The American Physical Society (APS), along with AIP Publishing, IOP Publishing (IOPP), and Optica Publishing Group (formerly OSA), surveyed over 3,000 physical science researchers between December 2021 and January 2022 in an effort to understand their perspective on Open Access (OA) publishing. Their responses have been compiled into a report, which will help APS and other publishers better meet the publishing needs of the research community.
Physicists from all over the globe participated, with the majority of respondents based in the UK/Western Europe and North America. Approximately half of respondents have published between one and five articles in an online OA journal over the past five years, while 14% have not contributed to any OA articles within the past five years. The report also found that OA publication in physics is in large part driven by respondents agreeing with the principles behind OA (26%) and the desire to reach a wider readership (25%).
According to the survey responses, a persistent barrier to OA publishing has been securing funding to pay for article publication charges. More senior researchers are typically able to secure funding for OA publishing, whereas early career researchers have more difficulty securing funds to cover article publication charges.
The full report and its findings can be found here, and we encourage you to take the time to review the responses from physical science researchers in full.
APS is responding to the needs of researchers by providing several options for OA publication.