This was a small piece of work I did for a JISC project run by Nottingham University. It shows the challenge of communicating the benefits of what may seem to be a self-evidently Good Thing. Read the report here.Taken along with the other reports (here), it makes a few steps towards understanding what motivates academics to engage with publishing in Open Access research repositories an journals.
As with most people employed within the public sector, academics have a strong altruistic self-image, however they also work within a cometitive environment where success is often defined as publication in a high-impact journal. This was especially true of the Chemists. External pressure in terms of reward, sanction or direction seem least effective in motivating academics.
