Shifting from the traditional model of scholarly communication to open access is a significant move, perhaps even a revolutionary one. There are numerous ways in which open access might impact an academic library:
Economic, technological, collection development & management, and the very roles that academic libraries play, reference services, information literacy, and peer evaluation.
Scenarios that would affect how open access impacts libraries:
(1) The open access movement collapses,
(2) The open access movement triumphs, and
(3) The open access movement partially succeeds, resulting in a mixed scholarly communication system that has elements of both traditional and open access publishing.
From my perspective, a complete failure of the open access movement seems unlikely. It appears to me that, at this point, the primary factors that will determine its degree of success are:
(1) Legislative, funding agency, employer and other mandates that require open access
(2) Sustainable business models for open access journals
(3) a commitment by universities and other organizations to establish, adequately fund, staff, and operate permanent digital repositories and archives; and
(4) A successful campaign to win the hearts and minds of scholars so that they will support (e.g., serve as editors and editorial board members) and publish in those journals, deposit e-prints in digital archives and repositories, and recognize the validity of open access publications in promotion and tenure proceedings.
Major Open Access Impacts on Libraries
• Institutions that decide to support open access via implementation of an institutional repository or creation of an electronic journal also face a number of technological issues. Links to electronic resources are already quite fragile, and it is common to find outdated, broken links even on reputable, well-updated websites.
• You would have the right to archive them forever without special permission or periodic payments. Long-term preservation and access would not be limited to the actions taken by publishers, with future market potential in mind, but could be supplemented by independent library actions. Cost -At some universities and colleges, publication charges are shouldered by the libraries which they may find such costs to be as expensive as those associated with traditional journal subscriptions
• Access and usage would not be limited by password, IP address, usage hours, institutional affiliation, physical location, a cap on simultaneous users, or ability to pay. You would not have to authenticate users or administer proxy servers.
• The most challenging issue facing those who develop and manage library collections is how they will keep track of open access sources. most academic libraries will need to confront the important issue of adding open access sources to their collections if they wish to serve their communities in the long-run, and indeed, if they wish to stay relevant
• You would have the right to lend and copy digital articles on any terms you liked to any users you liked. You could offer the same services to users affiliated with your institution, walk-in patrons, users at home, visiting faculty, and ILL users.
• Users who object to cookies or registration would have the same access privileges as other users. Anonymous inquiry would be possible again for every user.
The Role of Libraries in Open Access
Open access does not require that libraries do anything for it to exist. It has not been designed with libraries as its foundation. From this perspective, open access is all benefit, and no cost. For example, if a traditional journal becomes fully open access or a new open access journal fully substitutes for a conventional one, that is one less journal the library has to buy, and it can deploy those collection development funds elsewhere. If it was a double-digit-cost STM journal, all the better.
However, the probability those libraries, especially academic libraries, will simply ignore open access materials is quite low, if not zero. The lesson of other freely
available Internet resources is that, regardless of what libraries think, many users (especially undergraduates) love them and may well use them to the exclusion of conventional, vetted materials. Graduate students and faculty find riches in the Internet as well, and may be engaged in creating valuable new authoritative digital resources in that setting. Of course, they can distinguish between the real and the glass diamonds; less sophisticated users can't. So whether it was out of enthusiasm for new digital resources or out of a sense of obligation to steer users towards useful materials (or both), libraries have increasingly considered that vast sea of Internet materials to be a source of materials that are a potential part of a redefined collection, one that primarily includes purchased and licensed materials, but also, through inclusion in digital finding tools and instruction, free Internet materials.
Reference
Noorhidawati Abdullah. “Open Access ” Lecture, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.
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