Awareness of Open Access Scholarly Publications Among Science Faculty Members: A Survey

The purpose of this paper is to explore the awareness of Open access scholarly publications among Science faculty members in Universities of Karnataka State. A total of 556 faculty members are selected from 11 Universities in Karnataka State. A well designed questionnaire was used to collect the data from the faculty members. The findings of the study reveal that, most of the faculty members are aware of OA scholarly publications (98.56%). Further, majority of the respondents are aware of OA journals (71.58%) and OA Books (59.71%). The respondents awareness on OA patents and OA research/Technical reports is low (45.86%). However most of the faculty members are aware of open access outlets such as Google/Google Scholar and Open access journals gateways. Only 37.41% of faculty members are unaware of OA Search tools (OAIster, i.e. OA Journals Search Engine). It is also found that 59.35% of respondents are aware that OA is free online and digital form. Based on the findings, the study recommends that the librarian should create awareness among the faculty members about OA scholarly publications. The Librarian need to conduct orientation programme as well as training programmes for science faculty members for the effective use of OA scholarly publications.