Trust versus perceived quality in scholarly publishing: A personality-attitude-intention approach

Abstract

Digital academic journals serve as the main dissemination method for peer-reviewed research articles. These journals can be divided into two main categories: open access (OA) and non– open access (non-OA) journals. OA literature is defined by Suber as “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.” The reasons why no-cost OA adoption is slow-going are still largely unexplored, both theoretically and empirically. However, some influential reasons are suggested in the literature: uncertainty or distrust and perceived lower quality or reputation. Distrust can be caused by general skepticism towards new publication technologies and journals, article processing charges (APC), predatory publishers, and low impact factor. Distrust aside, findings by Björk and Salomon indicate that OA literature is approaching the same quality or academic impact as non-OA literature, in addition to maintaining a citation advantage. To our knowledge, no previous research has tested how researchers’ trust and perceived quality interact to influence both OA and non-OA publishing in one integrated study.