The attitudes and perceptions of academics in the College of Humanities, School of Social Sciences (Sss) towards open access (OA) journal publishing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Abstract

The development of OA journal publishing has opened opportunities for the scholarly community to create, disseminate, and share knowledge beyond the confines of traditional subscription journals. However, the inception of OA journal publishing for the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) academic community is still at its infancy. There are several contributing factors such as lack of institutional drive to promote OA, lack of awareness and general misconceptions about OA journals such as poor quality, low impact factor, lack of peer review, amongst other reasons. OA journal publishing is not a new phenomenon. It dates back to the 1970’s, and it has operated in parallel with the traditional subscription mode of publishing. The uptake of OA journal publishing has been more prevalent amongst the pure scientists, for example, physicists when compared with Social Scientists and the Humanities. Thus, the objective of the study was to ascertain the attitudes and perceptions of academics in the School of Social Sciences towards OA journal publishing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). The study was guided by the following key questions: (1) What were the attitudes and perceptions of the Social Sciences academics towards OA journal publishing? (2) What was the level of awareness of OA journal publishing? (3) What were the challenges Social Sciences academics faced when publishing on OA platforms? (4) What strategies could be used to encourage Social Sciences academics to publish on OA platforms? and (5) Where were UKZN Social Sciences academics publishing their research? The study was informed by the attitude theory which is a branch of Social Psychology. The main focus of the research study was to examine the factors leading to the non-participation by academics in OA activities at UKZN. The study unpacked the problems that academics encounter when publishing in OA journal platforms and recommended strategies to be adopted to support academics. The target population of the study is 42 academics in the School of Social Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The study used a pragmatic paradigm as a lens in which to view the subject of OA journal publishing. The researcher employed mixed methods which included both a quantitative and qualitative methods approach. The study used questionnaires and semi-structured interviews as data collection tools. Analysis of data was achieved using a statistical software package and thematic analysis. To gain an in-depth understanding of the attitudes and perceptions of OA publishing amongst the academics of the School of Social Sciences a comparison was drawn from each cluster using quantitative data analysis. Interviews were analysed using thematic content analysis. The main results of the study indicated that academics were aware of OA publishing, and the benefits and disadvantages of OA as an alternative model of publishing. The study also revealed that academics understood the principle of knowledge sharing and dissemination as a public good. However, there was a lack of understanding of the economic and political dynamics of OA publishing. Strategies that supported and improved the knowledge academics have of OA publishing were highlighted. Such strategies included advocacy and capacity building, incentives schemes which may include funding, expansion of the exiting accredited OA journals base, and improved quality and archiving of OA journal articles in the UKZN institutional repository (ResearchSpace).