Assessing the Awareness and Perceptions that Researchers and Lecturers have Towards Self-Archiving at the University of Zambia

Abstract

Zambia has not experienced any growth in Institutional repositories. OPENDOAR documented that Zambia only has one institutional repository which is at the University Of Zambia. The statistics provided by OPENDOAR placed Zambia as one of the least pioneers in institutional repositories and open access of information. In addition, self-archiving by Zambian academicians is not yet empirically documented. Further, the awareness and selfarchiving practices, views and opinions of academic researchers who are the most important stakeholders group as far as self-archiving is concerned is not known. 7 Studies that have been conducted in Kenya so far are mainly on the subject of OA and scholarly communication in general, none of these studies have specifically addressed the status of self-archiving by Kenyan academicians this is outlined in a research done by (Muinde and Goutman, 2009; Munge, Kamilie and Nasieku, 2012; Otando, 2011, Mutwiri, 2014, Chilimo, 2015). This indicates that OA and self-archiving isn’t widely practiced in Africa and Zambia in particular. Studies from other African countries such as Otando (2011) pointed out that the status of OA repositories and self-archiving services and practices in Africa is not known. In india Goutam and Dibyendu, 2014 reported that low rate participation by faculty members in IR phenomenon is a major issue for the success of IRs, while a study by Abrizah (2009) in Malaysia reveals that the majority of academician or academic researcher had little or no knowledge of, or experience with, IRs and unfamiliar with self-archiving opportunities.