Factors influencing the adoption of open access scholarly communication

in Tanzanian public universities

Dulle, FW[1], Minishi-Majanja, MK[2]

, Cloete, LM[3]

[1] Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania. E-mail: fwdulle@suanet.ac.tz[2] University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa. E-mail: majanmk@unisa.ac.za[3] Johannesburg, South Africa. E-mail: lcloete@iafrica.com

AcknowledgementThis paper was also presented at the 76th IFLA General Congress and Assembly - World Library and

Information Congress, 10-15 August 2010, Gothenburg-Sweden. The full paper can be accessed at http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla76/138-dulle-en.pdf

OUTLINE

• Introduction

• Problem definition

• Aim and objectives of the study

• Research methodology

• Research findings

• Conclusions and recommendations

Introduction…

• Scholarly communication– the process through which scholars exchange information– important process for fostering the growth of science and

technology. – core value - sharing of knowledge (without price and copyright

restrictions) – access limitations (reduced subscriptions) caused by exorbitant

journal prices – An alternative scholarly publishing system

• catalysed by ICTs and frustrating journal prices • Aiming for wider/freer/cheaper distribution of scholarly content.

Introduction.…• open access (OA)

– a means through which scholarly content is made freely available [without price and copyright limitations] to end users through Internet.

– two main channels:• Open Access Journals (OAJ) for electronic refereed journals, • Self-archiving (repositories).

– funding strategies (direct author fees; institutional membership; funding agencies; grants to open access publishers; institutional subsidies).

– increases the visibility and accessibility to research output. – Marked growth of OA journals and repositories.

Introduction….Table1: Growth of OA

OAIster Scientific Commons

ROAR openDOAR DOAJ

OA journals 5271

Repositories growth in 2008

129 (14%) 72 (8%) 271 (28%) 281 (28%)

Repositories listed

1,103

(April 2009)

1,312

(April 2009)

1,650

(12Aug2010)

[Africa=42; Tz=0]

Source: Cassella & Calvi (2010)

Problem and motivation

• Poor uptake in developing countries including Tanzania as compared to developed countries.

• Increasing information access gap between developed and developing countries.

• Absence of specific detailed studies (addressing the awareness, acceptance and usage of open access scholarly communication in Tanzanian public universities.

Aim and objectives of the study• Aim:

To investigate the factors affecting the adoption of open access within public universities in Tanzania so as to recommend a ways to enhance the use of this mode of scholarly communication.

• Objectives:– Assess awareness and use of open access usage by

researchers and policy makers in Tanzanian public universities;

– Determine the factors that enhance/facilitate wider adoption of open access;

– Recommend strategies to enhance the adoption of open access.

Methodology

• Survey approach– Questionnaires– semi structured interviews.

• Target population – 6 Tanzanian public universities: Ardhi University (ARU); Muhimbili

University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS); Mzumbe University (MU), Open University of Tanzania (OUT); Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA); University of Dar es salaam (UDSM).

– stratified random sampling from a population of 1088 university researchers

• 544 researchers = 50%

– 67policy makers (university administrators) = 100%

Methodology…

• Response rate– 398 (73%) researchers – 63 (94%) policy makers.

• Data analysis– The descriptive statistics of the SPSS (v15) package was used

for data analysis.

ResponseTable 2: Distribution of the researchers by rank [N=398]

Rank Institution Total (%)

ARU MUHAS MU OUT SUA UDSM

Lecturer 10 20 17 24 30 83 184 (46.2)

Senior lecturer

9 23 8 7 25 27 99 (24.9)

Professor 2 14 2 3 45 49 115 (28.9)

Total (%) 21 (5.3)

57 (14.3)

27 (6.9)

34 (8.5)

100 (25.1)

159 (39.9)

398 (100)

Theoretical Framework

• The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model ( by Venkatesh et al, 2003).– a refined view of how the determinants of intention and

behaviour evolve over time. – provides a useful tool for:

• assessing the likelihood of success for technology introduction • helping to understand the drivers of technology acceptance• determining the basis to proactively design interventions

– Postulates:• two direct determinants of usage behaviour (intention and facilitating

conditions). • three indirect determinants of new technology usage (performance

expectancy, effort expectancy, and social influence), • four moderators (gender, age, voluntariness, and experience) play

specific moderating roles to the indirect and direct determinants.

Findings-1

• Open access awareness and usage:– The majority of both the researchers (72.1%) and policy

makers (90.5%) aware of open access before this survey.

– The respondents were more familiar with open access journals as compared to other open access aspects or initiatives.

– 62% of the researchers use OA to access free scholarly content from the Internet.

– Less than 20% of the researchers publish in open access outlets

– None of the OA outlets used above are Tanzanian

Findings-2

• Factors affecting OA adoption:

– Attitude and perceptions on OA (an individual’s overall affective reaction to using a system)

• The majority had very positive attitudes towards open access. • Researchers rated OA publications to have adequate standards of high

quality research, originality and scientific merit.

– Facilitating conditions (the degree to which an individual believes that an organisational and technical infrastructure exists to support the use of a system)

» The most facilitating conditions inadequate (good computer; internet access; cost, etc).

» Slow Internet speed - main cause for little effective usage of open access.

Findings-3• Factors affecting OA adoption:

– Performance expectancy (how individuals believe new technology will help them to better perform their job)

• Over 66% consider open access publishing as superior in many aspects.

• No (unclear) policy on acceptance of OA publications for career development.

– Effort expectancy (the degree of ease associated with the use of the system)

• More than 50% - unlikely to face difficulties in using open access outlets to access or publish scholarly output.

Findings - 4

• Factors affecting OA adoption:

– Internet Self-efficacy (the individuals’ ability to use the Internet, i.e. their own skills).

• 88.6% confident in searching information on the Internet. • 68.4% unable to design personal websites. • 63.8% little confidence to publish on the Internet without assistance.

– Social influence (how an individual is affected by his/her peers or other leading researchers and/or his/her organisation in deciding to use open access)

• Low influence - peers and colleagues

• High influence - organisational and research funding bodies.

Findings - 5• Prospects for open access endorsement by policy

makers– Overwhelmingly supportive – plans underway to foster open access

development.

– 92.1% would support a policy requiring on institutional repositories.

– 87% would support retaining of copyright by researchers.

– 85.7% would support institutional sponsorship of author charges for their employees to publish in open access journals.

– 82.5% would support institutional journals that are openly accessible.

– 82.5% would support explicit recognition or reward for open access publications.

Conclusions

– Scholars in Tanzanian public universities are aware of the open access concept.

– Researchers not optimising OA channels

• accessing more than they disseminate their scholarly content in open access outlets.

– Attitude, effort expectancy, social influence and performance expectancy were positively rated as factors that could enhance greater adoption of open access.

– Slow Internet connectivity, inadequate skills in the digital environment and lack of OA support policies were some of the hindrances for researchers to exploit open access opportunities.

Recommendations…

1. Internet connectivity improvement– Increase internet access– Increase Internet speed through subscription to more bandwidth.

2. Improve researchers’ online publishing skills– proactive and attractive training modules for upgrading publishing

techniques. – Availability of institutional assistance

Recommendations ….3. Formal institutionalisation of open access publishing

appropriate mechanisms to foster the adoption of OA.– policies that support recognition of open access publications in career

development.

– establishment of local OA journals and institutional repositories. – Establish appropriate peer review or quality control measures

– Address intellectual property concerns

4. Advocacy for open Access– To the pockets of researchers and policy makers who are still unaware of,

or lack full confidence in all the benefits open access.– To harness open access as the choice mode of scholarly publishing.

Questions/Comments?

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!