Abstract
Open-access scholarly literature has increased in significance in terms of accessing and disseminating information and research and development activities in Indian higher education. Consequently, this study was conducted to understand the awareness and use of open-access scholarly communication among research scholars in Indian higher education. The study employed a combination of multistage cluster sampling and simple random sampling as its methodological framework. The study’s participants included researchers from six universities with potential for excellence (UPE) universities, who were tasked with data collection. The study identified a total population of 3,218. The Qualtrics sample size calculator was a tool that can be used to determine the minimum number of samples required to achieve a desired sample size of 344. The study’s findings revealed the growing awareness of open-access literature among researchers in higher education. However, the level of acceptance of this concept among scholars varied depending on the specific discipline. The study’s findings indicated that research scholars held a favorable perception of open access. The study found that open-access resources, including Google Scholar (96.95%), SpringerOpen (90.30%), Sci-Hub (90.02%), Open Science Elsevier (86.7%), Wiley Open Access (82.82%), Shodhganga (71.46%), and PubMed Central (68.97%), have garnered over 50% awareness among research scholars. The study observed that the majority of respondents access open scholarly literature for their research work (92.5%) and paper writing (78.1%). The study demonstrated that research scholars concurred on the positive impact of open access on their research. Specifically, the scholars acknowledged that open access increased research paper visibility, improved access to education, facilitated wider circulation of research papers, and increased citations. By addressing the challenges associated with open access and by engaging in training opportunities, we can achieve excellence in the realm of open-access scholarship, information dissemination, and collaboration.