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PEER Behavioural Research: Final Report on authors and users vis-a-vis journals and repositories now available

PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) is a three year project supported by the EC eContentplus programme aimed at improving understanding of the effects of the large scale deposit of stage two (accepted) manuscripts in open access repositories (Green Open Access).

PEER is a pioneering collaboration between the key stakeholder groups in scholarly publishing: publishers; libraries and repositories; plus the research community consisting of researchers as both authors and readers, and funding agencies, which will explore the effects of large scale archiving of research outputs. The results arising from PEER are expected to provide a better understanding on the effects of large scale archiving in repositories on the access, use and economics of journals and the effects on the research environment in Europe and will provide valuable information and guidance in support of future evidence based policy decisions in this area.

ESF  is a member of the Executive Consortium of PEER and therefore participates in the project on behalf of research organisations (research funding organisations and research performing organisations) and the research community. It facilitates a dialogue between those groups with a view to finding a common position on key issues relevant to the project. ESF consults with and acts as interface for those organisations and the project.

The key aim of this report was to understand the extent to which authors and users are aware of Open Access (OA), the different ways of achieving it, and the (de)motivating factors that influence its uptake.