1.0 Introduction

The access to scholarly communications particularly the journals is of much concern for a long time. The exponential growth of scholarly literature is a vis their escalating cost and shrinking fund of libraries put severe constraints to their accessibility. The ‘Open Access’ is a philosophy and the concept arose for solving the problems of accessibility of information available in varieties of forms such as journal articles, books etc. The open access may be defined as a philosophy to achieve the goal of accessing and making available the digital material free of charge which may or may not be free from copyright and licensing restrictions (Ghosh & Das, 2007). Peter Suber1defines ‘Open Access literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions’. 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. The objective of this unit is to portrait 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’. This is an excellent piece of advice for any university or funding agency which is considering adopting a mandatory OA policy.

Last modified: Wednesday, 31 March 2021, 2:14 PM