Academic Article - What is Open Access?

 

What is Open Access?

Aktarul Islam

The Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) has described Open Access as accessing the literature that is always freely accessible online and the scholars willingly give access to their research contents without any charge. It covers peer-reviewed research works. Morrison (2006) has described Open Access as a platform where research outputs of a peer-reviewed journal should be freely available everywhere for reading, copying, downloading, and other purposes. Khallaf (2017) stated that the benefits of Open Access are not limited to the library professionals but to the whole research community with innovative ideas, quality research outputs, and cost-effective journal publications.

Researchers and academicians are advocating freely and unrestricted access to scientific journals and other scholarly publications. Open Access stimulates scientific and scholarly publications by enabling equitable and universal access to knowledge contents and information resources (Chatterjee, Biswas, and Mishra, 2013; Das, 2008). OA is extensively offering a viable solution to the serials pricing crisis. It ensures access to all types of journal publications needed for libraries and for their constituents as well as provides the necessary support for the libraries to be able to go without the risk of losing access to essential journal publications. Developing countries are still far away from exploiting the blessing of OA facilities. The noble objectives of OA will remain unaddressed unless the scholars realize the problems of making knowledge and information widely accessible to people irrespective of geographical barriers.