Open access views among PhD students at the University of Borås, Spring 2024

The doctoral students in the Information Seeking course at the University of Borås have quite a diverse view on Open Access. In their statement about how they plan to publish, they all made comments about Open Access. This is fun, since it gives a glimpse of a cross section of disciplinary views on Open Access. The doctoral students come from disciplines so diverse as soft robotics, design science, resource recovery, caring sciences and information science, to name a few.

“In addition, Open access publishing is an established practice in the field of scholarly communication and scientometrics. Many journals in the field offer open access options or are fully open access. In Sweden, publishing in OA is a requirement, especially for research that is being funded by Swedish Research Council. Furthermore, Open Access makes research easily available, which increases its visibility and citation potential. However, some questionable journals may undermine the credibility of Open Access publishing according to […]”

“The current project is funded governmentally, and thus includes open-access scientific publications and practitioners’ reports.”

“Within my supervisory group, open access has always been a given. The only reason not to pursue it would be if one of the two major journals in our research field were to accept one of my manuscripts, The prestige of being published in those journals takes precedence over accessibility.”

“Open access är vedertaget i ämnesområdet även om det finns exempel bland de allra mest ansedda tidskrifterna där andra lösningar förekommer …”

“…and by publishing with open access I will increase my chances of making an impact with my results…”

“…if it is not feasible to publish with open access, I can always consider parallel publishing, to gain more accessibility of my work.”

“…sträva efter att publicera i etablerade tidskrifter med open access som lämpar sig för ämnet och når så många läsare som möjligt.”

“I aim to publish in the journals covered by Bibsam while also publishing parallelly in DiVa. It is of course important that the journal has good visibility to reach a specific target audience, but it is possibly more important to publish open access.”

“…sources and platforms that facilitate open-access distribution, the strategy aims to make research findings easily accessible to a wide range of audiences, including researchers, industry professionals, and the general public.”

“…as well as exhibitions at galleries and conferences and aims to be published in papers and articles where I see a potential within open access publications…”

“[The society publishes] …an open access international and peer-reviewed journal welcoming artistic research from all disciplines.”

“In recent years, Open Access publications have gained popularity and are now considered a “golden standard” of medical research. Clinical trials need to be publicly pre-registered. Data analyses can also be pre-registered. Journals often provide online repositories for “Open Data”, and ask for a data availability statement upon submission of a research manuscript.”