Document Type : Original Article
Author
Assistant Professor, Department of Information Science and Knowledge studies, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, East Azerbaijan , Iran
Abstract
Introduction: The Open Access Movement has been one of the best ways that can facilitate information flow. One of the representations of the Open Access Movement is Open Access Journals. Despite the positive attitudes of the scientific community towards Open Access Journals, it seems that the number of the researchers who have the tendency to publish in these journals as compared with Closed Access Journals has been limited. The purpose of this study was to investigate the views of medical researchers as to the barriers to publishing papers in Open Access Journals.Methods: This applied study used a survey design. Population of the study was academic staff of Medicine Schools in Public Medical Universities of Iran and the sample size was 367 respondents. This study was carried out in 2009-2012. Data collection instrument was a questionnaire developed by researcher of the study. The reliability of twelve items of this study was estimated by using Cronbach's alpha whose coefficient was 0.859. The validity of questions was assessed by using Test-retest among population of the study and experts' view on open access area. In order to analysis date in descriptive level, percent and mean was used. In inferential level, Pearson correlation coefficient was used. SPSS 17 was used to analysis data.Results: Based on the findings, with a total of 76 percent of respondents, author-charge was a barrier to publishing papers in Open Access Journals. According to majority of the respondents, negative influence of publishing papers in open access journals on career promotion as well as problem of renewing credit card were not important publishing barriers. Based on Pearson correlation coefficient, there was a significant relation (r=-0.130, p=0.05) between publishing experience and publishing barriers.Conclusion: Among the all mentioned barriers, author-charge is the most important reason for not publishing in valid Open Access Journals. However, the increase of publishing experience of respondents can reduce the influence of barriers significantly.
Keywords
)