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Open access is a new scholarly publishing model that has appeared in place of the commercial publishing model. The aim of this study was to investigate the level of awareness, use and attitudes of the Indian students in higher educational institutions about scholarly open access.

Survey method was used in the study. The sample population of the study was 212 Indian students belonging to different higher educational institutions in India.

The results of the study reveal a gloomy picture about the open access (OA) awareness and use among Indian students. Unfamiliarity with the OA journals and high publication fee were the main obstacles for the students not to publish in OA journals. However, a majority of the students reported their willingness to publish in OA journals in future if the obstacles are removed. A very meager ratio of the respondents had published in OA journals so far. In addition, motivational factors for publishing in OA journals were also taken into consideration, and respondent's indicated winning research grants, great impact and higher citations as main factors to publish in OA journals.

This study is geographically limited to the students of the higher educational institutions located in India.

This study will help to understand the involvement and behavior of the Indian students toward scholarly open access. The study will also guide what measures need to be taken in the take up of open access movement.

Institutional repositories appeared to be relatively a novel term for the respondents, and in order to get the citation advantages and higher visibility, librarians can make an effort to persuade students to publish their research work in open access journals and institutional/subject repositories. The study recommends that institutions need to take appropriate measures to inform students about the importance and overall benefits associated with using of OA platforms in their scholarly work.

The use of social media is prevalent and having the largest number of members than any other online platform available on the internet. Members of all age groups use social media websites according to their needs. This study aims to investigate the impact of social media usage on the academic performance of college students in Kashmir.

A structured questionnaire was formulated and a survey was carried out to collect data from the undergraduate students of different government colleges in Kashmir. The questionnaires were distributed randomly among both, male and female of the first, second and third year students of different undergraduate programs.

The findings show a majority of the students use social media networking sites to fulfill their educational needs. YouTube is the most largely used social media network among undergraduate students. A majority of the students feel that social media networks are easy to use and they have been using these sites for the past three years. The use of social media greatly helps the students to share knowledge and information with others, to improve their academic grades and to improve their reading and writing skills. A majority of the students spend an hour in using social media networks. Students use their laptops, mobile phones and personal computers to access social media websites.

This study will help to highlight the important role of social media networks in the pedagogical activities of students.

This study affirms that students do use social media networking sites for academic purposes, which is a good factor to improve their academic skills and grades. Teachers must encourage their students to make the best use of social media networking sites for recreational and academic purposes.