Trends and Patterns in Open Access Resource Usage Among University Libraries Users: a Critical Study

The Open Access (OA) movement brings both enormous possibilities and various challenges in the context of Indian higher education. In a country with a large and expanding academic community and limited library budgets, OA can democratise access to global knowledge and enhance the discoverability of Indian science. This critical study provides an overview of the current state and changing patterns of resource utilisation in OA among faculty, researchers, and students at Indian universities. This research used empirical studies, national OA policies, and usage data from 2015 to 2023 to offer an opposing view of the state of consumption vs engagement with OA. Specifically, they find that much consumption of OA (very little impact in publishing); the active promotion of national OA programmes in an economically driven manner, but with little infrastructure for implementation at this point; and finally, that the widespread usage of shadow libraries evidences that the failure to provide access to OA is rampant. The study reveals a number of common patterns: the dominance of Google Scholar as a way to discover research; the relative significance of national repositories (such as IR@INFLIBNET and Shodhganga) in a cultural context; the variation in discipline-based engagement; and the lack of infrastructure, such as digital literacy, bandwidth access, and language preference. The authors provide an overview of these trends and tie them to the unique scholarly communication ecosystem in India, including the UGC's OA mandates, the prevalence of predatory publishing, and the dichotomy between elite institutions and peripheral colleges. The paper concludes with recommendations for university libraries in India, noting that universities need to move from simply providing access to resources to actively curating, promoting literacy, and participating in the creation of a sustainable, equitable, and culturally appropriate open knowledge commons.