Open Access to scientific literature: An assessment of awareness support and usage among academic librarians at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Open Access (OA) to scholarly communications is a critical component in providing equitable admission to scholarly information and a key vehicle toward the achievement of global access to research in the knowledge building process. A standard and universally accepted process for guaranteeing OA permits complimentary access to knowledge, research and data; it also creates a barrier free pathway for those seeking information and rapid, global distribution of information.;Open Access can have a significant impact on the scholarly communications process and all of the stakeholders therein. One of those stakeholders that stand to improve its usefulness dramatically is the academic library. The transformation to OA will affect libraries because they play a critical role in the scholarly communications process (Schmidt, et.el, 2005). To what extent academic libraries are supporting and utilizing open access venues has been investigated in several studies. However, to date, there are no studies that have specifically focused on libraries of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and their interactions with Open Access venues.;This study applies a mixed methods research approach to assess how librarians at HBCU institutions feel about Open Access venues and documents their current interactions with Open Access venues. The study concludes that librarians at HBCU institutions are aware of Open Access venues and in favor of making research freely available on the Internet. However, they are experiencing a variety of obstacles in making the transition to Open Access. The most frequently noted obstacles were funding, skepticism about quality of work for public view, lack of institutional commitment, and low or no demand by faculty and others within the academic community. These obstacles lead to what may be considered an opportunity gap.;The implications of these findings are that students would benefit greatly from a more aggressive advocacy campaign on Open Access, targeting librarians and faculty, ultimately leading to increased scholarly output at HBCU institutions.