Visualising Sustainable and Universal Access to Scholarly Information through the Prism of Open Access: A Selective Review

Abstract

Introduction:The existing model of research communication is tilted heavily in favor of a capitalist mindset wherein selective profit-making publishing establishments monopolize the lion's share of research publications and put a premium on access to the content of publicly funded research outcomes and thereby creating information starvation. As a viable alternative, the concept of Open Access has been doing the rounds. The present work is a selective review of existing literature on the research on Open Access and its different facets. Methods: The Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA) database was searched for the identification and selection of bibliographic details along with abstracts and keywords of relevant literature on OA practices. In the extracted literature, key concepts like "Open Access adoption", "Open Access publishing", "Open Access tools", and "Citation advantage of Open Access ", etc were singled out and a further Google Scholar search on these topics retrieved more related works. The literature thus selected was used to carry out the review. Results: The lack of a uniform OA adoption policy has resulted in variation in the adoption of OA across different disciplines, countries, institutions, publishers, and individual levels. Higher education and research institutes have welcomed OA and this is reflected in the adequate awareness of OA among academics and research scholars. At the country level, formulation and implementation of OA policy have not progressed much due to persistent misconceptions and misapprehensions about OA publishing. Article processing charges discourage the adoption of the open access publishing model among scholars. Conclusion: The review is expected to help understand the implications of OA not only in the ecosystem of universal access to scholarly information but also in the larger context of sustainable development goals 2030.