The authors were asked: Are there any conditions you would wish to impose before agreeing to deposit/continuing to deposit your work to QUEprints? Sixtyseven per cent of the authors answered ‘no’ to this question. Of the 33 per cent of authors who mentioned a condition, ensuring that the work had first been peer-reviewed (43%) and ensuring that depositing work to QUEprints would not upset the publishers with whom they had signed a copyright agreement (29%) were the top two concerns mentioned. It became clear, as the questions turned to asking authors’ views on copyright and on which version of their work they would prefer to see included in QUEprints, that more and more authors expressed similar preferences.
Views on copyright and version preference
Authors expressed more concern about protecting the copyright of the publishers than about their personal copyright. When asked: Have you ever discussed retaining your copyright with a publisher?, one author said they had discussed the issue of retaining copyright with colleagues but none of the authors had ever discussed retaining their copyright with the journal publishers; they had always willingly transferred their copyright. This finding is reflected in the literature11 .
The findings suggest that authors placed great value on peer review and believed that it should be protected. This became very apparent when the authors were asked: Which version of your work would you prefer to see included in QUEprints? Three options were given from which the authors had to choose: preprint (not refereed), refereed preprint (refereed, but not with publisher’s logo or formatting) or postprint (refereed, publisher’s PDF version). Eighty-six per cent of the authors said they would prefer the postprint. At the very least, authors wanted to see a refereed version included. No one said they would prefer the non-refereed preprint version to be included. When asked: Why do you prefer this version?’, 38 per cent felt that the peer review was like the ‘gold standard’, ‘like the rubber stamp of quality’, lending credibility to their work. Many considered ceding their copyright to be a fair exchange for the referencing and copyediting provided by publishers. Thirty-three per cent