The Use of Open Access Resources by Post-graduate Students in School of Allied Health of Tehran University of Medical Science In 2015

Open access movement is a global initiative for providing free access to scientific journals and preprint of papers. Free access materials are in digital forms, continuous, and free from any restrictions. This study was carried out to identify the use of open access resources in school of Allied health of Tehran University of Medical Science.
This study was a descriptive survey. The population of the study consisted of 165 post graduate students of school of Allied health of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Data collection was performed by aquestionnaire validity and reliability of which were confirmed.
Findings showed that 16.5% of students had high and very high level of use, 22.5% had moderate level of use, 28.3% had low level and 32.7% did not use open access materials at all. Also there was a significant relationship between students’ use and grade and field of study.
The results indicated that the students’ use of open access resources and databases were lower than expected and the materials were not commonly used by the members of academic community.