Factors influencing Lithuanian researchers’ use of open access repositories as a publishing channel

Abstract

The affordances of repositories for scientific information are emphasized in various international and national governmental and research financing documents. However, the researchers do not upload their full-text publications into the repositories as intensively as it is expected. The aim of the paper is to establish which factors and to what extent affect the intention of Lithuanian researchers to use open access repositories as a publication channel. The model of the theory of planned behaviour was employed to better understand the intentions of Lithuanian researchers to deposit their publications to research repositories. A representative questionnaire survey was carried out to collect the data. The 545 respondents of the survey were the Lithuanian researchers who have a doctoral degree and work at Lithuanian state universities or state research institutes. The obtained data were analysed using statistical analysis (correlation). The connections between intention to submit publications to open access repositories and attitudes, perceived norm, perceived control, past open access publishing behaviour, occupational and demographic characteristics were analysed. The study has identified the factors affecting the open access publishing behaviour of Lithuanian researchers and the strength of their influence with regard to it. It was found that the most significant factors which affect Lithuanian researchers’ intention to submit their publications to repositories are perceived norm, perceived control and past open access publishing behaviour. The age and seniority of researchers are also significant. Lithuanian researchers differ from the general context of open access publishing behaviour in that the influence of norms on the intention to submit publications to open access repositories is greater than that of researchers in other countries, and the attitudes, although positive, are less significant. The remaining factors are affecting their publishing behaviour similarly as in the studies from other countries. Lithuanian researchers representing social sciences and humanities are slightly more likely to submit publications to the repositories than researchers representing the natural science, medicine and technology.