While the OA movement in theory enables free access to research and spur innovation and development, in practice there are also barriers such as slow uptake among authors and costs at the author-publisher side. 

So far the impact of open access journal and repositories has been limited, perhaps due to so called ‘policy-practice divide’. A necessary condition for increased open access publishing is that the researchers are aware of the possibilities offered. We discuss the ‘awareness aspect’ and how awareness may be increased among researchers and research students. Our presentation builds on preliminary findings from an on-going research project performed in collaboration with three African and one Swedish university.

Findings from interviews with researchers indicated that open access publishing is used although not always considered as open access and that there are some restrictions, so called ‘unwritten rules’, were to publish due to low option of OA journals.  Furthermore, university librarians voice concerns about the cost of opening articles published in international journals by researchers at their own university, while the researchers, on their side, want to reach other researchers in developing countries where the libraries cannot afford subscriptions for the same journals. Initiatives to start e-journals in developing countries risk running into several problems: there are already doubts about the quality of open access sources which hinders further adoption.  Moreover, running e-journals is not a cost-free pursuit and it remains to see if such initiatives in the long run drain or gain research communication in developing countries.