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The Impact of Open Access on Teaching—How Far Have We Come?

Author

Listed:
  • Elizabeth Gadd

    (Research Office, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK)

  • Chris Morrison

    (Information Services, University of Kent, Templeman Library, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NU, UK)

  • Jane Secker

    (LEaD, City, University of London, Northampton Square, London EC1A 0HB, UK)

Abstract

This article seeks to understand how far the United Kingdom higher education (UK HE) sector has progressed towards open access (OA) availability of the scholarly literature it requires to support courses of study. It uses Google Scholar, Unpaywall and Open Access Button to identify OA copies of a random sample of articles copied under the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) HE Licence to support teaching. The quantitative data analysis is combined with interviews of, and a workshop with, HE practitioners to investigate four research questions. Firstly, what is the nature of the content being used to support courses of study? Secondly, do UK HE establishments regularly incorporate searches for open access availability into their acquisition processes to support teaching? Thirdly, what proportion of content used under the CLA Licence is also available on open access and appropriately licenced? Finally, what percentage of content used by UK HEIs under the CLA Licence is written by academics and thus has the potential for being made open access had there been support in place to enable this? Key findings include the fact that no interviewees incorporated OA searches into their acquisitions processes. Overall, 38% of articles required to support teaching were available as OA in some form but only 7% had a findable re-use licence; just 3% had licences that specifically permitted inclusion in an ‘electronic course-pack’. Eighty-nine percent of journal content was written by academics (34% by UK-based academics). Of these, 58% were written since 2000 and thus could arguably have been made available openly had academics been supported to do so.

Suggested Citation

  • Elizabeth Gadd & Chris Morrison & Jane Secker, 2019. "The Impact of Open Access on Teaching—How Far Have We Come?," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-17, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:7:y:2019:i:3:p:56-:d:253927
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hamid R. Jamali, 2017. "Copyright compliance and infringement in ResearchGate full-text journal articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(1), pages 241-254, July.
    2. Elizabeth Gadd & Jenny Fry & Claire Creaser, 2018. "The influence of journal publisher characteristics on open access policy trends," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(3), pages 1371-1393, June.
    3. Jenny Fry & Valérie Spezi & Stephen Probets & Claire Creaser, 2016. "Towards an understanding of the relationship between disciplinary research cultures and open access repository behaviors," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(11), pages 2710-2724, November.
    4. Martín-Martín, Alberto & Costas, Rodrigo & van Leeuwen, Thed & Delgado López-Cózar, Emilio, 2018. "Evidence of open access of scientific publications in Google Scholar: A large-scale analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 819-841.
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