Open Access

On the 11/04/2017 after I left class I had so much going on my mind, as the Lecturer had touched on the most interesting topic....which is Open Access to information. What is meant by open access information is putting emphasizes  on providing free access to scholarly material. Students and researchers can not only consult them for free but can also download,copy,print and distribute them.

As I sat and listened to the lecturer I realized that there are so many definitions of open access but the intent is always the same, which is removing barriers and providing access to information for all with no bias or restrictions.

However there are challenges that hinder the progress of Open Access which raise questions about its feasibility, such as the quality of OA journals, regarding their economic sustainability and funding.

As a prospective researcher I listened tentatively, through all that there which there lecturer kept on dwelling on, and that which caught my attention was Green Open Access: which is a mode of publishing in non open access journal but also self archiving it in an Open Access Archive. Green OA publishing articles such as preprints that precede formally published versions, the advantage for end users is that preprints maybe almost enough version of final formally published article and would suffice for their reference without having to pay heavy prices to acquire or access the published version (Bjork et al. 2008).

Like any student it has always been very frustrating to get any articles as there always seemed to be restrictions  to those that we of use to our research, but with universities taking up the pledge to sign the Berlin declaration  on  open access of which the UWC has also signed.  Have a look at UWC Signs Berlin Declaration . To be quiet honest this has also helped me put more informative discussions on my libguide project.