(from Serialst)
Swan, Alma and Brown, Sheridan (2005)
Open access self-archiving: An author study.
Technical Report, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC),
UK FE and HE funding councils.

ISC's Scholarly Communications Group commissioned Key Perspectives Ltd
to undertake an author study on open access to determine the current
state of play with respect to author self-archiving behavior.


Excerpts from Executive Summary

"This, our second author international, cross-disciplinary
study on open access had 1296 respondents. Its focus was on
self-archiving."

"Almost half (49%) of the respondent population have self-archived at
least one article during the last three years. Use of institutional
repositories for this purpose has doubled and usage has increased by
almost 60% for subject-based repositories. Self-archiving activity
is greatest amongst those who publish the largest number of papers."

"There is still a substantial proportion of authors unaware
of the possibility of providing open access to their work by
self-archiving. Of the authors who have not yet self-archived any
articles, 71% remain unaware of the option. With 49% of the author
population having self-archived in some way, this means that 36%
of the total author population (71% of the remaining 51%), has not
yet been appraised of this way of providing open access."

"Authors have frequently expressed reluctance to self-archive because
of the perceived time required and possible technical difficulties
in carrying out this activity, yet findings here show that only 20%
of authors found some degree of difficulty with the first act of
depositing an article in a repository, and that this dropped to 9%
for subsequent deposits."

"Another author worry is about infringing agreed copyright agreements
with publishers, yet only 10% of authors currently know of the
SHERPA/RoMEO list of publisher permissions policies with respect to
self-archiving, where clear guidance as to what a publisher permits
is provided. Where it is not known if permission is required, however,
authors are not seeking it and are self-archiving without it."

"Communicating their results to peers remains the primary reason for
scholars publishing their work; in other words, researchers publish
to have an impact on their field."

"The vast majority of authors (81%) would willingly comply with a
mandate from their employer or research funder to deposit copies of
their articles in an institutional or subject-based repository. A
further 13% would comply reluctantly; 5% would not comply with such
a mandate."