Discuss on the impact of Open Access Initiatives to libraries
“Open Source’ Integrated Library System Software
Open access to scholarly information has been a hot topic for debate among librarians, scholars, and publishers over the last few years. Open-access (OA) literature is free, digital, and available to anyone online. An open-access article has limited copyright and licensing restrictions which means anyone, anywhere, with access to the Internet may read, download, copy, and distribute that article.
The open access gives a best impact to libraries. Their benefits and importance to libraries are examined like:
Ø Benefits include lower costs, greater accessibility, and better prospects for long-term preservation of scholarly works. The growth of the open access movement is partially in response to the enormous costs of many scholarly journals. With traditional journal publication methods it is not uncommon for an institution to have to pay for an article twice. First they pay scholars to produce the work and then the institution's library pays to purchase the work back from the journal publisher
o Increased Visibility:
Open access literature is much more accessible than print-only publications. For
researchers, the barriers to access of literature, such as subscription costs and
inconveniences associated with the traditional model, are removed. As more
scholarly information is made freely available, scholars are relying much more on
materials that they can find and retrieve online. Authors must consider how their
research will potentially be found and used as they plan for future publications.
Open access literature is much more accessible than print-only publications. For
researchers, the barriers to access of literature, such as subscription costs and
inconveniences associated with the traditional model, are removed. As more
scholarly information is made freely available, scholars are relying much more on
materials that they can find and retrieve online. Authors must consider how their
research will potentially be found and used as they plan for future publications.
o Increased Impact:
The obvious result of higher visibility of open access literature is that open access leads to increased impact and a greater citation rate. Multiple studies conducted over the last several years show that open access materials are cited at a higher rate than articles that are published traditionally.
o Reduced cost:
For libraries, open access relieves the burden associated with the ever-increasing cost of serials subscriptions. Many academic libraries are experiencing subscription costs that are growing faster than their purchasing budgets. If a researcher publishes with a traditional print-only publication, their colleagues at these universities may have no access to their writing.
Ø Help library make intelligent decisions about subscriptions and cancellations by having a discussion about the real value of scholarly journals. Librarians often feel pressured to take actions that perpetuate the pricing crisis by subscribing to journals whose price may not be a true reflection of their size, quality, impact, or usage. Educate colleagues and the next generation of scientists and scholars. You can prevent damaging myths or alarmist claims about open access from circulating without challenge. Open access is compatible with peer review, copyright, and career advancement.
Ø Open Access benefits researchers, institutions, nations and society as a whole. For researchers, it brings increased visibility, usage and impact for their work. Institutions enjoy the same benefits in aggregated form. There is growing evidence to show that countries also benefit because Open Access increases the impact of the research in which they invest public money and therefore there is a better return on investment. Society as a whole benefits because research is more efficient and more effective, delivering better and faster outcomes for us all.
Ø Open access bring the libraries closer to the users: Information are brought to the users, either at home or work, making it more accessible, and increases its usage. This is very much different that traditional libraries where the users have to physically go to the library.
As a conclusion. When the library has open access Information can be shared where the pacing digital information on a network makes it available to everyone. The open access provides more choices, and is convenient to user access at any time and at any place and ensure they get the best possible education and are not artificially limited by the selection of information are able to provide.
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