The Impact of Open Access on Scholarly Communication and its Future

Library Herald Year : 2008, Volume : 46, Issue : 2 First page : ( 91) Last page : ( 102) Print ISSN : 0024-2292. Online ISSN : 0976-2469. The Impact of Open Access on Scholarly Communication and its Future

Kumar Shiv1, Library Assistant, Bansal Jivesh2, Assistant Librarian 1Panjab University Library, Chandigarh 160 014, E-mail: shiv1977@yahoo.com 2Panjab University Library, Chandigarh 160 014, E-mail: jivesh@pu.ac.in

Abstract With the dawn of 21st century, the Open Access (OA) has given a new challenge to scholarly communication and publishing world. Increase in journals’ prices and constant budget for the last two decades have posed a challenge for libraries to maintain their journal subscriptions up to a sufficient level to support their research and development activities. In the meantime, publication of scholarly articles in public domain through Web has provided new ways to scholarly world. Various means of OA have been discussed with supporting business models. Authors have gone through various studies which were made in the recent past to show impact of OA towards its use and citation in scholarship and research. The studies have shown that OA helps to increase the citation impact of journals and is helping to make scientific research more visible and accessible, thus affecting tremendously the scientific communication. Authors hope that OA will have a bright future.