Open Access and Libraries

Title: Scholarly Open Access Journals and Libraries
Author: Jan Hagerlid
Publisher: KVHAA Konferenser
URL: http://www.kb.se/dokument/Om/projekt/scholarly_journals_hagerlid.pdf

Abstract
Jan Hagerlid traces the development of open-access online journals from print journals. The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web transformed the collection and dissemination of print scholarly journals into online subscription of e-journals, and later, into what we call now as open-access (OA) online journals. Though online subscription journals stay available, the creation of OA online journals has become very useful to librarians as they provide additional and accessible information resources to researchers. Aside from the definitions of OA online journals and the discussion on the issue of making it income generating or not, this article focuses on the development and discussion on the future of OA online journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Nordic context.

Three-point Learning

1. Access to open-access online journals encourages collaboration and consortium among academic libraries. In turn, member libraries of the different consortia promote proper usage of these journals.

2. Consortium among academic libraries, brought by OA online journals, provides better quality of service, if not the best, to patrons.

3. The advent of OA online journals benefits not just the researchers but the authors as well. With proper usage of these journals, contributors/authors are recognized with proper citations.

Application

As a researcher, it has been realized that the creation of open-access online journals is important in the development of a specific discipline's body of knowledge. Authors are given the opportunity to be reviewed by peers and share their journals to a wider reach. It must therefore be ensured that proper citations are made to avoid infringement of intellectual property rights.