Open access revolution: is it a paradigm shift of scholarly publishing practices?

Abstract

This paper aims to provide an overview of open access and its consequences. This focuses especially on open access for scholarly publishing. This is a review of literature, describing the evolution of open access, recent trend and its growth and adoption at global level. Findings of this study are the philosophy of open access has tremendously grown in all over the globe since 2002 and the benefits have leaded the researchers to alter their practices of scholarly communication. Even the research funders and institutions have mandated open access for the dissemination of research findings for which they grant financial assistance. Limited literature regarding open access status in Sri Lanka indicates that there is room for improvement. This paper proposes the Sri Lankan scientists, to adopt open access for scholarly communication practices to maximize visibility and to earn high impact for their research. Similarly, funding agencies, universities and research institutions can formulate open access policy, establish institutional repositories, and motivate publishing in open access journals and archiving in digital repositories for future development and research. Also, this will help librarians to make a strategic decision to develop open science. This study recommends the researchers in Sri Lanka to do an explorative study to identify the local scenario.