LAUSR

The study investigated the awareness and use of open access (OA) channels for scholarly publishing by researchers at selected universities in Kenya. A sample of 341 faculty members, from three public universities, was selected for the study. A questionnaire was used as the main data collection instrument. The findings revealed that there is a considerably high level of awareness among the researchers; librarians were the main channel with regard to creating awareness; the OA channels that are more frequently used by researchers are OA journals, OA institutional repositories and OA e-books; the researchers mostly published/disseminated theses and dissertations, conference proceedings and workshop/seminar presentations through OA channels; and searching and accessing research articles, developing research proposals and formulating research problems were among the main reasons why researchers used open access channels. There are several reasons why researchers sometimes do not use OA channels for research. The study makes several recommendations for the adoption and effective use of OA channels in the selected universities and beyond.