Abstract:
This article aims to provide an overview of Open Access (OA) resources and its utilization by
the academic staff at South Eastern University of Sri Lanka (SEUSL) and the level of growth
of OA resources. The concept of OA has been greatly developed globally, and these benefits
have prompted researchers to change their academic communication practices. The data was
collected using questionnaires. The population of this study was 210 staff members and 136
staff members were selected as the research sample data for analysis using stratified random
sampling technique. Used SPSS version (23) to analyze the data to examine the tools used to
get awareness on OA Resources by research scholars. The majority of the respondents have
used OA resources for academic-related activities and found utilization of OA are to be very
encouraging. The studies found the OA resources that are accessed online have been well
utilized. The use of academic social networking sites, OA journals, e-books, online lecture
videos, etc. is very encouraging. Similarly, universities and research institutions can
formulate OA policies, establish institutional knowledge bases, and encourage the
publication of articles in OA journals and archive them in digital knowledge bases for future
development and research. In addition, this will help librarians to make strategic decisions
for the development of open science. This study recommends conducting exploratory
research to identify university communities.
