhaps alarming, it is actually a reduction from the previous year’s survey which saw 40% of respondents give this reason. In humanities and social sciences the drop in respondents choosing this option was from 54% in 2014 to 41% in this year’s survey. So overall this represents good news as it demonstrates that perceptions of quality are becoming less of an issue. It is also interesting to note that around the same number of respondents choose the option “I am not willing to pay an APC”. This answer too has seen a reduction year on year, from around 30% to 25% for STEM and 52% to around 42% for HSS.

(NPG), Nature Publishing Group (2015): Author Insights 2015 survey. figshare.http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1425362

Question 8: Understanding funder requirements.

25% of respondents said they didn’t know their funder’s open access requirements (20% in STEM disciplines, and 30% in Humanities and Social Sciences). Interestingly, around 23% of respondents thought their funder demanded authors publish the final published version either with an embargo or immediately via open access. In our experience funders require at the very least the accepted version, and none stipulate the final published version only. A further 6% thought their funder demanded the pre-peer review version. Again, this seems unlikely. So, what this indicates is that in all probability more than half of the respondents did not know their funder’s requirements for open access. Also interesting to note is that around 40% of those who reported that their funder required immediate OA also admitted they had not published open access.

Nature/Palgrave admit themselves that the survey is not an "academically rigorous study" nor is it particularly comprehensive. What it does highlight are general attitudes and trends. We have picked out two questions that produced particularly pertinent results. What the results of these two questions show is that overall attitudes towards open access are improving, but there are still misunderstandings about how funding bodies fit in, and what, if any, mandates for open access exist.

In a Nature Publishing Group press release Dan Penny, Head of Insights at NPG and Palgrave Macmillan said:

"Perceptions are likely to change over time as more open access publications establish strong reputations, funders mandate open access, and authors publish their best research in OA journals. Last year in particular saw a significant improvement in attitudes." (Nature Publishing Group, 2015, http://www.nature.com/press_releases/perceptions-open-access.html)

If any authors would like more information about funder open access policies, or would like any other advice about open access publishing, as ever the Open Access and Repository Publications Support team is here to help - email us at open-access-support@st-andrews.ac.uk. We also have a webpage detailing relevant funding bodies with open access policies.

The survey was published with a CC BY creative commons licence on Figshare here: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1425362

SHERPA/REF author survey

SHERPA/REF is a resource currently under development that is designed to help authors and institutions demonstrate compliance with the HEFCE open access policy for the next Research Excellence Framework. It is expected that the resource will be able to furnish authors and library staff with information about journal compliance with the HEFCE OA policy.

The author survey can be found here: http://fluidsurveys.com/s/SHERPAauthor/

Since the service is still very much in the development stage the team behind SHERPA/REF are looking to make sure that the resource develops in the right direction and includes all the functionality that the research community would like/expect.

The survey takes around 15 minutes to complete and there is a chance of winning a £50 shopping voucher.

The survey will close at midnight on 28 January 2015.

Making research data count

Are you a researcher interested in metrics that could track and measure the impact of research data? We invite you to contribute to a short survey which aims to learn what metrics would be useful to you. Responses will feed into a project with the ultimate goal of designing and developing metrics that track and measure data use, creating 'data-level metrics' (DLM).

California Digital Library (CDL), the Public Library of Science (PLOS), and the Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE) are investigating researcher attitudes towards potential metrics for datasets.

See the Making Data Count project site for more information.

Access the survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/makedatacount

We all know that data are important for research. So how can we quantify that? How can you get credit for the data you produce? What do you want to know about how your data is used? If you are a researcher or data manager, we want to hear from you. Take this 5-10 minute survey and help us craft data-level metrics.

[http://blogs.plos.org/tech/how-do-you-do-data/]

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.

The future of books: what do researchers want?

Please help a major research project to understand how you use books.             

OAPEN-UK, an AHRC and Jisc-funded project on open access monographs, is currently running a survey to understand how researchers in the humanities and social sciences use books, and especially monographs.

The survey design has been informed by a range of funders including HEFCE and Jisc, and the findings will help build an evidence base for future policies to support monograph publishing in the UK.  

No identifiable data will be made public or shared beyond the OAPEN-UK project team. All respondents to the survey can enter a prize draw to win up to £100 of Amazon vouchers.

I hope you’ll spare 10-15 minutes to participate, and to help the researchers understand what you want as both authors and readers of books.

The survey can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/K96XZD5 (closes 6 June 2014)

If you have any questions, please contact the survey researcher, Ellen Collins, on ellen.collins@researchinfonet.org


The survey will form an important input into the HEFCE Monographs and Open Access Project. This study aims to examine the difficulties facing open access publishing for monographs. HEFCE has set up an Expert Reference Group to establish what evidence is needed to inform understanding in this area, and to provide advice on an appropriate programme of work to gather this evidence.

International survey on attitudes to open access

St Andrews researchers are invited to complete a very short survey on attitudes to open access.

Professor Thomas Eger from University of Hamburg, together with doctoral student Marc Scheufen, is conducting a survey on the experience of academic scholars with and their perception of open access publishing.

One of our objectives is to examine the commonalities and differences between the academic disciplines. For this purpose, we have already conducted surveys in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Benelux, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, India, Brazil, and Egypt.

It would be of special interest to gather additional information on universities and research institutes in the UK and compare the results with those of the other countries. Therefore, we have decided, in co-operation with Prof. Guido Westkamp from the Queen Mary University of London, to extend the survey to British universities. We would kindly ask you to forward this invitation to all professors and other scholars of the faculties/departments of your university.

Your participation will help to provide valuable information regarding the recent discussion on how to organize the dissemination of academic publications in a globalized and digital knowledge society.

The survey should only take around 10 minutes, and respondents can request the final results.

Please find access to the questionnaire at: http://www.equestionnaire.de/?q=10874

Prof Eger is Vice-Dean for Research and International Affairs Director, Institute of Law & Economics, University of Hamburg.

Supporting Open Access initiatives

Open Access Week 2011 is a global event now in its 5^th year, promoting open access as a new norm in scholarly communication. To mark the event, which runs from 24 – 30 Oct 2011, the Library would like to share some of the results from a survey we ran earlier this year. The survey was part of a national initiative to create a body of evidence about researchers’ attitudes to open access. 

As well as seeking opinions about open access in general, the survey asked about 'self-archiving' - "the open access route where the author makes a version of his/her publication available in a repository or other online open access service" and use of our Research Information system Pure.

See the Open Access survey results