Diffusion of Open Access: Why are some disciplines more successful than others?

Since the first international statement on open access – the Budapest Open Access Initiative in February 2002, a growing number of open access publishing outlets have become available, and several policies in the European Union and the U.S. have been introduced to mandate the open access archiving of publicly funded research. In spite of these strides, research practices today are still far from completely embracing the open access movement. In this research in progress, we draw on models of the diffusion of changes in institutional practices across networks in order to understand how open source practices of unrestricted access to information and ideas have spread in the academic and research disciplines – in short, the diffusion of open access models of research dissemination across disciplines.