Open Access repositories and journals for visibility: Implications for Malaysian libraries

TL;DR

This paper reviews the growth and impact of Open Access repositories and journals, emphasizing their role in increasing visibility and citations for Malaysian academic institutions, and advocates for libraries to actively promote OA initiatives.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of Malaysian OA repositories and journals, highlighting their performance and proposing strategies for libraries to enhance OA adoption.

Findings

OA channels increase visibility and citations.

Malaysian repositories show growth and impact.

Libraries can promote OA through strategic initiatives.

Abstract

This paper describes the growth of Open Access (OA) repositories and journals as reported by monitoring initiatives such as ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories), Open DOAR (Open Directory of Open Access Repositories), DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), Directory of Web Ranking of World Repositories by the Cybermetrics Laboratory in Spain and published literature. The performance of Malaysian OA repositories and journals is highlighted. The strength of OA channels in increasing visibility and citations are evidenced by research findings. It is proposed that libraries champion OA initiatives by making university or institutional governance aware; encouraging institutional journal publishers to adopt OA platform; collaborating with research groups to jumpstart OA institutional initiatives and to embed OA awareness into user and researcher education programmes. By actively involved, libraries will be free of permission, licensing and archiving barriers usually imposed in traditional publishing situation.