Open AccessAttitudes and practices of open data, preprinting, and peer-review—A cross sectional study on Croatian scientists
Author(s) -
Ksenija Baždarić,
Iva Vrkić,
Evgenia Arh,
Martina Mavrinac,
Maja Gligora Marković,
Lidija Bilić-Zulle,
Jadranka Stojanovski,
Mario Malički
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0244529
Subject(s) - croatian , preprint , open data , open science , peer review , scale (ratio) , psychology , construct (python library) , medical education , publishing , medicine , computer science , political science , world wide web , geography , statistics , mathematics , philosophy , linguistics , cartography , law , programming language
Attitudes towards open peer review, open data and use of preprints influence scientists’ engagement with those practices. Yet there is a lack of validated questionnaires that measure these attitudes. The goal of our study was to construct and validate such a questionnaire and use it to assess attitudes of Croatian scientists. We first developed a 21-item questionnaire called Attitudes towards Open data sharing , preprinting , and peer-review (ATOPP), which had a reliable four-factor structure, and measured attitudes towards open data, preprint servers, open peer-review and open peer-review in small scientific communities. We then used the ATOPP to explore attitudes of Croatian scientists (n = 541) towards these topics, and to assess the association of their attitudes with their open science practices and demographic information. Overall, Croatian scientists’ attitudes towards these topics were generally neutral, with a median (Md) score of 3.3 out of max 5 on the scale score. We also found no gender (P = 0.995) or field differences (P = 0.523) in their attitudes. However, attitudes of scientist who previously engaged in open peer-review or preprinting were higher than of scientists that did not (Md 3.5 vs. 3.3, P<0.001, and Md 3.6 vs 3.3, P<0.001, respectively). Further research is needed to determine optimal ways of increasing scientists’ attitudes and their open science practices.