ASSESSMENT OF LEVELS OF OPEN ACCESS AWARENESS AND ITS USAGE IN RELATION TO SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION IN TANZANIAN UNIVERSITIES (Published)
The study investigated the awareness and use of open access within Tanzanian universities. The investigation was conducted at 2 universities: the Mwenge University College of Education (MWUCE) and the Moshi University College of Cooperative and Business Studies (MUCCoBS) in Moshi Municipality in Kilimanjaro Region. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 60 (30 from each university) respondents who were randomly selected using stratified random sampling from a population of researchers in the 2 universities as follows: 20 researchers (academic staff and students), 4 administrators, and 6 librarians and ICT staff in each university. Also interview involving respondents from among policy makers, ICT personnel and librarians was conducted. Archival or content analysis to complement the questionnaire survey was also done. The validity of the research instruments was ascertained by two educational experts from the department of education. The reliability of the questionnaires was determined through pilot testing by test-retest and split half technique of the questionnaires with five faculty staff members and university administrators who were obtained from one university which was not involved in the actual study. Descriptive and regression statistics was used for data analysis. Data was obtained and analyzed by using descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) and presented in tables. Data was presented, interpreted and discussed with support of relevant statistics and in relation to the information in the literature review. The study concluded that majority of the staffs manage to access and disseminate on the internet when they get assistance from their friends. Many staff members and the library/ICT members acquired their knowledge and skills of internet by self-training and Incompatibility of open access with the scholarly communications, unguaranteed availability of open access publications, low quality of open access and lack of skills and knowledge to publish in open access outlets are the major challenges facing scholars in the sampled universities.
Keywords: Open Access, Open Access Archives and Open Access Scholarly Communication, Open Access Journals