Open Access to Knowledge and Challenges in Digital Libraries

Information access has been a major challenge to researchers, especially in Africa and majorly in Nigeria. The exploitation experienced by researchers who do not have free access to papers but have to pay constitutes a major factor for consideration of Open Access Initiative. An exposition on the oppositions confronted by proponents of open access initiative has been done in this work; the change management process and challenges encountered and how to obliterate the challenges are presented in this chapter. Academics across the globe are coming to terms with open access initiative but the Nigeria environment has not fully integrated into this philosophy. This chapter points out the need to embrace open access initiative. It was concluded that open access signals a new dawn for conducting research by granting free access to the deluge of information available across the globe. The open access initiative challenges publishers who place unnecessary restrictions on access of scholarly publications. This makes research endeavours of scholars around the globe easily accessible, thus enabling researchers to extend the frontiers of existing knowledge.