Self-Archiving in practice: What do the researchers say and is there any pain alleviation?

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to increase self-archiving of scientific articles in Swedish open archives and thus contribute to the dissemination and increased visibility of Swedish research and to a greater impact for the individual researcher. We wanted to find out what obstacles may occur in the self-archiving process and how the database SHERPA/RoMEO functions as support for control of the publishers’ conditions. We engaged 40 researchers at 7 Swedish institutes of higher education to self-archive their peer-reviewed journal articles from the last 5 years. The result was that 140 publications were self-archived in the open archives of these universities and university colleges. After the self-archiving was carried out we followed up on the researchers’ experiences and viewpoints in the form of oral interviews. We have found several imperfections and problems in the process of self-archiving. These issues are discussed and then we conclude with suggestions for measures to take, which we believe are crucial to making self-archiving generally accepted in the world of research and therefore increasing the dissemination of research results.