Trust Versus Perceived Quality in Scholarly Publishing: A Personality-Attitude-Intention Approach

Digital academic journals serve as the main dissemination method for peer-reviewed research articles. These journals can be divided into two main categories: open access (OA) and non–open access (non-OA) journals. OA literature is defined by Suber as “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.” 1 The reasons why no-cost OA adoption is slow-going are still largely unexplored, both theoretically and empirically. However, some influential reasons are suggested in the literature: uncertainty or distrust and perceived lower quality or reputation. 2 Distrust can be caused by general skepticism towards new publication technologies and journals, article processing charges (APC), predatory publishers, and low impact factor. 3 Distrust aside, findings by Bjork and Salomon indicate that OA literature is approaching the same quality or academic impact as non-OA literature, in addition to maintaining a citation advantage. 4 To our knowledge, no previous research has tested how researchers’ trust and perceived quality interact to influence both OA and non-OA publishing in one integrated study.