Embrace and Access the Open Access Journals as Library Resources

Scholarly communication and academic publishing are changing. The internet and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) make it easy to publish and share content online. As an alternative to subscription model to academic journals, open Access publishing are booming both in terms of the numbers of the journals and the impact it created. This brings a big opportunity to the Libraries in the collection development and also a challenge to the Library as supporting function to learning, teaching and research. Libraries shall embrace this new trend and integrate the open access journals into their collections. Compared to those established subscription journal which have a track record in reputation, it appears rather hard for librarians and faculties to assess the quality of Open Access publishing. This article introduces the concept and definition of Open Access, its different models in practice, and the criteria and principles which librarians and researchers could use to assess the quality of Open Access publishing, and this article also presents the trusted tools helping librarians and researchers to identify quality open access journals.