PEER Behavioural Research: Authors and Users vis-à-vis Journals and Repositories (PEER: Publishing and the Ecology of European Research)
Released on 1 Feb 2010, this 95-page report “is based on an electronic survey of authors (and authors as users) with more than 3000 European researchers and a series of focus groups covering the Medical sciences; Social sciences, humanities & arts; Life sciences; and Physical sciences & mathematics … [The] project was commissioned by PEER in April 2009 as part of a broader initiative to investigate the effects of the large-scale, systematic deposit of authors’ final peer-reviewed manuscripts (also called stage-two research outputs) on reader access, author visibility, and journal viability, as well as on the broader ecology of European research. The specific aim of the behavioural research is to understand the extent to which authors and users are aware of open access (OA), the different ways of achieving it, and the (de)motivating factors that influence its uptake”. [Source: email from Barbara Bayer-Schur, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, to AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM, 01-02-10]