How Library and Information Science Faculty Perceive and Engage with Open Access

Abstract

This paper presents the inferential analysis of a systematic survey of North American Library and Information Science (LIS) faculty awareness of, attitudes toward, and experience with open-access scholarly publishing. The study reveals that engagement with open access is related to faculty rank and perceptions about tenure and promotion committee assessments of open-access publications. The perceived constraints of the tenure and promotion system within the academy impact LIS faculty engagement with open-access publishing in ways found in other academic disciplines. However, those who themselves engage with open access tend to assess publications in such venues more favourably than those without such publishing experience and are similarly more predisposed to believe that tenure and promotion committees would evaluate such publications favourably. Nonetheless, while in general it is clear that experience with open access reduces some of the concerns about the effects of this type of scholarly publishing on career opportunities, there remains a substantial amount of equivocacy among LIS faculty about open access.