Do Open Access ETDs Effect Publishing Opportunities in the Sciences? Preliminary Findings from the 2012 Survey of Academic Journal Editors

In spite of some institutions decade-long policy of providing open public access to ETDs in their online repositories, some faculty advisors and ETD authors are still concerned that unfiltered access to ETDs could diminish future publishing opportunities. Therefore, the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations Board of Directors charged a working group to survey editors about their attitudes and journal policies regarding online theses and dissertations.

At the 2011 ETD symposium, the authors reported the results of the survey of social science and humanities editors’ and publishers’ attitudes toward freely accessible ETDs. Those findings revealed that the majority of manuscripts, which are revisions of openly, accessible ETDs are welcome for submission.

The authors subsequently conducted a similar survey of science journal editors. This paper presents the preliminary survey findings regarding the policies of science journals in light of open access ETDs. It also compares and contrasts the survey responses among the three publishing communities--science, humanities, and social science.