THE KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDES, AND PRACTICES OF FACULTY TOWARDS SCHOLARLY AND PREDATORY OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING
Abstract
Faculty have many options regarding publishing their scholarly research. Yet, along with the growth and development of scholarly open access, predatory open access publishing was created as a business devoted to making a profit at the expense of high-quality scholarship. Many faculty are not aware of the process to publish in an open access journal, the benefits of choosing such a model for their research, or the differences between a scholarly and a predatory open access publisher. The problem addressed in this study was the lack of knowledge about the motivations and behaviors of faculty when choosing publication venues for their research. Thus, this study aimed to establish some understanding of why a faculty member might choose to publish their research in a traditionally published journal, a scholarly open access journal, or a predatory open access journal. A qualitative approach to this study allowed to researcher to interact with participants through interviews and gain a full understanding of their experiences with open access publishing, the meaning they ascribed to the publication experiences, and the ways these experiences shaped their behavior when considering future publications. The population of interest in this study was the faculty of an academic health sciences center in the south who were engaged in scholarly publishing. This study found that faculty’s knowledge about both scholarly and predatory open access publishing was lacking. Based on the results of this study, it is determined that faculty need further training in the practice of scholarly publishing, choosing a publication venue, and ethical issues involving publication.