The academics' perceptions of open access : a case study at the University of Malta

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the University of Malta academics‘ perceptions of open access. A web-based survey was sent to all resident academics based at the University of Malta to gather quantitative data, whereas semi-structured interviews were conducted with scholars from different academic disciplines to collect qualitative data. Research questions that accompanied the study were designed to explore the awareness, attitudes and practice of both gold and green open access models, with a view to identify any areas that require fundamental awareness and support from the point of view of library and information services. Specific questions were posed by the researcher to understand whether the participating academics perceive any open access benefits and what kind of issues they face that discourage its practice. The results show that in general participants agree with the open access principle, though this positive outlook is not reflected substantially in their publishing activity and in self-archiving practice within the institutional repository. Key research findings suggest that journal quality with high impact factor often determines the academics‘ decision in which scholarly communication model they publish. Furthermore, academics need more awareness on particular open access areas. Sufficient institutional funds would incentivise academics to publish in OA journals, while usage statistics in the institutional repository would encourage more self-archiving.