Road to Open Access in the Sciences: Exploring publishing trends in OA journals at York University

Abstract

Academic freedom and openness are the hallmarks of scholarship. Scientific progress is being impeded due to inadequate access to research which ironically is being conducted collaboratively with global researchers. As libraries have struggled to meet the needs of their colleagues, researchers themselves have become dissatisfied that their libraries can no longer afford to buy back their research output even though this is largely provided free of cost to journal publishers. As a consequence publishing in Open Access journals as an alternative route is gaining acceptance within the science community. York University Libraries support Open Access publishers in the form of institutional memberships thus allowing York scientists to publish in OA journals by subsidizing Article Processing Charges. Our present study sheds light on the factors that lead science faculty to choose OA journals over subscription based journals with particular reference to biomedical research. The study proposes some key points for increasing support to OA journals based on feedback from science researchers. This paper highlights the new role of science librarians as awareness builders in the changing knowledge dissemination arena.