Copyright Protection in the Light of Movement for Open Access Scholarship

"Open access advocates promise that the embrace of their ideology would lead to a simpler, less costly, more democratic, and more effective scholarly communication system. To achieve their objectives they propose two different ways of providing open access of scholarly work: self-archiving and open access publishing. However, while the open access movement has succeeded in persuading research institutions and funders of the merits of open access, it has failed to win the hearts and minds of most researchers in Africa. More importantly, research has shown that open access does not prevent or limit the sale of scholarly materials and yet it is not achieving its objectives. There are various reasons for this, but above all it is because open access advocates underestimated the extent to which copyright would subvert their cause."