Open Access and libraries

The benefits that libraries can gain from Open Access are well known.
As Charles W. Bailey Jr. (publisher of Digital Scholarship) writes in his paper Open Access and libraries "...if a traditional journal becomes fully open access or a new open access journal fully substitutes for a conventional one, that is one less journal the library has to buy, and it can deploy those collection development funds elsewhere."

 But what can libraries do to promote OA?
  • establish an open access institutional repository (which also benefits the institution/university by enhancing the visibility and impact of its research output and raising the profile of the institution);
  • help faculty deposit their research articles in the institutional archive;
  • include open access resources in catalogs and/or websites ;
  • consider rejecting the big deal (entire journal collections) or cancelling journals that cannot justify their high prices to take a stand against the growing power of publishers;
  • consider publishing an open access journal.

Our Library is implementing an institutional repository that will soon be public and has added to the catalog of electronic resources the titles included in the open access directories DOAJ and SciELO (open access journals published in developing countries). The journals collected in both of these archives are peer-reviewed.

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