Survey of US Higher Education Faculty 2023, Use of Digital Repositories

Survey of US Higher Education Faculty 2023, Use of Digital Repositories

A plurality of 43.72% chose answer #4 -- I sympathize and try to help out by providing open access to my research as much as I possibly can. The second most common answer – given by 23.17% of respondents was: I have some sympathy with it but really need to make cooperating with the needs of commercial and society journal publishers my priority. Another 21.93% were unsure of what open access was and 4.41% did not sympathize with its goals. Lack of knowledge of open access and its goals was most common among community college and BA-level faculty and least common among research university faculty. Open sympathy and cooperation tended to rise with the size of the institution and was higher among faculty aged 31-49 than those aged 50 or older or those under 30. Sympathy with the goals of open access was also much greater on the political left than the political right and nearly 55% of those who say that they are “left of liberal” and nearly 50% of liberals support open access as much as possible while this was true of only 23.76% of political conservatives. White and Asian faculty were considerably more supportive than Black or Hispanic faculty.

This study looks at how 725 faculty from nearly 500 US colleges and universities are using their own and other digital repositories. The study gives detailed data on the incidence and extent of use of the scholars own institution’s digital repository, and use of repositories from other institutions. Data is broken out by 12 personal and institutional variables including size, type or Carnegie class, tuition level and public/private status of the participant’s affiliated institution, as well as personal characteristics such as academic field, tenure status, academic title, gender, income and other variables. The study helps its readers to answer questions such as: who is depositing their journal articles in repositories and how often? Who is using the repositories of other institutions in their research? Which scholars are having publication fees paid for them on their behalf by libraries, academic departments and other sponsors? How satisfied are scholars with their college or university’s open access and digital repository policies? How important is open access to them and how has it impacted their careers?