Library Accessibility, Open Access Policies and Access to Knowledge | Open Research Community

The research project of by Katie Wilson et al. (2019) has analyzed access policies from twenty academic libraries worldwide, to find that individuals without university affiliation oftentimes experience financial and administrative barriers to accessing non-digital collections. In addition, Open Access policies, such as for research result sharing, of these institutions have not been found to comprehensively alleviate public access issues. In other words, Open Access policies can be expected to facilitate knowledge sharing to a limited extent only. At the same time, as Open Access gains in adoption, becomes increasingly mandated and receives financial support, institutional barriers to knowledge, such as on-location access fee requirements, are likely to become reduced as well.