Abstract
The chapter examines the opportunities associated with open access (OA) initiatives from the perspective of research students in selected Nigerian universities. A survey design was adopted to conduct the study, whereby the questionnaire was the instrument of data collection. The findings revealed that OA is perceived by the research students as a good idea, easy, beneficial in terms of access and use and usually makes research more interesting. OA most importantly provides opportunities such as enabling readers with the access to publish articles, the future of scholarly research, and publishes faster than the traditional outlets, along with wider dissemination of research and opportunity of free access to all. Incentives of OA include users' accessibility, copyright retention by authors, high quality publications, among others; while the disincentives of OA include lack of reach, cost of publishing, and inadequate quality of some OA platforms. A considerable number of respondents have the continuous intention to use OA instead of traditional platforms, for study and research, as an autonomous tool for improving research and to recommend to colleagues. Significant challenges associated with OA include procrastination, inadequate ICT infrastructure, high cost of internet, and slow speed of internet, restrictions placed on using storage devices like discs or flash drive for downloading contents from OA platforms, among others. The chapter made recommendations based on the findings.
TopIntroduction
The open access (OA) initiative is gaining pace worldwide and it’s now critical for all involved in scholarly publishing such as policymakers, research funders, publishers, government, learned societies, librarians and academic communities to be aware of and well informed about the genealogy, advantages and shortcoming of OA. Part of the advancement in technology is the issue of OA to scholarly communication. OA typically provides an internet-based digital platform for the publication of research output with unrestricted access to the public, while scholarly publication networks encompass interlinked information access to a database by educational institutions (Abdulhayyu, 2013). The growth of OA and scholarly communication has been remarkable in most developed countries. However, academic and research institutions in many developing countries, inclusive of Nigeria, are still struggling to deal with the challenges in an attempt to make their research outputs openly available and accessible.
As postulated by Jain (2012), the digital age comes with the responsibility to explore new publishing technologies and economic models to improve access to scholarly work. Widely circulated published communication is considered an addition to knowledge. OA benefits the right to know and the right to be known (Wllingsky, 2010). It has become increasingly expedient to close the gap between the developed and less developed countries. And as Jain (2012) points out, this can only be achieved through access to information for educational, cultural, and scientific development. OA can foster information and knowledge sharing within research, educational, and scientific communities in traditionally economically disadvantaged regions (Canada, 2009). OA makes scholarly research permanently available online without restriction, which can provide benefits to all those who have a stake in the scholarly publishing process – researchers, funders, students, librarians, scholarly societies, publishers and the general public. OA plays an important role in enabling the society to fulfil the mission of furthering the advancement of learning, knowledge and research worldwide (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Some decades ago, the economic market, and technological foundations that sustained the symbolic publisher-market relationship started shifting (Benkler, 2006). This is consequent on what is called the networked information economy which is gradually replacing the industrial information economy that characterised information production from about the second half of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century (Abdulhayyu, 2013; Ola, 2015).
OA initiatives facilitate the free availability and distribution of scholarly communication and it is the free, immediate online availability of peer reviewed research papers with full re-use rights. Before the inception of OA, researchers including postgraduate students had to pay a certain amount of money before access could be enabled to scholarly publications. Research findings are not disseminated freely and widely currently, thereby resulting in restrictions in readership and reduction in the overall impact.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Perception: This is defined as the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses. It is the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted. Perception is the organisation, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information, or the environment.
Research Students: A research student is defined as one who is learning how to research by doing research under the supervision of a more senior academic. A student studying for a doctoral award, that is, a PhD or an MPhil or Masters.
Open Access: Open access is a broad international movement that seeks to grant free and open online access to academic information, such as publications and data. Open access is a mechanism by which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers. With open access strictly defined, or libre open access, barriers to copying or reuse are also reduced or removed by applying an open license for copyright. (Wikipedia)
Opportunity: This is defined as a time or set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something. It is an exploitable set of circumstances with uncertain outcome, requiring commitment of resources and involving exposure to risk. An occasion or situation that makes it possible to do something that you want to do or have to do, or the possibility of doing something.
Open Access Initiatives: This is defined as a public statement of principles relating to open access to the research literature, which is released to the public.