We discuss the results of a survey conducted between March 2013 and May 2014 in six Mediterranean countries and covering 2528 researchers from France (380), Italy (596), Spain (1291), Portugal (142), Greece (130) and Turkey (131). We compare the results with those of a survey on Germany, conducted in 2012, with 1913 respondents. We show that there are significant differences between the scientific disciplines with respect to researcher’s awareness of and experience with both open access journals and self-archiving. We conclude by discussing our results in the light of the MedOANet policies which seek to foster open access publishing.