The influence of open access on library science academic communities in northeastern Brazil

Abstract

This article verifies the influence of the Open Access (OA) on the academic communities of Librarianship in the Federal Universities in the Northeastern Region of Brazil. Its global goal is to identify and discuss the influence of the OA movement. The adopted methodology consists of the combination of the qualitative and quantitative approaches; surveys and interviews were used as data collection instruments. The interview was applied to the senior technologist of the Brazilian Institute of Information Science and Technology (IBICT- Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia) aiming to obtain information on the OA movement in Brazil. The surveys applied to teachers and students of the Librarianship courses, aiming to verify the effects and consequences of the OA movement on those communities. The survey outcomes point out to several positive indicators of the OA movement influence on those academic communities among which we can include: the existence of institutional repositories in Northeastern Federal Universities, the high percentage of use of institutional repositories, the high percentage of use and production of bibliographic publications with OA. Also, the knowledge and concordance with OA movement show the impact of this movement on the academic communities in the Northeastern Region of Brazil.