Awareness and Use of Open Access Scholarly Publications by Postgraduate Students of Faculty of Science in Ahmadu Bello University Zaria (ABU), Kaduna State, Nigeria

The study investigated the awareness and use of Open Access scholarly publications by postgraduate students of Faculty of Science in Ahmadu Bello University Zaria (ABU), Kaduna State, Nigeria. The study was guided by four research objectives namely to determine the channels of awareness of Open Access publications, among postgraduate students of faculty of science in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, to determine the major sourcesconsulted for Open Access Publications by postgraduate students of the faculty, and to determine the impediments of using Open Access publications by postgraduate students of faculty of science in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Survey research design was adopted. The population of the study consists of all the postgraduate students of Faculty of Science in Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. A sample of 100 was purposely selected from the entire departments in the faculty. Questionnaire was used as an instrument of data collection, 97 were successfully retrieved and analysed using descriptive statistics. The study found that majority of the postgraduate students of Faculty of Science in Ahmadu Bello University Zaria became aware of OA publications by surfing/searching through the Internet haphazardly, majority of the respondent are not aware of the major sources of OA publications, the respondents predominantly use OA publications to support their thesis/dissertations among others. It is however, recommended that libraries should organise training on interval base for both staff and postgraduate students of Faculty of Science on the importance of OA publications Faculties should guide and encourage their students on the need for publishing in OA journals among others