1.9 Let us sum up
The concept of open access to scholarly communications evolved during 1990s to facilitate wider communication of scholarly contributions, feedback and use which resulted in the development of open access repositories. Two ways (routes) of open access have been identified in the literature – Green and Gold. The problem of Open Access Repositories (OAR) is that after establishing the system, we need to appeal to contributors to deposit contents for populating the OA system. This is a global phenomenon and the reason is possibly lack of awareness amongst the authors and complexities of copyrights. Mandatory policies are now widely recognized as the only way to achieve close to 100 percent of contents in institutional repositories. Mandates demand exclusive rights. Open access mandates are not exceptional to this. Open access mandate also demands exclusive rights to publish scholarly outputs of researchers to make greater visibility and accessibility. Formulation of Policies/Mandates by the publishers/copy right holders/funding agencies facilitates the wider accessibility of such communications. Many initiatives have been taken in this regard both at national and international levels adhering to policies formulated by them. This unit portraits a clear picture of Open Access Mandates/Policies and related issues. The recommendations widely adopted by the open access movement may be summarized as ‘deposit immediately, and make open access as soon as legally possible’. The importance of mandates and policies in the context of open access, the various sources of mandates and policies has been discussed in this unit. The features of some important OA policies in vogue and the initiatives taken at national level by some countries have also been discussed. Draft OA policies framed by experts in the field have also been highlighted, based on which you should be able to frame a draft OA policy for your institution.