A Statistical Analysis of the Campus-Based Open Access Fund at Boston College

Luo, Jiebei; O'Connor, John; Melton, Sarah; Kowal, Kimberly C.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121602 Copy

Description

Title

A Statistical Analysis of the Campus-Based Open Access Fund at Boston College

Author(s)

• Luo, Jiebei
• O'Connor, John
• Melton, Sarah
• Kowal, Kimberly C.

Issue Date

2022

Keyword(s)

• academic library
• open access

Abstract

In 2018, the Boston College Libraries launched a fund totaling $20,000 per semester to support affiliated researchers for their publications in open access (OA) journals. The BC OA Fund has experienced an increasing depletion rate as well as usage inefficiency. In this study, we seek to better understand these usage patterns by analyzing the OA applications received in the past three semesters. Specifically, we utilize two-sample t-tests and multiple linear regressions to perform a quantitative study of the depletion rate of the BC OA Fund and consider multiple factors affecting the efficiency of fund usage, including manuscript status, applicant’s discipline, applicant’s position, and co-authorship. Our results indicate that the OA Fund is becoming more popular within the BC community, especially among researchers in science and social science fields, and that a researcher’s status as student and their co-authorship significantly improve usage efficiency.

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press and the Illinois School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Series/Report Name or Number

Library Trends 70 (3). Winter 2022

ISSN

0024-2594

Type of Resource

text

Language

eng

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2022.0003

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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