Highlights from the SOAP project survey. What Scientists Think about Open Access Publishing

1. Introduction

• SOAP compares the offer and demand for open access publishing in peer-reviewed journals.Its first phase described available open access publishing solutions; its second assessed demand through a survey of scientists.Source: §1 · p. 2
• This article presents highlights from the survey, with a more complete report to follow as the project winds down.Source: §1 · p. 2
• The survey data are released under a CC0 waiver to facilitate future academic investigations and provide market intelligence to publishing enterprises.Source: §1 · p. 2

2. The SOAP survey

• The online SurveyMonkey questionnaire had up to 23 questions, with skip logic that omitted questions irrelevant to respondents’ earlier answers.Source: §2 · p. 2
• Distribution relied mainly on consortium publishers’ mailing lists, and about 1.5 million individuals were estimated to have encountered the survey.Other routes included scholarly communication lists, targeted mailings, OASPA members, and a Thomson Reuters mailing to 70,000 authors in lower-response fields.Source: §2 · p. 2
• The analysis retained 38,358 respondents who had published at least one peer-reviewed article in the previous five years and answered the key open access question.They came from 162 countries, with a large representation from research-intensive nations.Source: §2 · p. 3
• Figure 1 presents the distribution of analyzed responses across research fields.Source: Figure 1 · p. 3

3. Attitudes towards open access publishing

• 89% of published researchers answering the survey considered open access publishing beneficial for their field; the share exceeded 90% in most humanities and social sciences and was around 80% in several other disciplines.Source: §3 · p. 3, Figure 2 · p. 4
• The open-ended question drew 17,852 published researchers and about half a million words, which were scrutinized and tagged by recurring argument.Respondents could explain why they considered open access beneficial or not; Table 1 summarizes the tags used for beneficial responses.Source: §3 · pp. 3–4, Table 1 · p. 5
• Among positive respondents, community-wide benefit was the most recurring reason at 36%, followed by financial issues and public-good relevance at around 20%.Individual benefit as an author ranked fourth at around 10%; Figure 3 shows the distribution of 22,312 tags from 16,734 positive respondents.Source: §3 · p. 5, Figure 3 · p. 5
• Respondents rated statements about open access publishing presented in random order, and Figure 4 displays the agreement results.The statements are summarized in Table 2.Source: §3 · p. 6, Figure 4 · p. 6

4. Barriers to open access publishing

• Among respondents who had not published open access, 29% had not done so, and 42% of that group gave a specific reason; 4,976 supplied free-text explanations.Reasons were tagged as accessibility, funding, habits, journal quality, plans to publish next time, unawareness, or other.Source: §4 · p. 7
• Funding was the largest barrier, followed by concerns about the perceived suitability or quality of open access journals.Across disciplines, funding mattered more where established high-quality open access journals were present; lack of journals mattered more where few or none were available.Source: §4 · p. 7
• In hospitals and medical schools, more than one in two respondents cited funding as a barrier.Source: §4 · p. 7

5. Experience with open access publishing

• 52% of all survey respondents had published at least one open access article, yielding a subgroup of 22,977 scholars familiar with the model.Source: §5 · p. 8
• 50% of respondents who had published open access articles had done so without paying a fee.This was more common in several humanities and social-science fields than in many natural-science and engineering fields.Source: §5 · p. 8, Figure 7 · p. 9
• Among researchers who had published open access articles and paid fees, 54% found funds difficult to access, 31% found them easy, and 15% did not use those funds.Source: §5 · p. 9, Figure 8 · p. 10

6. Conclusion

• The sample cannot be treated as representative of all scholars active in every country and discipline, though it provides a cross-section of previously unanalyzed attitudes.Source: §6 · p. 10
• Around 90% of survey respondents were convinced that open access benefits their research field.A previous study6 found that only 8–10% of articles were published in open access journals yearly.Source: §6 · pp. 10–11
• The authors attribute the apparent gap between positive views and publication levels mostly to funding and the perceived lack of high-quality open access journals in some fields.Source: §6 · p. 11
• Many scientists published open access articles without directly incurring costs, while those paying fees reported widely varying ease of finding funds.Source: §6 · p. 11
• The article presents only selected survey highlights, with further project findings and a follow-up survey planned to clarify questions raised by this preliminary study.Source: §6 · p. 11

7. Survey data release

• The survey data were released in partially aggregated and filtered form under a CC0 waiver to maximize their scientific reuse.Source: §7 · p. 11
• The dataset is available as CSV and Excel files, accompanied by release notes describing its structure and content.Source: §7 · p. 11
• The authors hoped the results and data would inform future studies and help funding agencies and publishers assess risks and opportunities in a transition to open access.Source: §7 · p. 11

• The questionnaire screens for active researchers and asks about research field, institution, and optional additional fields.Source: Appendix I · p. 12
• Respondents are asked about research experience, country, gender, and whether they work in publishing, libraries, or another field.Source: Appendix I · p. 12
• Questions cover online access to articles, whether journals publish open access work, and whether respondents think their field benefits.Source: Appendix I · p. 12
• The survey asks whether respondents recognize open access articles and how they determine an article’s open access status.Source: Appendix I · p. 13
• The questionnaire asks about recent peer-reviewed and open access publication counts, and reasons for not publishing open access.Source: Appendix I · p. 13
• Respondents rate journal-selection factors and report who usually decides where their articles are submitted.Source: Appendix I · p. 13
• Questions ask what fee was charged for the last open access article, how it was covered, and how easily funding can be obtained.Source: Appendix I · pp. 13–14
• Respondents report editorial-board and peer-review roles, then rate statements about open access publishing and its effects.Source: Appendix I · p. 14