Faculty self‐archiving behavior: Factors affecting the decision to self‐archive

This dissertation investigates university faculty members’ self-archiving behavior the placement of research materials on publicly accessible web sites, such as personal web pages, research group web sites, or Open Access (OA) repositories. Existing scholarly publishing is complemented by self-archiving. Although several studies have examined academic authors’ self-archiving behavior quantitatively and qualitatively, little research characterizes the wide range of faculty members’ self-archiving practices or investigates the motivations and barriers to self-archiving. My study attempts to bridge this gap in the literature. In addition, understanding the factors that motivate or impede faculty self-archiving behavior has potential benefits for universities since they view OA publishing and Institutional Repositories (IRs) as a means to regain control the intellectual output of faculty. Academic libraries also see these mechanisms as a way of reasserting their central place in the learning community. This research will assist these stakeholders to design and implement repositories for self-archiving in a successful manner