USAGE OF OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS BY ACADEMICIANS: THE CASE OF WOLAITA SODDO UNIVERSITY AND HARAMAYA UNIVERSITY IN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The study investigated Usage of open access journals by academicians in Ethiopian selected public higher learning institutions. Wolaita Sodo University and Haramaya University were the selected universities among thirty five Ethiopian public higher learning institutions. Questionnaire was used to collect data from academic staffs that were randomly selected using stratified simple random sampling from a population of academicians having academic rank above assistance lecturers in the two universities. Also semi structured interview involving respondents among librarians was conducted. Descriptive statistics (frequencies, percentages, mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (T-test, one way ANOVA and Ordinary least square model) were used for data analysis. Data was interpreted and discussed with support of appropriate statistics and in relation to the information in the literature review. The findings of this study revealed that majority of the respondents have awareness about open access journals and most of them used open access journals to access scholarly information rather than disseminate their research output. Majority of the respondents were informed about open access journals informally through colleagues rather than institutionalized organs such as libraries especially in WSU respondents. The findings of this study also revealed that the academicians in public universities involved in this study rated social influence, Internet self-efficiency, facilitating conditions, perceptions and performance expectation of open access journals as strong determinants of their decisions to use open access journals. From the finding and general comment obtained from respondents many respondents highly welcomed the idea of open access publishing, OA policy, and the establishment of advanced institutional repositories as a way of improving the accessing and dissemination of research output originating from their respective universities. The study concluded that even though less publishing in open access journals by many academicians in the public universities in Ethiopia, the fact that majority of the respondents was expectant of publishing in such outlet in future implies good prospects for future development of open access journal usage in such universities. To the end, researcher recommended that implementing developed Framework thoroughly will lead to enhanced use of open access journals by academicians from local and worldwide disseminated research outputs.