Opinion on Open Science practices at the University of Rijeka

Background: the opinion on open science practices at the University of Rijeka and the importance of information literacy skills of scientists have been investigated before, but to our knowledge, not in Croatia. Objective: we aimed to analyse the opinion on open access and open science practices before open science policies were implemented. Methods: Scientists at the University of Rijeka (N=1256) were invited to fill out an anonymous online questionnaire (73 questions in total) on open science (Google forms) in 2020. Results: Altogether 192 participants (response rate=15%) were involved in this study, out of which 110 (57%) were female with a , mean age of 42±11 years. Participants involved had a career in biomedical (37%), social (31%) and technical sciences (14%); 20% of them were novice researchers or post-docs and 80% of them were assistant professors or had a higher academic rank. Participants agree that journals should be open access (88%), would choose an open access journal if they had to choose between two journals with similar impact factors (77%). They consider the impact factor more important than open access (45%), think that publishing fees are too high (83%), and 28% of them still conceive the open access journals of less quality. Most of the participants (74%) have published an article in an open-access journal, 33% without a publishing fee. Respondents archive their articles in the Croatian bibliography (CROSBI) (70%), on social networks (43%) and on their web (27%). If the article is not available to read online, they use different strategies for obtaining the desired article: writing to the authors (51%), using Sci-Hub (56%), asking a colleague for help (40%) and asking a librarian for help (35%). Conclusions: Most of the scientists in our study are in favour of open access but consider publication fees too high. The archiving practices are not satisfactory as authors mostly don't use digital repositories and need more information literacy programmes, guidance made in cooperation with librarians. The results indicate that creating and implementing the information literacy programs for scientists with the OA open-access topics is needed.

背景：此前已有研究针对里耶卡大学（University of Rijeka）的开放科学实践态度，以及科研人员的信息素养技能重要性展开过调研，但据我们所知，此类研究尚未在克罗地亚境内开展。
目的：本研究旨在分析在开放科学政策实施前，科研人员对开放获取（Open Access, OA）与开放科学（Open Science）实践的态度。
方法：2020年，我们邀请里耶卡大学全体科研人员（总样本量N=1256）填写一份关于开放科学的匿名在线问卷（采用谷歌表单（Google Forms）制作，共计73道题目）。
结果：最终共有192名参与者参与本研究，应答率为15%。其中110名（57%）为女性，平均年龄为42±11岁。参与调研的科研人员所属学科领域涵盖生物医学（37%）、社会科学（31%）与技术科学（14%）；20%为初级科研人员或博士后，80%为助理教授及以上学术职级。调研结果显示：88%的参与者认同期刊应采用开放获取模式；若两份期刊的影响因子相近，77%的参与者会选择开放获取期刊；45%的参与者认为影响因子比开放获取更重要；83%的参与者认为出版费用过高；另有28%的参与者仍认为开放获取期刊的质量较低。74%的参与者曾在开放获取期刊上发表过论文，其中33%未支付出版费用。受访者会将论文存档于克罗地亚书目数据库（CROSBI）（70%）、社交网络（43%）以及个人网站（27%）。当论文无法在线阅读时，参与者会通过多种途径获取所需论文：联系作者（51%）、使用Sci-Hub（56%）、向同事求助（40%）以及向图书馆员求助（35%）。
结论：本研究中绝大多数科研人员支持开放获取，但认为出版费用过高。当前的论文存档实践并不理想，多数作者未使用数字仓储，且亟需开展与图书馆员合作制定的信息素养培训项目。研究结果表明，针对科研人员开展包含开放获取主题的信息素养培训项目具有必要性。