Fostering open access publishing in Tanzanian public universities: policy makers' perspectives.

摘要

This paper stems from an ongoing doctoral study entitled "An analysis of open access scholarly communication in Tanzanian public universities". The focus of the paper is on one of the five objectives of the main study, i.e. to investigate the general awareness and usage of open access (OA) in public universities. To determine their awareness and perspectives, 63 policy makers from 6 universities were interviewed. The findings revealed that most (90.5%) of the university policy makers are aware of OA in general but not specific terms. However, it was generally acknowledged that access to and dissemination of scholarly content at their respective universities is problematic and hence interventions/initiatives likely to stimulate adoption of OA, though absent, would be supported. The study recommends that librarians and information professionals should capitalize on the positive perspectives of policy makers by establishing institutional repositories for wider dissemination of research findings in the country.