Open Access publishing and academics’ career assessment. Peer reviewers knowledge and opinions regarding open access journals in Argentina, Brasil and Mexico

This presentation will discuss the project “Open Access (OA) and Academic Assessment. Researchers who serve in academic assessment committees’ knowledge and opinions regarding open access publishing in Argentina, Brazil and México” within the major project Quality of Open Access Publishing in Latin America. The work reported surveys the knowledge, attitudes and opinions regarding OA publishing among researchers who evaluate the academic career of their peers in the area of Social Sciences in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. A literature review identified that peer review, the prestige of journals and the need to reach their target audiences are the main motivations of researchers to choose where to publish their work, regardless of journals’ economic model (Cooning and Younce, 2009, Harley et al, 2010). Previous studies found an increase of scholars’ awareness of open access journals (Swan and Brown, 2004; Xia, 2010), although this has not been directly translated to their publication practices. Moreover, authors did not publish in open-access journals because of at least three reasons. First, they were not familiar with OA journals. Second, they considered OA journals to have low prestige and impact in the academic community they wanted to reach. Finally, due to high publishing fees of some OA journals (Harley et al., 2007; Xia, 2010; Dallmeier-Tiessen et al., 2011; Gómez et al., 2008; Sánchez-Tarragó y Fernández-Molina; 2008; Miguel et al., 2012; Bongiovani et al., 2012). It was also found that researchers feared that their academic careers could be negatively affected if they published in OA journals (Mann et al., 2009; Harley , et al., 2010; Pontika, 2011). Considering that specific research results are missing (Hurrell and Meijer-Kline, 2011) it was deemed important to study knowledge, attitudes and opinions regarding OA publishing among researchers who evaluate the academic career of their peers in Latin-America. The assumption behind the proposal is that if these researchers are not familiar with OA journals or do not value them, then peers undergoing evaluation may be unwilling to publish in OA journals, even if they considered them beneficial. Methodology: in order to collect data, an online survey will be sent to a representative sample of social science research committee members at Teaching and Research Incentive Program of National Universities in Argentina, CNPq and CAPES in Brazil, and National Researchers System of CONACYT in México. The study focus on factors influencing where authors choose to publish; relevant aspects considered in the evaluation of peer researchers; knowledge, opinions and attitudes towards OA journals; perceptions about both benefits and incentives provided by OA publications and difficulties and/or concerns about these new publications outlets. Results: Preliminary results obtained will be presented at the conference.