Abstract:
Open access is a core aspect of the open science movement, and nowadays, most journals offer at least the choice for optional publishing open access. Nevertheless, publishing the own research as open access (OA) is partly connected with some extra effort, and the individual publishing behaviour usually depends on different factors. This article presents an empirical study on the influence of academic circumstances and individual attitudes on the researcher's publishing behaviour in the field of economics. The research aim was addressed by use of the data of the open science survey (in 2023) of the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (ZBW), namely the subsample of those 184 participants who provided all answers necessary to analyse their publishing behaviour. A hierarchical multiple linear regression was calculated. The dependent variable was the portion of the researcher's journal articles available as OA related to all of his/her journal articles (OA-rate). The tested predictors were the researcher's academic circumstances (academic status and subfield of economic research) and individual attitudes towards various barriers and incentives of open science. The results of the regression analysis revealed that both, academic circumstances as well as individual attitudes had a significant contribution to the researcher's publishing behaviour. A higher academic status and the subfield business studies predicted a lower OA-rate. The negative contribution of a higher academic status to the OA-rate could be explained by the fact that professors usually had a higher age and a longer publication history, and thus, at the beginning of their career there were probably fewer available options to publish OA. In relation to the researcher's individual attitudes, none of the barriers had a significant influence, but three incentives significantly contributed to the OA-rate. The incentive to receive more information on open science practices and the incentive to increase the number of citations for the own work predicted a higher OA-rate. The incentive to receive attention from outside the science system was connected with a lower OA-rate. The presented findings provide valuable insights how to encourage open science and publishing OA in the field of economics. Future studies are necessary for further insights in the progress of open science and publishing OA.
