  Access to the work of others is something that is too often taken for
granted, yet problematic and difficult to be obtained unless someone pays for
it. Green and gold open access are claimed to be a solution to this problem.
While open access is gaining momentum in some fields, there is a limited and
seasoned knowledge about self-archiving in computer science. In particular,
there is an inadequate understanding of author-based self-archiving awareness,
practice, and inhibitors. This article reports an exploratory study of the
awareness of self-archiving, the practice of self-archiving, and the inhibitors
of self-archiving among authors in an Italian computer science faculty.
Forty-nine individuals among interns, PhD students, researchers, and professors
were recruited in a questionnaire (response rate of 72.8%). The quantitative
and qualitative responses suggested that there is still work needed in terms of
advocating green open access to computer science authors who seldom
self-archive and when they do, they often infringe the copyright transfer
agreements (CTAs) of the publishers. In addition, tools from the open-source
community are needed to facilitate author-based self-archiving, which should
comprise of an automatic check of the CTAs. The study identified nine factors
inhibiting the act of self-archiving among computer scientists. As a first
step, this study proposes several propositions regarding author-based
self-archiving in computer science that can be further investigated.
Recommendations to foster self-archiving in computer science, based on the
results, are provided.
