Publishing and Archiving Trends in Open Access: Preliminary Results

Agricultural researchers are engaged in the growing open access (OA) movement, either publishing in OA journals or archiving in OA repositories. The latter is reflected in the use of the institutional repository (IR) at Kansas State University (K-State), a land grant institution. K-State library faculty are analyzing faculty publications to determine the publishing and archiving habits of selected researchers. Reviewing copyright agreements from journals reveals those with policies for archiving post-prints in an IR; articles by these authors are compared to their total three-year article output to determine the efficacy of the current IR program at K-State. Chosen for analysis were the faculties of the College of Agriculture's Department of Animal Sciences and Industry's (ASI) and the College of Veterinary Medicine's Department of Clinical Sciences (CS) who conduct research on food animals. ASI has one of the largest faculty on campus as well as a department head supportive of the University's IR. While many of ASI's extension publications are in the IR, several important animal science journals do not allow for self-archiving or deposit in an IR. Many articles published by ASI faculty are co-authored with faculty in CS, who also focus their research on livestock.