University faculty awareness and attitudes towards open access publishing and the institutional repository: A case study
Yang, Zheng Ye and Li, Yu

PublishedMarch 2015
JournalJournal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication
Volume 3, Issue 1, Pages 1-30

ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION:
The purpose of this study was to understand TAMU faculty awareness of open access (OA) publishing; assess their attitudes towards, and willingness to, contribute to an institutional repository (IR); and investigate their perceptions of newer OA trends and resources, including Open Educational Resources (OER) and DMPTool. The survey also served as an outreach tool to inform and educate TAMU faculty about OA publishing, the IR, and the Libraries’ OA services.

METHODS:
The 34-question survey was conducted between Nov. 6–Dec 15, 2014 using Qualtrics, a web-based survey tool. Responses were anonymous, and participants were prevented from answering the survey more than once. Two hundred ninety-five faculty responded to the survey, resulting in a response rate of 11 percent.

RESULTS:
Survey results suggest that tenured faculty are more engaged and interested in OA publishing topics in general, and tenure-track faculty are more willing to adopt new initiative such as Open Textbooks. Overall, the responding TAMU faculty are willing to consider publishing in OA publications, and almost half of them believe OA journal publications are acceptable for consideration of tenure and promotion in their departments. Despite their positive attitudes towards OA publishing, they are not so positive towards OA mandates. The survey also revealed there is a low awareness level of the TAMU IR, as well as of newer OA trends and resources.

CONCLUSION:
The majority of responding TAMU faculty are aware of OA journals in their fields, and indicated their willingness to publish in an OA publication. Being unaware of the IR deposit process stood out as the greatest barrier that accounts for the low IR participation rate at TAMU. In line with previous studies, copyright concerns, as well as the perception of IR contents as being of lower quality, are the second most significant barriers. Workshops or seminars on copyright, data management, and the IR are badly needed. Several participants appreciated this survey because it provided many web links to the resources mentioned for them to explore further, and as a result they learned a lot from the survey. Despite our best efforts to make faculty aware of the abundance of resources made available by the Libraries, it seems that our audience continues to remain unaware of some of our services and resources. This only reinforces the need for continuous communication—after all, there is no such thing as too many reminders.

Keywords case study · OER adoption · OER awareness · OER barriers · OER repository · open textbooks

RefereedYes
Rightsby/4.0
DOI10.7710/2162-3309.1210
Other informationJ. Librariansh. Sch. Commun.
Export optionsBibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar



AVAILABLE FILES
3-5-2-PB.pdf · 769.5KB33 downloads



Viewed by 120 distinct readers




CLOUD COMMUNITY REVIEWS

The evaluations below represent the judgements of our readers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cloud editors.

Click a star to be the first to rate this document


POST A COMMENT
SIMILAR RECORDS

AM-OER: An agile method for the development of open educational resources
Arimoto, Maurício M.; Barroca, Leonor; Barbosa, Ellen F.; Institute of Mathematics and Computer Sciences, University of São Paulo; et al.
Open Educational Resources have emerged as important elements of education in the contemporary society, promoting life-long and personalized learning that transcends social, economic and geographical barriers. To ...

OERu Open Educational Resource University - Towards a logic model and plan for action
Day, Robin; Ker, Phil; Mackintosh, Wayne; McGreal, Rory; et al.
Match: university

Open source textbook report: August 9th, 2016
Corcoran, Kevin; Bedard, Martha; University of Connecticut
This report covers the state of Open Textbooks and Open Educational Resources from a national and state perspective, and describes the actions taken to date to raise the awareness of the appointed legislative task ...
Match: oer adoption; oer barriers; open textbooks

Open educational resources: The experience of the Wawasan Open University, Penang, Malaysia
McGreal, Rory
Wawasan Open University (WOU) is a not-for-profit, private, open university based in Penang, Malaysia. Malaysia is very active in the OER movement, implementing OER into educational mainstream practice. WOU began its ...
Match: university; case study; oer adoption; oer repository

Motivations and challenges in MOOCs with eastern insights
Zhong, Sheng-Hua; Zhang, Qun-Bo; Li, Zheng-Ping; Liu, Yan; et al.
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are the latest e-learning initiative to attain widespread popularity in the world. Unfortunately, nearly all of these studies are built from western insights. Thus, there is a need ...

Open educational resources at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
McGreal, Rory
Since 2011, at least 46,000 students at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada students were exposed to a range of open educational practices, including 16,450 who enrolled in courses in which ...
Match: university; oer adoption; open textbooks

Open educational resources at Notre Dame University, Louaize, Lebanon
McGreal, Rory
Notre Dame University-Louaize (NDU) in Lebanon is a Catholic private, non-profit institution of higher education organized according to the American system of higher education. The main driver for the adaptation of OER ...
Match: university; case study; oer awareness; open textbooks

MOOC's barriers and enables
Gulatee, Yuwanuch; Nilsook, Prachyanun; the Department of Management and Information Technology, Nakhophanom University, Thailand; the Department of Technological Education, King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok, Bangkok, 10800, Thailand
MOOCs (massive open online course) become a very popular way of learning these days. People could access MOOCs from anywhere at any time with a fraction of the cost. In this study, we have examined both barriers and ...

Developing low-barrier courses using open textbooks: A University of Southern Queensland case study
Partridge, Helen; Stagg, Adrian; Power, Emma; Barker, Sandy; et al.
Open Educational Resources (OER) have continued to gain significant global traction over the last decade, with research claiming the transformative power of these resources for broadening access and participation in ...
Match: university; case study; open textbooks

Open source textbook report
University of Conneticut; The Conneticut Conference of Independent Colleges; Conneticut State Colleges & Universities
Since 2006, the cost of college textbooks has increased by 73% - more than four times the rate of inflation. Many students have opted for cost avoidance. In the report, Fixing the Broken Textbooks Market, it states that ...
Match: open textbooks