Attitudes and practices of open data, preprinting, and peer-review-A cross sectional study on Croatian scientists

PLoS One. 2021 Jun 21;16(6):e0244529. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244529. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

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.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Attitude
  • Croatia
  • Cross-Sectional Studies
  • Faculty
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Information Dissemination / methods
  • Laboratory Personnel
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Peer Review, Research / methods
  • Peer Review, Research / trends*
  • Physicians
  • Preprints as Topic / trends*
  • Psychometrics / methods
  • Scholarly Communication / trends*
  • Surveys and Questionnaires

Grants and funding

The research was funded by the project Knowledge, attitudes and use of open science tools in biomedicine (uniri-biomed-18-99) of the University of Rijeka, Croatia.