Open Access To Knowledge And Information: Scholarly Literature And Digital Library Initiatives - The South Asian Scenario

摘要

The introduction to this works states that in an information society "free flow of information is a fundamental principle for bridging the knowledge gaps between privileged and under-privileged communities". Open access (OA) takes that principle to scholarly communication with the vision that potential readers and users should be freely able to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to, the full text of works, without financial cost or legal or technical barriers. OA can be achieved in a number of ways, the most common of which are to post work to a web site or place in an institutional, disciplinary or national digital repository, commonly called self-archiving or to publish in an open access journal.