Editage report highlights country-specific patterns and differences in researchers’ attitudes toward open access

One of the industry’s largest researcher surveys provides interesting insights into how authors from China, Brazil, Japan, Korea, India, the U.S.A., and the U.K. view open access.

(December 20, 2018; Philadelphia, U.S.)Editage—a leading global scholarly communications company—has released a report highlighting geographic patterns in author attitudes toward open access publishing. In September this year, Editage had released a comprehensive report based on a global author survey capturing the views of almost 7000 researchers (mostly non-Western, non–English-speaking researchers) on different aspects of scholarly publishing. The latest report released by Editage takes a deep dive into the open access-specific data collected in the survey, and showcases the views of authors from the seven most represented countries in the survey.

Open access has been a topic of hot debate in scholarly publishing for over a decade now, and recent years have been marked with significant developments in global adoption of open access, which is changing the publishing landscape drastically. In this scenario, the report, titled “Geographic Trends in Attitudes to Open Access: Findings from the Editage Global Author Survey 2018” provides a much-needed global author perspective.

“The open access movement has progressed at a different pace in every research-producing country,” says Clarinda Cerejo, Associate Vice President, Scholarly Communications, at Editage. “In the wake of the Plan S initiative launched by Science Europe in September this year, and more recently, China’s announcement of its support for Plan S, the publishing industry is waiting with bated breath to see how open access will evolve and shape the scholarly communications landscape. While overall awareness of open access among authors has increased in recent years, it was very interesting for us to segment our survey responses by country and correlate opinions on open access with the known trends in those regions. Some of the findings are definitely eye-opening and would be very valuable for publishers and funders who are formulating and refining their open access policies.”

The report can be downloaded here.

About Cactus Communications
Founded in 2002, Cactus Communications is a global scholarly and medical communications company with offices in Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, London, New Jersey, Mumbai, and Singapore. CACTUS operates through two main verticals: Editage, a leading consumer technology business that provides editorial, translation, and digital solutions, and Cactus Life Sciences, which provides rich strategic and tactical content solutions to stakeholders associated with global pharma and device-making. The team, comprising over 750 full-time employees and 2,500 freelancers, has served close to 200,000 researchers, doctors, and scientists across 173 countries and has transformed over 900,000 papers across 1,200 disciplines.