Introduction to Open Access

The BBB open access statements and associated literature have identified major benefits of OA scholarly publishing. Primary benefit is to provide removal of access  barriers, as there is no cost associated with subscriptions or online access. There is no access restriction in OA mode, leading to bridging knowledge divides between  global North and global South. Many benefits of OA publishing are related to global nature of Internet. Internet brings every piece of online content to a general or  specialized audience, depending on nature of contents. These free contents are outreached globally, accessed and appreciated by global communities. So, OA  publishing brings full potentials of the communicated research. To an author these include increased global visibility, increased accessibility in both developed and  developing countries, increased possibilities of get cited, and increased article level metrics or altmetrics. Other researchers seeking research collaborations get  engaged with the publishing authors for possible international collaborations at the institutional or individual level. The OA contents also offer a window for receiving  constructive feedbacks, comments, and opinions. These critical reflections enrich the published OA contents. Both readers and authors can then be a part in the  advancement of knowledge, offered by OA scholarly literature. Figure 2.3 elaborates different benefits of OA scholarly literature, as observed or perceived by the  scholarly communities.