Editage releases a report highlighting country-specific patterns and differences in researchers’ attitudes toward open access

In September this year, Editage released a comprehensive report based on a global author survey capturing the views of almost 7000 researchers (mostly non-Western, non–English-speaking researchers) on different aspects of scholarly publishing. Editage has now released a new report highlighting geographic patterns in author attitudes toward open access publishing. This report, titled “Geographic Trends in Attitudes to Open Access: Findings from the Editage Global Author Survey 2018,” takes a deep dive into the open access–specific data collected in the survey and showcases the views of authors from the seven most represented countries in the survey: China, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, India, the U.S.A., and the U.K.

Open access has been a topic of hot debate in scholarly publishing for over a decade now, and recent years have been marked with significant developments in global adoption of open access, which is changing the publishing landscape drastically. In this scenario, this report provides a much-needed global author perspective. In the survey, we had asked authors whether they had ever published in an open access journal or not, and why. This report summarizes the responses provided by authors from each of the seven countries mentioned above and offers interesting insights into how author motivations and views vary across these countries.

“The open access movement has progressed at a different pace in every research-producing country,” says Clarinda Cerejo, Associate Vice President, Scholarly Communications, at Editage. “So while overall awareness of open access among authors has increased in recent years, it was very interesting for us to segment our survey responses by country and correlate opinions on open access with the known trends in those regions. Some of the findings are definitely eye-opening and would be very valuable for publishers and funders who are formulating and refining their open access policies.”

The complete report can be downloaded below.