  This paper describes the growth of Open Access (OA) repositories and journals
as reported by monitoring initiatives such as ROAR (Registry of Open Access
Repositories), Open DOAR (Open Directory of Open Access Repositories), DOAJ
(Directory of Open Access Journals), Directory of Web Ranking of World
Repositories by the Cybermetrics Laboratory in Spain and published literature.
The performance of Malaysian OA repositories and journals is highlighted. The
strength of OA channels in increasing visibility and citations are evidenced by
research findings. It is proposed that libraries champion OA initiatives by
making university or institutional governance aware; encouraging institutional
journal publishers to adopt OA platform; collaborating with research groups to
jumpstart OA institutional initiatives and to embed OA awareness into user and
researcher education programmes. By actively involved, libraries will be free
of permission, licensing and archiving barriers usually imposed in traditional
publishing situation.
