Understanding researchers’ intention to publish in open access journals
| Pages | 1149-1166 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-02-2017-0019 |
| Date | 09 October 2017 |
| Published date | 09 October 2017 |
| Author | Lars Moksness,Svein Ottar Olsen |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Understanding researchers’
intention to publish in open
access journals
Lars Moksness
University Library and School of Business and Economics,
UiT Norges arktiske universitet, Tromso, Norway, and
Svein Ottar Olsen
School of Business and Economics, UiT Norges arktiske universitet,
Tromso, Norway
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to understand how attitudes, norms (injunctive and descriptive) and
perceived behavioral control (PBC) (capacity and autonomy) influence the intention to publish open access
(OA), and how personal innovativeness in information technology affects attitude and PBC.
Design/methodology/approach –This study employs an integrated and extended theory of planned
behavior (TPB) framework within a cross-sectional survey design. The sample consists of researchers at a
Norwegian university, and data are collected digitally via e-mail invitation and analyzed using structural
equation modeling.
Findings –This study determines that attitude is the strongest predictor of the intention to publish OA,
followed by injunctive and descriptive social norms, and PBC capacity and autonomy. All factors positively
influence intention apart from PBC autonomy, which has a negative effect.
Research limitations/implications –Potential limitations include: a relatively small sample size,
self-reported data and employing intention, not behavior, as the ultimate dependent variable.
Practical implications –This research contributes with a deeper understanding of what drives the
intention to publish OA research articles, and how innovativeness affects attitudes and PBC autonomy.
Support is found for an extended TPB model with decomposed normative and PBC components.
This knowledge is essential in creating an impetus for systematic research on OA publishing behavior.
Originality/value –Theory-driven research into understanding OA publishing behavior is rare.
Decomposing the normative and PBC constructs is uncommon in TPB research, and a novel approach in OA
research. Personal innovativeness has not been explored previously in relation to OA publishing.
Keywords Theory of planned behaviour (TPB), Open access, Intention, Personal innovativeness, Psychology,
Extended model, Scholarly publishing
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The amount of research being made available in open access (OA) journals is only a small
percentage of the total amount of published research (e.g. Solomon et al., 2013; Ware and
Mabe, 2015). In the early days of digital scholarly publishing, the concern was that the ease
of publishing articles electronically would cause the amount of low-quality articles to
proliferate (Sullivan, 1996), and the sheer amount would somehow “destabilize the practices
of scholarly communication”(p. 40). Nowadays, it appears that the concerns regarding
digital publishing –at least under the traditional model (paper journals going digital, same
financial structure) –have diminished, and that researchers are less motivated to publish
OA than what is expected from research and educational public authorities.
Most research articles dealing with OA are descriptive in nature (e.g. Dallmeier-Tiessen
et al., 2011; Rodriguez, 2014). However, relatively recently, some research works explain how
and why scholarspublish or do not publish OA (Dulle andMinishi-Majanja, 2011; Park,2007,
2009). Moststudies are exploratory and withan unclear conceptual and theoretical framework
(Rodriguez, 2014; Warlick and Vaughan, 2007; Xia, 2010). For example, Rodriguez (2014)
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 73 No. 6, 2017
pp. 1149-1166
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-02-2017-0019
Received 10 February 2017
Revised 12 July 2017
Accepted 3 August 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
1149
Open access
journals
investigated cross-disciplinary awareness and perceptions of OA among a sample of
faculty and found thatauthors do possess knowledge about OA, but havelimited experience
in actual OA usage (enabling OA to their research), an observation reflected by Xia (2010)
as well. Other papers suggest that scholars generally view the publication model favorably,
although they are reluctant to fully commit to OA (Rowley et al., 2017). OA is a channel
for publishing where scholars’motivation for using this new opportunity are not fully
explained or understood. Incentives seem not to be working as intended (e.g. Harnad, 2011),
and scholars’attitudes and beliefstoward publishing seem to be in favor of traditional outlets
(Togia and Korobili, 2014; Xia, 2010).
Thus, this study contributes to the growing body of research that explains scientific OA
publishing by employing an extended version of the theory of planned behavior (TPB)
(Ajzen, 1991). The extended TPB model includes both injunctive and descriptive norms
(Rivis and Sheeran, 2003), and two dimensions of perceived behavioral control (PBC):
capacity and autonomy (Fishbein and Ajzen, 2010). Finally, because OA publishing
represents a relatively new channel for the dissemination of research (Suber, 2012), this
study includes individual differences in adopting, or accepting, a new information
technology (Davis, 1989; Venkatesh et al., 2003) in the theoretical framework. Personal
innovativeness in the domain of information technology (PIIT) (Agarwal and Prasad, 1998)
is defined as an enduring individual trait intended to tap individuals’tendency to adapt to or
avoid change in relation to such technologies.
Theoretical framework
Over the years, many studies have been conducted about the attitudes, awareness and
acceptance of OA publishing (e.g. Rowley et al., 2017), followed by efforts to synthesize the
major trends in the vast literature (e.g. Togia and Korobili, 2014). In a review of the
research on OA, Togia and Korobili (2014) systematically analyzed how focus has evolved
in parallel with the maturation of the publishing model. Several key factors emerge from
their research: for example, scholars’attitudes toward OA are predominantly positive and
scholars’journal selection criteria primarily gravitate around perceptions of quality,
prestige and reputation. Furthermore, they discovered that some misconceptions about
OA do exist, specifically concerning article processing charges and the perceived erosion
of peer review. A large-scale international survey about scholars’attitudes toward OA
conducted by Rowley et al. (2017) largely corroborates these findings and provides further
evidence that although attitudes toward OA are generally positive, these attitudes are not
necessarily translated into intentions to publish OA. The authors cite lingering confusion
and uncertainty about OA as possible causes.
Several perspectives are potential candidates for building the theoretical framework for
the investigation of OA publishing intentions. Perhaps the two most widely recognized
models that could fill this role are the TPB (Ajzen, 1991) and the technology acceptance
model (TAM) (Davis, 1989). The TPB proposes that the intention to perform a behavior is
determined by attitudes, perceived norms and PBC. The TPB has seen extensive use,
including to explain and predict several categories of behaviors such as health-related
behaviors, consumer behavior, environmental behavior, political behavior, organizational
behavior or job behavior (see Fishbein and Ajzen, 2010). One previous empirical study
(Park, 2009) has used the TPB as a general framework for studying OA publishing.
The TAM is generally recognized as the most influential theory in adoption and acceptance
of new information or new technology (Pavlou and Fygenson, 2006). Khalili and Singh (2012)
use the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology to explain how attitude/beliefs,
anxiety, facilitating conditions, ease of use and social norms influence the acceptance of OA
publishing. Some other recent studies (Masrek and Yaakub, 2015; Tenopir et al., 2017)
use similar attitudinal constructs to explain the intention to publish or publish OA.
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