Role of Open-Access e-repositories of Sri Lanka in commercial e-repository environment

Abstract

Although information business in the world is dominated by commercial resource suppliers today, users of academic libraries expect free access to information they need. High subscription prices and various access restrictions of commercial e-repositories hinder the library’s effort to provide free information for their patrons. This issue is specially occurring in developing countries due to budgetary restrictions and unavailability of modern technology. In this circumstance, Open Access (OA) concept has been popular among scholarly communities and many institutions today have initiated OA e-repositories to serve the users under a sharing basis. This movement in Sri Lanka still seems in the developing stage and is getting more attention from users as well as librarians. Open Access e-repositories have a great role to play in order to save the user from the hands of commercial profit-oriented information providers and to serve the people with free access to information. Scholarly communities, librarians, and funding agencies need to collaborate to make this process easy and successful. Poor content, lack of proper policies, and lack of awareness were found as barriers to this process.