Open access as a mode of scholarly communication in Al- Balqa Applied University: Researchers' perspectives

Abstract

The current research investigated scholars' perspectives in Al- Balqa University, their awareness, knowledge and deploy of Open Access resources. The researchers distributed a questionnaire to 84 academics and scholars through Random Sampling method. The study population was 117 researchers in humanities and social sciences faculties in the university. 84 academics responded to the questionnaire with response rate was 71.7%; the data were analyzed using (SPSS 20) program. In addition, the researchers concluded that open access was favorable to most of the participants. The results show a high level of awareness of how OA publishing is important as a tool for scholarly exchange. The researchers recommended that universities and libraries pay more attention to the importance of Open Access scholarly communication in their institutions and, as well, expand their institutional repositories with such literature. University management should hold workshops and training courses to improve researchers' skills in Open access research publishing and, further, develop greater knowledge sharing.