Business school researchers' attitudes towards open access and institutional repositories: a study on user acceptance and user behavior

Background In recent years we have seen quite a few studies on open access publishing. Among others, large survey results on a cross-disciplinary level on author opinions to open access journals have been published (Nicholas & Rowlands 2005; Nicholas, Huntington & Rowlands 2005; Swan & Brown 2004). Also author perceptions towards the author charges business model has been studied in the domain of a medical journal (Schroter, Tite & Smith 2005). In studies regarding institutional repositories the attention has mainly been for several years on implementation, technical features and interoperability of systems using the OAI-PMH standard. It is a natural development that now at a time when institutional repositories have been in function for some time we have seen studies focusing on evaluation of repository content by genre and type of the included documents as well as growth rate for submissions (Thomas & McDonald 2007; Dowell 2007; ). However, even though the concept of open access is known among academic researchers their research and publishing practices have still not undergone a radical change. The important question on non-use of institutional repositories has lately been raised by Davis & Conolly (2007). There is a need for deeper understanding of to what extent open access practices have spread among academics and what are the main incentives and barriers to acceptance and use of new systems for open access dissemination of research results for example institutional repositories. Aim of the study The aim of this study is to address the need of further studies on researchers' expectancies towards open access and in particular acceptance and user behavior regarding institutional archives. Our approach is domain specific, focusing on researchers in business schools in Finland and is based on a framework of theories on intellectual and social organization of the sciences and communication practices in the digital era (Whitley 1984; Fry 2006; Fry & Talja 2007). We also rely on previous studies on open access publishing in the domain of biomedicine (Author 2007;). In the study we apply a theoretical model of user acceptance and user behavior (UTAUT) developed by (Venkatesh et al.2003 ) as an explanatory model in the analysis of results. Thus our research approach is new and cross-disciplinary in the way we combine earlier research results from the fields of organizational theory, information science and information systems science. This is in our view a fruitful approach broadening the theoretical base of the study and bringing in a deeper understanding of the research problems. Research questions and structure of the paper In the study we will address the following questions: What are the prevailing attitudes toward open access among business school researchers in Finland? What type of incentives and barriers for use and non-use of open access publishing channels can be identified. Does factors such as the social influence of the faculty and the organization have an impact on acceptance and use of open access and institutional repositories? Does personal factors such as perceived usefulness for the research career and perceived ease of use have an impact on acceptance and use of open access and institutional repositories? The structure of the final paper will start by an introductory section on theories describing domain specific features in scientific communication and scientific publishing in the fields of research typically carried out in business schools. In the following section we will build up the framework of theories and models on end-user attitudes and the diffusion of new technology. In the section on study settings we will describe the methodology for the survey carried out in business schools in Finland, followed by an analysis of results, discussion and concluding remarks. Study object, methods For the study on the scientific disciplines represented in business schools we will rely on Whitley's (1984; 2000) theory on the social organization of the scientific fields as our staring point. Whitley's theory characterizes the differences between scientific fields into two main dimensions? -Degree of mutual dependence Associated with the degree of dependence between scientists, colleagues, or particular groups to make a proper research contribution -Degree of task uncertainty Associated with differences in patterns of work, organisation and control in relation to changing contextual factors Author (2007) characterize, in their study on incentives to publish in open access journals, factors depending on the social environment and factors depending on personal factors of the researcher. In studies modeling user acceptance and behavior Venkatesh et al. (2003) develop a theoretical framework that is well suited to use as an explanatory framework for the intended statistical analysis of the results from a survey directed to business school researchers in Finland. In the formulation of the Unified Theory of acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) Venkatesh et al. (2003) identified four constructs as direct determinants of user acceptance and usage behavior. The four constructs are: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions. The above four constructs in Venkatesh et al (2003) are defined shortly as follows: Performance expectancy - "the degree to which an individual believes that using a system will help to attain gains in a job performance" Effort expectancy - "the degree of ease associated with the use of a system" Social influence - "the degree to which an individual perceives that important others believe he or she should use the new system". Facilitating conditions - "the degree to which an individual believes that an organizational and technical infrastructure exists to support use of the system" Until now the above constructs have been used mainly in research on acceptance and intention to use of IT-systems. In the present study we will adapt the above constructs to the study of acceptance and use and eventually also non-use of open access publishing systems as for example institutional archives. The questions in the survey form for the empirical study to business schools in Finland are developed to reflect the definitions of the constructs especially regarding discipline specific social and personal factors that influence the acceptance and user behavior. The survey will be conducted in January-February 2008. Results In the conference paper we intend to present the framework, modeling the constructs of researchers' attitudes to open access publishing and institutional archives. Our framework is based on the above presented theoretical model for user acceptance and use of information technology (UTAUT) and we apply it in the context of business schools. Thus also the discipline specific factors of research carried out in this context will be taken into account in the analysis. We will present a set of survey questions developed for the purpose of analysis of attitudes towards open access and as we hope also adaptable to surveying open access attitudes in other disciplines. Initial results and analysis from the survey will be presented answering the proposed research questions. References Davis, P. M. and Connolly, M. J. L. (2007). Institutional repositories: Evaluating the reasons for non-use of Cornell University's installation of DSpace. D-Lib Magazine vol 13(3/4) doi:10.1045/march2007-davis Fry, J. (2006). Scholarly research and information practices: a domain analytic approach. Information processing and management vol 42, pp 299-316. Fry, J. and Talja, S. (2007). The intellectual and social organization of academic fields and the shaping of digital resources. Journal of information Science vol 33(2) pp. 115-133. Author and Roos, A. (2007). 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