امكان سنجي ايجاد آرشيو مقالات آماده چاپ حوزه كشاورزي كشور: بررسي ديدگاه هاي محققان

A feasibility study on creating an agricultural eprint archive in Iran; Researchers views

In this paper, attitudes and views of Iranian Agricultural Researchers on creating an eprint archive for the era have been reviewed. To do this, a sample society comprising 350 researchers, who had published at least one paper in an Iranian agricultural peer-reviewed journals between 2002 - 2005, was chosen and through questionnaire, it was attempted to specify firstly do the researchers believe to use unpublished and non-peer reviewed papers, secondly, do they have enough motivation and readiness to share their unpublished papers in such an archive, and finally is such an archive effective enough in the country agricultural scientific process? The results show that more than 50 percent of respondents will benefit from unpublished or preprint papers that are related to their research projects in some way. The rate of researchers participation in the potential eprint archive to much extent depends on fulfilling some requirements such as accrediting the archive by competent/official authorities, copyright protections, and doing necessary activities to prevent plagiarism. The results of this research also show that about 33% of respondents do not believe that such an archive can be so effects on scientific research process of the country, at the same time about 33% of respondents have a completely opposite view as well. The present research finally suggests setting up an experimental eprint archive to show the potential roles that they can play in scientific process and get agricultural researchers familiar with such capabilities.