From the Intech press release:

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Rijeka, Croatia, May 18th, 2011-Today InTech, a leading multidisciplinary Open Access publisher,has made available results from a recent survey of over 8,000 authors to determine theirattitudes towards Open Access.

The benefits of the Open Access (OA) model continue to be debated by publishers and librarians,but relatively little research has been undertaken to understand the attitudes of researchers. Itwas with this in mind that InTech, a commercial Open Access publisher with a focus on bookpublishing, commissioned TBI, an authoritative source in publishing to survey its 25,000 authorbase to help better understand researchers awareness of and attitudes towards this evolving model.

The survey attracted a very high response rate – 32% (over 8,000) of InTech authors responded,showing a high level of interest and engagement. Responders were drawn from all over theworld, and most defined their role as ‘researcher’ (78%) covering a broad range of specialties.

“We are excited but not particularly surprised by these results” said Goran Candrlic, CEO, “AtInTech we work very hard to continually improve all of our processes and provide the bestservice possible for authors. It is good to see that our authors recognise our achievements.”

Key findings of the survey include:-

There is overwhelming approval amongst researchers for free access to their work (75% rateas ‘important’ or ‘very important’), whatever their country of origin is-

Authors are generally accepting of the need to cover Article Processing Charges (APC), butare concerned that the charges remain affordable both for them or their institutions- Authors want to see direct evidence of the positive impact that OA provides them and their                                          work if they are to be persuaded to pay publication charges

– Peers and colleagues are the most important source of recommendations for authors whenchoosing a publisher, but librarians are also extremely influential

– Researchers are concerned with the quality of OA publications as publishers have littleincentive to reject work as they are paid based on volume of output rather than quality – Peer review remains a highly valued service, and one that authors still expect publishers toprovide

– There remains widespread misunderstanding and some mistrust towards the OA model andOA publishers

The full results of the survey can be downloaded at: http://www.intechweb.org/public_files/Intech_OA_Apr11.pdf

By sharing the results of this survey,InTech hopes to dispel some of the myths about whatresearchers truly value relating to OA and peer review, so that the scholarly communicationscommunity can continue to innovate and evolve its business models to suit the needs of theauthors that they serve.

For more information, please contact:Ms Ana Nodilonodilo@intechweb.org+385 51 686 165About InTech:InTech, a leading multidisciplinary Open Access publisher, was founded in 2004 and it’sheadquarter is currently in Rijeka, Croatia. Since its establishment, InTech has rapidly expandedreaching the status of an internationally reputable OA publisher with 420+ books published and2.5 million downloads up to 2010. The main subject areas covered are Engineering, Computerand Information Science, Medicine and Technology. InTech’s early leadership in its field isundoubtedly reached in 2006 when a special issue of the “International Journal of AdvancedRobotic Systems” was released, to which NASA’s scientists contributed.

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