Bangladesh: An overview of Open Access (OA) initiatives

The present paper describes about the universal access to knowledge and information in the network and digital environment. The paper discusses the Open Access (OA) and Institutional Repositories (IR) initiatives for global access, repository, preservation, and organized management of networked information services in an environment where both the users and resources are at varied locations. The paper highlights the importance of open access and Institutional Repositories initiatives to the system of scholarly communication in Bangladesh. The paper explains research communities' benefits of open access, salient features of ICT in Bangladesh, initiatives of institutional repositories in Bangladesh, open access movement in Bangladesh. Open Access Movement and IR could contribute significantly to economic, scientific and research growth of the respective country by providing access to scholarly materials without the economic barriers that currently exist in scholarly publishing.