A comparative analysis of subscription and open access journals at a selected University in Cape Town.

Ethical Clearance Certificate No | 2018FBREC575

A questionnaire was designed and discussed with a statistician at the university where the study was conducted. The questionnaire featured different types of questions. It was important that respondents were given a variety of response options, which authorised them to respond both positively and negatively. To this study, the interview guide for collecting data was developed by the researcher.

The interview data collection tool was in two sections – semi-structured questions and open-ended questions, presented in a questionnaire to researchers in the Department of Business and Information Administration of the Faculty of Business and Management Sciences, with the aim of finding out which method of journal subscription was favoured by them. In addition, after the data was cleaned, it was presented in graphs and tables for stress-free reading.

Secondly, data gathered from the open-ended interviews was completed by the sample population. There are three sections to the questionnaire, with various subsections. Section A covered demographical information, followed by Section B with open-ended and opinion questions, covering open access and other databases, differences between subscription and open access journals, benefits of open access. Section C contained follow-up questions, which formed part of the qualitative data