Open Access: Perceptions and Reactions of Academic Librarians in Nigerian Private Universities

Abstract

Open Access (OA) has been heralded as a key strategy for promoting the electronic dissemination and access to quality scientific knowledge by researchers in developing countries. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the perceptions and reactions of academic librarians in Nigerian private universities to OA publishing as a medium for disseminating quality scientific knowledge and for assessing the contributions of scholars to global knowledge improvements. Ten of the seventeen private universities in Southwestern Nigeria were randomly selected, and 42 academic librarians from the ten universities were surveyed. A questionnaire adapted from Palmer, et al. (2009) was used to collect data. The findings showed that academic librarians in Nigerian private universities have positive perception of OA scholarly publishing. However, their level of involvement in creating awareness and contributing to the development of OA at the time of the study was low. It needs to be improved in view of the potential benefit of OA for promoting the visibility of the research output of researchers in the universities.