The aim of this study was to investigate factors affecting the adoption of open access
in research activities within Tanzanian public universities in order to device
mechanisms of enhancing the use of this mode of scholarly communication. The study
adopted the UTAUT model to formulate an open access research model comprising of
six constructs and five moderators for guidance of this investigation. A triangulation
approach for data gathering was adopted. In the first instance, a semi-structured
questionnaire was used to collect data from 398 respondents selected using the
stratified random sampling from a population of 1088 university researchers from six
public universities in Tanzania. The interview involving 63 policy makers and
structured records review were also conducted to complement the questionnaire
survey. The descriptive and binary logistic regression statistics of the Statistical
Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) were used for data analysis.
The study established that majority of the policy makers (90.5%) and researchers
(72.1%) were aware of open access. Attitude, awareness, effort expectancy, and
performance expectancy were established as the key determinants for researchers’
behavioural intention of open access usage while age, awareness, behavioural
intention, facilitating conditions and social influence were found to significantly affect
researchers’ actual usage of open access. It was concluded that researchers’ and
policy makers’ general perceptions about open access were very positive signifying
the acceptance of this mode of scholarly communication in the study area. Current
poor research conditions and researchers’ low Internet self-efficacy such as
inadequate information search and online publishing skills were cited as the main
hindrances for researchers to use open access in scholarly communication. The study
recommends institutionalisation of open access publishing in Tanzanian public
universities and other similar research institutions so as to improve the dissemination
of research output emanating from such institutions. Six areas for further research to
establish more insights regarding the feasibility for open access development in the
country are also recommended. / Information Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Information Science)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/3684 |
| Date | 08 1900 |
| Creators | Dulle, Frankwell Wilson |
| Contributors | Minishi-Majanja, M.K., Cloete, L.M. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (xx, 304 leaves) : illustrations, color graphs, application/pdf |
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