The SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) project has run a large-scale
survey of the attitudes of researchers on, and the experiences with, open
access publishing. Around forty thousands answers were collected across
disciplines and around the world, showing an overwhelming support for the idea
of open access, while highlighting funding and (perceived) quality as the main
barriers to publishing in open access journals. This article serves as an
introduction to the survey and presents this and other highlights from a
preliminary analysis of the survey responses.