The effect of lobbies' narratives on academics' perceptions of scientific publishing: A survey experiment

Abstract

Biased lobbying narratives shape the perceptions of citizens, practitioners, and policymakers. Copyright lobbies are particularly active today in influencing the Open Access transition. This paper investigates whether opposing copyright lobbies' narratives affect scholars' views on the publishing system. To test the persuasive power of these narratives, we conducted a large-scale randomized survey experiment in six European countries. Scholars were randomly assigned to a control group or exposed to one of two promotional videos representing opposing lobbying interests. The first video presented the publishers' narrative, portraying publishers as innovative firms and guardians of ethics and scientific advancement. The second video presented the narrative of copyright activists, depicting publishers as greedy and unethical. Our findings document scholars' general discontent with the publishing system. However, both lobbying narratives successfully influenced perceptions in favor of their respective causes. Overall, the publishers' narrative had a slightly smaller persuasive effect, largely due to a subset of participants who exhibited strong emotional reactions to the activists' messaging.