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The authors explore the emergence of altmetrics and Open Access (OA) publishing and discuss why their adoption in the management field lags behind other fields such as life sciences. The authors draw on the status literature to discuss the knowledge production and consumption underpinned by the ‘Impact Factor’ metric and high-status ‘Toll Access’ journals and their implications. The authors explain the rise of altmetrics and OA publishing and their implications on the production and consumption of knowledge. The authors then examine the current situation, challenges and offer reflections on the management field’s progression towards a more open research regime in the digital era.

The purpose of this study is to know the various factors librarians consider while selecting open access (OA) journal for publication, and to know the challenges librarians face with OA journal publishing.

Online questionnaire was designed to collect data using SurveyMonkey software from 335 academic librarians in 57 institutions (Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education) in Nigeria.

The findings of the study revealed that majority of the academic librarians are aware of the gold and green publishing routes, while the majority of academic librarians are not aware of the diamond publishing route. The study also revealed that when considering where to publish, reputation and impact factor of journal were rated as very important among the factors that inform their choice of OA. The study further revealed that academic librarians have little or no knowledge about the existence of institutional repositories in their institutions, and only a few actual use institutional repositories and ResearchGate to self-archive their publications. The majority of the academic librarians agreed that author fees (Article Processing Charges) and low impact factor of journal are barriers to publishing in OA journals. Training on OA publishing is recommended for librarians to increase their knowledge and confidence to discuss OA with faculty members in future.

Knowledge of authors’ attitude toward OA publishing models will help OA advocates focus on the factors that are meaningful that are raised in this study.

The study is an original research work that investigated academic librarians’ perception and engagement with OA publishing as they lead the OA campaign in their institutions.

This study aims to explore the role of habit strength in explaining intention and open access (OA) and non-OA scholarly publishing.

A decomposed theory of planned behaviour (TPB) is used as the conceptual framework to investigate a sample of 1,588 researchers from the major universities in Norway. Different latent construct models are analysed with a structural equation modelling approach.

The results show that the effect of habit was non-significant in an extended TPB framework where attitude was most important, followed by norms and perceived behavioural control in explaining intention to submit OA. Habit was only found to have a significant impact on intention to submit OA when it played a role as a full mediator for the effects of the intentional antecedents. In this modified model, norms were found to have a stronger effect than attitudes in explaining the habit to submit OA. OA habit strength forms intentions to publish in OA journals and reduces the intention to publish and publishing behaviour in NOA journals.

Other individual forces (e.g. personality and personal values) and the role of habit strength should be included for future research.

The results provide empirical insights to management, policy makers and research on scholarly publishing.

This paper contributes not only to the understanding of OA scholarly publishing, but is also relevant for research on what drives (academic) data sharing, knowledge sharing, the sharing economy or the open source movement.

The main aims of the survey were to determine: the volume of open access (OA) publishing; what the attitudes of authors to publishing in OA journals were; and what authors felt were the implications of OA publishing.

The questionnaire survey was administered on behalf of Ciber by NOP and the sample derived from mailing lists supplied by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI^®). Nearly, 4,000 authors responded.

The detailed results of a major survey of the views and experiences of nearly 4,000 senior authors in regard to OA publishing. A number of statistical analyses were employed to drill down into the data to obtain an understanding of the figures. Views were divided sharply along subject and geographical lines, demonstrating the need to survey large and robust samples of authors.

A snapshot study which while providing robust data requires a follow‐up study to monitor opinion shifts in this fast‐changing area.

Highlights the knowledge gap that exists between authors and publishers.

One of the biggest, if not the biggest, author survey conducted into scholarly publishing and OA publishing.

The purpose of the study is to know the various factors librarians consider while selecting Open Access (OA) journal for publication and to identify the challenges librarians face with OA journal publishing.

Online questionnaire was designed to collect data from 402 academic librarians in 87 universities in Africa using SurveyMonkey software.

The study found that academic librarians are aware of the “green” and “gold” routes but not familiar with the “diamond” route. The study revealed that a large number of the academic librarians have published only one paper in OA journals, followed by those who have not published any paper in OA journals. The study also revealed that reputation of journal and impact factor of journal were seen as very important among the factors that inform them of choosing OA. The majority of the respondents agreed that author fees, and lack of stable internet connectivity are the major barriers to publishing in OA journals.

The study recommends that academic libraries in institutions of higher learning in Africa should organize seminars periodically on the need for their librarians to research and publish in OA journals.

Identifying factors involved in author decisions to publish in OA journals will help illuminate issues that may encourage or discourage author support of OA publishing models. Further understanding of these issues can assist the efforts to improve author perceptions of and confidence in OA publications.

It is believed that this study of African librarians publishing in OA journals is the first study in the region.

The purpose of this article is to provide a vision for how academic libraries can assume a more central role in a future where open access (OA) publishing has become the predominant model for disseminating scholarly research articles.

The authors analyze existing trends related to OA policies and publishing, with an emphasis on the development of repositories managed by libraries to publish and disseminate articles. They speculate that these trends, coupled with emerging economic realities, will create an environment where libraries will assume a major role in the OA publishing environment. The authors provide some suggestions for how this major role might be funded.

The trends and economic realities discussed will lead to new roles for academic librarians and will change the existing roles.

This article provides insights for academic libraries and their institutions to consider a dramatic shift in the deployment of subscription dollars from a dysfunctional and largely closed scholarly communication system to one that provides open, unfettered access to research results.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how attitudes, norms (injunctive and descriptive) and perceived behavioral control (PBC) (capacity and autonomy) influence the intention to publish open access (OA), and how personal innovativeness in information technology affects attitude and PBC.

This study employs an integrated and extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) framework within a cross-sectional survey design. The sample consists of researchers at a Norwegian university, and data are collected digitally via e-mail invitation and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

This study determines that attitude is the strongest predictor of the intention to publish OA, followed by injunctive and descriptive social norms, and PBC capacity and autonomy. All factors positively influence intention apart from PBC autonomy, which has a negative effect.

Potential limitations include: a relatively small sample size, self-reported data and employing intention, not behavior, as the ultimate dependent variable.

This research contributes with a deeper understanding of what drives the intention to publish OA research articles, and how innovativeness affects attitudes and PBC autonomy. Support is found for an extended TPB model with decomposed normative and PBC components. This knowledge is essential in creating an impetus for systematic research on OA publishing behavior.

Theory-driven research into understanding OA publishing behavior is rare. Decomposing the normative and PBC constructs is uncommon in TPB research, and a novel approach in OA research. Personal innovativeness has not been explored previously in relation to OA publishing.

Open access (OA) has emerged as a modern academic publishing paradigm that strives to provide all members of society with free access to scholarly knowledge. This study aims to assess the behavior of faculty members to publish in OA journals from the perspective of the decomposed theory of planned behavior (DTPB).

A quantitative survey research design based on a cross-sectional survey approach was applied to investigate the phenomenon. The data were collected through a structured questionnaire from 338 faculty members of two large universities in Pakistan.

The findings of the study indicate that behavioral intentions (β = 0.664, p < 0.01), subjective norms (β = 0.159, p < 0.01) and perceived behavioral control (β = 0.238, p < 0.01) positively while attitude toward behavior negatively affected the actual behavior of the university faculty members to publish in OA journals.

The study offers theoretical implications for researchers and practical implications for educational authorities, policymakers and funding agencies.

The study fills the literature gap and offers insight into the OA publishing behavior of academicians from the perspective of DTPB.

This paper aims to analyze open access (OA) scholarly publishing patterns as well as OA policies and mandates across European countries.

The study is based on a descriptive research approach using data from Web resources, directories and bibliographic and citation databases, namely, DOAJ, OpenDOAR, SCImago journal and Country Ranking portal, ROARMAP and Web of Science.

The findings indicate that the initiatives and measures in Europe that promote OA are adequate. OA journals and digital repositories have progressively increased over the past two decades. Of the total journals (n = 25,231) published worldwide and indexed in Scopus, 53% are published in European countries, with 23.7% being OA journals. In total, 34% of the OA repositories (n = 5,714) are in European countries. The proportion of OA journal papers has grown significantly in all European countries, with a 14.3% annual growth rate. The average proportion of OA publications in European countries is significantly higher (39.07%) than the world average (30.16%), with a clear inclination for making research literature openly accessible via the green OA route (79.41%) compared to the gold OA route (52.30%). Most European research funders and institutions have required researchers to make OA available for their research findings, either by publishing them in OA journals or depositing accepted manuscripts in repositories.

The study analyzed OA trends in Europe; other continents and countries were not included in the analysis. The study only described OA policies and mandates; the extent to which the OA policies and mandates were implemented was not studied. However, the results of the study may be helpful to policymakers, funders, research institutions and universities in other countries in adopting and implementing OA policies and mandates.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is the first that used multiple data sources for investigating different facets of OA publishing in European countries, including OA journals, digital repositories, research output, mandates and policies for publicly funded research. The findings will be helpful for researchers and policymakers interested in promoting OA adoption among researchers worldwide.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the status of the open access (OA) movement on the African continent, and if there is any financial or moral exploitation by dominant “foreign” world powers. OA provided the African intellectual community with a tool to prove its academic prowess and an opportunity to display cultural and intellectual independence. OA publishing is prone to abuse, and some in Africa have sought to exploit the OA boom to profit from non-academic activity rather than use this tool to glorify Africa’s image and diversity on the global intellectual stage. These issues are explored in detail in the paper.

The authors broadly assessed literature that is related to the growth and challenges associated with OA, including the rise of OA mega journals, in Africa.

African OA journals and publishers have to compete with established non-African OA entities. Some are considered “predatory”, but this Jeffrey Beall-based classification may be erroneous. Publishing values that African OA publishers and journals aspire to should not equal those published by non-African publishing entities. Africa should seek solutions to the challenges on that continent via Africa-based OA platforms. The budding African OA movement is applauded, but it must be held as accountable as any other OA journal or publisher.

African scholars need to reassess the “published in Africa” OA image.