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.
