felt that the refereeing process improved the grammar and accuracy of the content of their work, and 10 percent of authors said that their work would be better protected by formally assigning copyright to the publisher, because they would have more legal influence than they would have as an individual.
One author specified the condition that he would want help in depositing his work – ‘I’d like help getting it on there [laughs]. I’ve got so much stuff it seems like a mountain to climb to get it all on there. What help can the library offer?’ – which strongly suggests that the current mediated deposit service is of value to this individual.
The authors were asked: What would be your biggest concern about depositing your work to QUEprints? Seventy-six per cent of the authors said they had no concerns. Concerns that were mentioned were associated with risks that exist with sharing work in any format, not just in an IR, for instance, the risk of plagiarism, of being misquoted, or that others might use the work for unauthorized commercial gain. The issue of the time involved in depositing work to QUEprints was raised as a concern. Many of the authors were already involved in submitting work for inclusion in their department’s RAE submission, so were concerned that sending work for deposit in QUEprints might cause duplication of effort.
Benefits and motivations
In order to understand the types of benefits that the IR might have from the author’s perspective, the authors were asked: What benefits do you see to putting a copy of your work in QUEprints? All the authors saw at least one benefit to putting a copy of their work in QUEprints, and some mentioned more than one. Of the benefits mentioned, access to a wider audience was mentioned by 67 per cent of the authors, and 43 per cent of the authors mentioned higher citations. When asked if they would be more inclined to send work for deposit in QUEprints if it meant that their work would be more widely available, 81 per cent of the authors said that they would. For the majority of authors the wider dissemination of their work appealed to them and would be an incentive.
The authors who had sent work for deposit were then asked: What were your motivations for doing so? Authors were able to mention more than one motivation.