Spanish researchers' opinions, attitudes, and practices towards open access publishing

Abstract

The open access (OA) movement has exploded in the last few years. In 2016 we invited 1,896 researchers based in Spanish institutions to fill in a survey on their opinion, attitudes and practices towards OA. We analysed the 554 responses received from researchers in all fields of knowledge (29% response ratio). Most researchers are aware of OA outlets in their fields (86%) and believe OA is beneficial (76%). There isn't a clear position on the quality of OA journals among Spain-based researchers and there are differences between disciplines. Almost 70% of researchers have published at least one OA article in the last 5 years. Half of them had to pay article processing charges (APCs) that were covered with research funds.