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The open access movement has become the center of discussion during the last decade. Open access publishing facilitates researchers' and scientists' access to research literature through the internet free of cost. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the awareness of open access publishing among researchers and faculty members of Indian institutions, and to evaluate the development of open access initiatives in India.

This study is based on both primary and secondary sources of data. For studying awareness of open access publishing, a survey was conducted among the researchers of IITs and IIMs in July‐August 2012 by using a closed ended questionnaire. The growth of open access initiatives in India is analyzed through data collected from secondary sources, i.e. the websites of Ulrich's, DOAJ, ROAR, and OpenDOAR.

The results showed that India's contribution has increased in the last few years. It was found that the awareness about such open access information sources and initiatives among the research community is increasing.

This study will assist in understanding the practices of open access publishing in India.

The paper aims to focus on the current state of open access (OA) initiatives in Zimbabwean universities. The paper specifically reports the initiatives at Zimbabwean universities regarding institutional repositories that promote OA and other digital OA collections.

A qualitative research methodology was adopted. Questionnaires were used as the primary data collection method for this research. The research sought to address the following specific areas: the state of institutional repositories and open access in Zimbabwe, the discoverability of content, open access policies and mandates, the benefits of open access in Zimbabwe, and future plans for institutional OA. A total of eight out of 12 universities responded to the questionnaire. The data provided by the universities involved in the research were summarised to give a general picture of the open access landscape in Zimbabwe.

The current initiatives in the universities involved in this survey indicate that most universities in Zimbabwe are going to have institutional repositories that promote open access to information. Most institutions in Zimbabwe are already working on putting open access policies in place in a bid to promote open access.

The research will shed more light on the status quo of open access initiatives in Zimbabwe, particularly with regards to institutional repositories, open access policies and open access mandates.

The purpose of this paper is to present various aspects of open access that are being discussed and debated in recent years.

The paper briefly reviews the flavors such as open access definitions, open access initiatives, platforms for open access, and players in the open access movement.

The paper finds that, while the debates on open access continue, there is no doubt that librarians can play an important role to help achieve faster and wider dissemination of research discoveries and new knowledge of which they have been disseminators and keepers for centuries.

The article may help readers further their understanding of the complexity of open access and raise awareness on some of the key points.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the current status of open access initiatives in Turkey.

The author has conducted extensive research on the subject, which is supplemented by his own professional experience with resource sharing activities in Turkey.

Turkish libraries first ventured into the open access arena in late 2005 and have since made great strides by implementing dozens of institutional repositories and a national thesis center as well. Open access has a bright future in Turkey because of its promise for eliminating barriers to scientific information and reducing the costs of scholarly publication.

The author is one of a small cadre of experts on resource sharing and open access efforts in Turkey.

This paper proposes explaining institutional repositories (IRs) and open access, discussing the relationship of open access to IRs, and examining the possible roles of reference librarians in IRs.

Key IR and open access concepts are clarified and critiqued. New organizational roles for reference libraries are suggested that build on their current functions.

The IR concept is defined, and IRs are shown to be different from scholars' personal web sites, academic department/unit archives, institutional e‐print archives, and disciplinary archives. Open access is defined and examined. While the vision of open access is clear, the implementation of the vision is less pure. Open access and IRs are not synonyms: IRs are best seen as an enabling technology for open access. Reference librarians must play a key role in IRs, and ten potential IR support activities for them are identified.

This paper orients reference librarians, library administrators, and others to IRs and open access, providing a context for understanding how reference librarians' jobs may be transformed by the emergence of IRs.

Open access publishing is an increasingly popular trend in the dissemination of academic work, allowing journals to print articles electronically and without the burden of subscription paywalls, enabling much wider access for audiences. Yet subscription-based journals remain the most dominant in the social sciences and humanities, and it is often a struggle for newer open access publications to compete, in terms of economic, cultural, and symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 2004). Our study explores the meanings of resistance held by the editors of open access journals in the social sciences and humanities in Canada, as well as the views of university librarians. To make sense of these meanings, we draw on Lonnie Athens’ (2015) radical interactionist account of power, and expand on this by incorporating George Herbert Mead’s (1932, 1938) theory of emergence, arguing that open access is characteristic of an “extended rationality” (Chang, 2004) for those involved. Drawing on our open-ended interview data, we find that open access is experienced as a form of resistance in at least four ways. These include resistance to (1) profit motives in academic publishing; (2) access barriers for audiences; (3) access barriers for contributors; and (4) traditional publishing conventions.

The purpose of this paper is to open the special issue of Online Information Review on open knowledge management in higher education. Its aim is to review the concept and extension of the movement or philosophy of open knowledge in universities and higher education institutions.

The approach follows the reference model used by the University of Salamanca (Spain) to promote open knowledge in the institution through its Open Knowledge Office. This model comprises four areas: free software, open educational content and cultural dissemination, open science, and open innovation.

For each of the four areas mentioned above, milestones and the most significant projects are presented, showing how they are promoting publication and information transmission in an open environment, without restrictions and favouring knowledge dissemination in all fields.

Open knowledge is an approach which, although somewhat controversial, is growing relentlessly as cultural and scientific dissemination leave behind other interests or economic models. International organisations and governments are gradually embracing open knowledge as the way to share scientific advances with society and as an international cooperative way to assist development in third‐world countries.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate open access penetration ratios through cross‐analysis of existing social context and open access indicators in Latin America.

The following parameters were used to characterize the chosen countries. On one hand, it takes social context indicators like digital opportunity index (DOI), GDP 2007 (Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development) (www.oecd.org/home/0,3305,en_2649_201185_1_1_1_1_1,00.html), scientific output 2005, and investment in science and technology vs GDP 2004. On the other hand, it analyses open access indicators considering the two main open access strategies – the green and gold routes – and the existing legal framework.

This paper discusses the evolution of DOI and compares with open access parameters (numbers of repositories, number of registries in repositories, DOAJ journals and number of creative commons licences) in the context of scientific information in developing countries in Latin America.

This paper is not an exhaustive survey and limits the comparison to the Latin American Countries, focalized in Brazil, Chile and Argentina.

This paper gives an overview of the situation of three particular countries: Brazil, Chile and Argentina, and explains the position of these countries in the open access movement in Latin America.

Open access movement is getting increased in Asia and the Pacific and has been started in the form of subject gateways, informal collections of articles on web pages and directories. Many Asian countries adopted the transition to Open Access journals and full-text repositories and digital libraries. Open access also helps to underprivilege countries to spread their research output. But third-world Islamic countries are far away from open access and its implementations. The purpose of this paper is to focus on open-access e-resource development in Afghanistan.

The data were complemented by documentary analysis, and information retrieved from open-access databases like DOAR, DOAJ and OER Sites.

The paper provides information about open-access development in Afghanistan and also focuses on the challenges for spreading OA awareness in Afghanistan. It suggests that how local people and universities can help to spread open-access movement.

This paper gives an idea about the educational system and other resources available in Afghanistan.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study open-access development and status in Afghanistan.

The purpose of this paper is to give a complex description and evaluation of open access adoption in the environment of the Czech Republic, from both the green road and golden road points of view.

Data and conclusions in this paper are numerically supported by quantitative analyses from several relevant databases (e.g. JCR, Scopus, DOAJ or ROAR).

The issue of open access has not been given appropriate attention in the Czech Republic. Therefore, most of the important activities have only recently been implemented, or are still underway. Open access is still being completely ignored at the level of Czech state offices and funding agencies, which leads to scientific institutions learning of this phenomenon individually. Compared to other Central European countries, the Czech Republic can be classified as average in certain respects, but it is no competition for developed West European and North American countries in terms of awareness, infrastructure and open access adoption.

This is the very first article that comprehensively sums up all aspects of the issue of open access in the Czech Republic.