-Dr. Djuwari

More and more, people around the world can get access to any information from throughout the world easily. For the researches, when they want to get the information related to references, Google Scholar website is the best digital information to get access. They can get so many references with various topics or disciplines. When they type any topics in that website, and click it, they can find hundreds or even thousands related topics.

Not only for the researchers to get easily access to find the online references, students who want to join the online seminars or conferences, they can also get some accesses without payment. There have been some seminars and conferences that are free for the participants. They can browse on the internet and find some organizers or committees who hold the seminars or conferences. They can also find some free online seminars or conferences.

This phenomenon must have some consequences. One of them is the sector of education such as schools or universities. The trend of holding the online seminars or conferences is really a challenge for schools and universities. Societies, especially the students can get free knowledge and even skills from free seminars or conferences. Moreover, they can also get some free online workshops.

Another impact of this phenomenon is the publishers of the books in prints. For example, we can imagine ten years ago, the publishers could publish many books in prints. They could make lot of money by printing the books and selling them to the customers. Today, the printed books are so rare. They have been replaced with the digital books, e.g. in amazon.com. However, we can now also get some printed books in PDF on the internet.

Not only the polishers but also the book writes who get affected with the digital society era. The cheaper books and free access by the people now can also affect the book writers’ income. When the books are printed digitally, they must be cheaper compared to those when they were printed in papers.

From the other side of perceiving the digital era is on the contrary. According to Harmanpreet & DAVIET (2012), the open access is also to solve the problem of many people who had to pay more money while they could not afford paying the printed books with high prices. It was described that an open access has its own focus.

This access has three main characteristics. First, the open access is always available on the internet. In addition it has no charge for the visitors. Finally, open access provides us with copyright to maintain the integrity of our work and retain the right of attribution. From these characteristics, people can get knowledge and skills easily and cheaply even for free.

In specific discussion related to libraries Velmurugan (2010) even highlights the benefits of open access for the society. Based on his opinion, open access can facilitate librarians and libraries for having more control over their information systems and services. Besides that, open access is also able to provide us with the means to explore and implement easily when we explore everything we need. The most beneficial is that open access can make the libraries meet quickly various information they expect for their users.

When considering the benefits, we can also find another impact such as the existence of the schools or universities. It is not the existence of luxurious school or campus building anymore for providing their students educational services. Instead, they have to prepare their technological equipment with open access and online communication. Free access and high strength of internet connection is required. Otherwise, they will no longer get their students intakes. For the private schools or universities, it is more competitive and challenging for them.

Dr. Djuwari is Associate Professor at Universitas Nahdlatul Ulama Surabaya (Unusa), Indonesia; He is the President of International Association of Scholarly Publishers, Editors, and Reviewers (IASPER). He is also a journalist at Indonesia Pos.