Objective To explore authors' attitudes towards open access publishing and author charges,their perceptions of journals that charge authors, and whether they would be willing to submit to these journals. Design Semistructured telephone interviews. Participants 28 randomly selected international authors who submitted to the BMJ in 2003. Results Authors were more aware of the concepts of open access publishing and author pays models than previously reported. Almost all authors supported the concept of open access, but few had submitted to an open access journal, other than BMJ. Reasons for not submitting included lack of awareness of which journals publish with open access, and journal quality taking a higher priority in decision making than the availability of open access. Authors disliked the idea of author charges without institutional support and were concerned about implications for authors from developing countries and those without research funding. However, many said they would probably continue to submit to journals they perceived as being of high quality even if they charged authors. Conclusions Authors consider perceived journal quality as more important than open access when deciding where to submit papers. New journals with open access may need to do more to reassure authors of the quality of their journals.
