The Roles of Academic Librarians in Promoting Gold Open Access to Faculty: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

Since the advent of Open Access (OA) publishing as a response to the serials crisis in scholarly communications, academic librarians have often served as OA guides for faculty as they navigate the research process. However, as more studies have emerged on faculty perceptions of gold OA, the roles of librarians in promoting OA have come into question. This literature review article aims to examine articles and book chapters published from 2010 to 2023 with a geographic focus on North America that discuss how and why librarians have promoted gold OA to faculty. The literature reviewed suggests that librarians should focus on the benefits for faculty authors when discussing gold OA, and early career researchers may be more inclined toward OA than those later in their careers. Librarians have used various types of outreach, including workshops, speaking engagements, social media, and more to advance OA on their campuses. Challenges for OA outreach include a lack of understanding of OA practices, article processing charges (APCs) for OA journals, predatory OA journals, and reluctance from librarians to adopt OA for their own publishing methods. Further study on both faculty and librarian perceptions of OA; on factors that influence researchers to choose specific journals and publishing methods; and on how commercial publishers and libraries are continuing to adapt to the OA movement will provide a better understanding on the roles of librarians in influencing faculty toward gold OA.