Effective Triggers and Barriers of Self-archiving Behavior Displayed by Knowledge and Information Sciences’ faculty members in Iran

Background and Aim: The present investigation was carried out in order to study the self-archiving behavior displayed by Knowledge and Information Sciences (KIS) faculty members in Iran. It intended to discover the incentives and barriers impacting on this behavior as well as arriving at a baseline for predicting the extent of self-archiving. Method: A descriptive survey method was deployed. The population investigated, included all KIS faculty members affiliated with universities and research centers supervised by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in Iran. Results: Based on self-reporting by the population studied, the extent of self-archiving is above average.  Self-archiving in personal and corporate websites were more prevalent than institutional and subject repositories. Recognition component was the most important incentive and copyright consideration was the most important barrier to self-archiving by KIS faculty members. Among the 10 factors studied, only the professional recognition component was capable of predicting self-archiving of scientific output in open access websites. Conclusion: KIS faculty members in Iran welcome open access of their scientific works but there is some obstacles such as copyright that removing it could help to improve current conditions.