The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 41 to 55.
Cancel the Subscription
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/cancel-the-subscription
<b>It has been a slow but steady move to make scholarship freely available, writes Prof. Arunachalam in an article published by the Indian Express on May 8, 2012.</b>
<p>Most of us spend a few hundred rupees a year on the magazines we buy for leisure reading or for keeping abreast of current affairs. But if you are a scientist, you may be shelling out a few thousand rupees for the journal your professional society publishes for its members. Of course, if you are a serious researcher, you may have to read or refer to many journals, not two or three. And you will depend on your institution’s library for those journals.</p>
<p>Till 20-30 years ago, most academic libraries, at least in the West, did not find it difficult to subscribe to most journals needed by the scientists in their institutions. Then things started changing and journal subscription prices started skyrocketing — some costing $20,000-40,000 — leading to what librarians call the serials crisis. Much of the price rise was caused by commercial publishers, such as Elsevier, Springer and Wiley. These three control most of the 24,000 science, technology and medicine journals and publish more than 40 per cent of all journal articles today. Elsevier reported a profit of 37 per cent of its revenue in 2011 (up from 36 per cent in 2010); the profit of the other two is no less than 30 per cent despite the recession.<br /><br />A few years ago, academic librarians, even in the US, had to cut down their budgets for books and monographs to keep journal subscriptions going. Early this year, Harvard, reputed to have the richest endowment among universities, announced that it was finding it to difficult to hold on to its subscriptions and requested its faculty to publish their work in “open access journals” which would be free to read and to resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls. The irony of it all was summed up nicely by Professor Robert Darnton, director of libraries at Harvard: “We faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all of it for free, and then we buy back the results of our labour at outrageous prices.”<br /><br />A few months ago, a Fields Medal winner, mathematician Timothy Gowers of Cambridge, made it publicly known that he had stopped publishing in, refereeing for and being on the editorial boards of journals published by Elsevier. Gowers created a website called The Cost of Knowledge and close to 11,000 scientists from around the world have signed it already, pledging to boycott Elsevier journals.<br /><br />Cost, however, is only part of the issue. A more serious issue is the exclusive control enjoyed by publishers over how research gets distributed and shared. They demand that authors surrender copyright to the papers they publish and use it to throttle scholarly communication and hinder the progress of science. It is common sense that if we make scholarly information freely available it will reach a larger audience and help advance further research and lead to wider economic benefits.<br /><br />The boycott had a salutary effect. Elsevier withdrew its lobbying for the rather absurd Research Works Act, which, if passed in the US Congress, would kill public access to federally funded research and reverse the mandate of the National Institutes of Health putting in one go all the 21 million freely available records in the PubMed library into a fee-to-see system.<br /><br />Long before Gowers’s boycott of Elsevier and Harvard’s request to its faculty, there have been many stellar initiatives to usher in an era of open access to science and scholarship. For example, all seven research councils in the UK have mandated open access to research funded by them. So has the Wellcome Trust, the world’s largest private-sector funder of life science research. Apart from these funder mandates, there are many institutional mandates, including the ones at ICRISAT, Hyderabad, the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, and the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela. All these developments have been meticulously chronicled by the philosophy professor, Peter Suber, in the US and the technology writer, Richard Poynder, in the UK.<br /><br />Recently, the British government enlisted the cooperation of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to help make all taxpayer-funded academic research in Britain available online to anyone who wants to read or use it. Says David Willetts, minister for universities and science: “Giving people the right to roam freely over publicly funded research will usher in a new era of academic discovery and collaboration, and will put the UK at the very forefront of open research.”<br /><br />In India, though, there appears to be very little enthusiasm among the leaders of the science establishment. Neither the office of the principal scientific adviser nor the department of science and technology seems to have shown any interest in mandating open access to taxpayer-funded research. The National Knowledge Commission has recommended mandating open access to all publicly funded research, but it is not clear who will implement the recommendation. Right now, it is left to individuals to promote open access in India.</p>
<p>The writer is with the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/cancel-the-subscription/946723/0">Read the original article in the Indian Express</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/cancel-the-subscription'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/cancel-the-subscription</a>
</p>
No publisherSubbiah ArunachalamOpennessOpen Access2012-05-09T03:44:50ZBlog EntryOpen access to government data on the cards
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/open-access-to-govt-data
<b>The way has been cleared for public access to the data collected by Union government ministries and departments, with official approval being accorded to the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP). T Ramachandran's article was published in the Hindu on March 25, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted in it.</b>
<p>Following its recent approval by the Union Cabinet, the policy has been notified and is in the process of being gazetted, said R. Siva Kumar, CEO of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, and head of the Natural Resources Data Management System, Department of Science and Technology.<br /><br />The use of open data as a tool for promoting governmental transparency and efficiency has been gaining ground in some parts of the world. An Open Government Partnership was launched last year by the United States and seven other governments. Forty-three other governments have joined the partnership, which has endorsed an Open Government Declaration, expressing a commitment to better “efforts to systematically collect and publish data on government spending and performance for essential public services and activities.” It acknowledges the ‘right' of citizens to seek information on governmental activities.</p>
<p>India has not joined the partnership, but is collaborating with the U.S. in developing an open source version of software for a data portal.<br /><br />The NDSAP states that at least five ‘high value' data sets should be uploaded to a newly created portal, data.gov.in, in three months of the notification of the policy. Uploading of the remaining data sets should be completed within a year.<br /><br />The Department of Science and Technology will co-ordinate the effort and create the portal through the National Informatics Centre. The Department of Information Technology will work out the implementation guidelines, including those related to technology and data standards.<br /><br />Welcoming the approval for the NDSAP, Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bangalore-based NGO, said the removal of “a few good aspects” in an earlier draft of the policy — such as linkage with Sections 8 and 9 of the Right to Information Act that specify the kinds of information exempt from disclosure by the authorities — had weakened it “even further.” “None of the criticisms the CIS had sent in as part of the feedback requested on the draft have been addressed,” he said.<br /><br />The NDSAP seeks “to provide an enabling provision and platform for providing proactive and open access to the data generated through public funds available with various departments/organisations of the government of India.”<br /><br />However, the Ministries and Departments can draw up, within six months of the notification of the policy, a negative list of data-sets that will not be shared, subject to periodic review by an ‘oversight committee.'<br /><br />The policy envisages three types of access to data: open, registered and restricted. Access to data in the open category will be “easy, timely, user-friendly and web-based without any process of registration/authorisation.” But data in the registered access category will be accessible “only through a prescribed process of registration/authorisation by respective departments/organisations” and available to “recognised institutions/organisations/public users, through defined procedures.” Data categorised as restricted will be made available only “through and under authorisation.”<br /><br />The policy also provides for pricing, with the Ministries and Departments being asked to formulate their norms for data in the registered and restricted access categories within three months of the notification of the policy.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/article3223645.ece">Read the original published in the Hindu </a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/open-access-to-govt-data'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/open-access-to-govt-data</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen DataOpen ContentOpen AccessOpenness2012-03-26T07:31:48ZNews ItemFrancis Bags EPT Award for Open Access in Developing World
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/francis-wins-ept-award
<b>The Electronic Publishing Trust recently announced a new annual award to be made to individuals working in developed countries who have made significant contribution for the cause of open access and free exchange of research findings. There were 30 nominations from 17 countries around the world and Dr. Francis Jayakanth from the National Centre of Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore was selected for the inaugural EPT Award for Open Access in the Developing World by a committee that went through all the nominations. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The award function organised by the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore was held at the Sambasivan Auditorium, M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Chennai on 14 February 2012. Leading luminaries such as Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Prof. G Baskaran and Prof. K Mangala Sunder participated in the award felicitation ceremony.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Giving the welcome speech, Prof. Arunachalam, distinguished fellow at CIS said that Dr. Jayakanth works for the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, has trained many students and helped a number of institutes to set up open access repositories. Prof. Arunachalam added that the event is being celebrated in India as the winner is from India and specified that it is being held at the MS Swaminathan Foundation as this was the institution that hosted the first workshop to promote open access. Prof. Swaminathan had a vital role in arranging funds for the workshop. About 50 people had learnt what open access was, how to set up open access repositories, how to use the EPrints software, etc. For this very reason it was decided to hold the event in Chennai and not Bangalore where Dr. Jayakanth is based.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Francis7.jpg/image_preview" alt="Participants in the Award Function" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Participants in the Award Function" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Felicitating Dr. Jayakanth, Prof. Swaminathan who presented the award added that it is important to highlight the contributions of those who really convert the concept of social inclusion to reality. He said that today every politician talks about inclusive growth. What is this inclusive growth, how do you convert exclusion to inclusion? Exclusion creates large problems, social problems, economic problems, etc. On a concluding note, Prof. Swaminathan said that the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh has declared 2012-13 as the year of science and he hopes that there will be a new science policy and technology policy and that he hopes that a very important component of that should be methods of ensuring open access including open access to knowledge and open access to literature.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Francis3.jpg/image_preview" title="Francis Jayakanth" height="166" width="174" alt="Francis Jayakanth" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">In his award acceptance speech, Dr. Jayakanth said that the atmosphere was very overwhelming and never in his two-and-a-half decade old career he had the opportunity to speak amidst such luminaries and added that it was a privilege and prestige to have received the award from Prof. Swaminathan, the father of the Green Revolution in India. He also added that no event in India or elsewhere is complete without the active participation and mentioning of the name of Prof. Arunachalam, the greatest advocate of open access that India has seen so far, and that he wouldn’t have been here at the award ceremony but for the timely intervention of Prof. Arunachalam. <br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Dr. Jayakanth concluded by saying that he would like to thank Prof. NV Joshi, Prof. Derek Law, Prof. Alma Swan, Prof. Balaram, Prof. N Balakrishnan, Prof. Giridhar, and Prof. TB Rajashekar, and particularly the students of the information and knowledge management programme at the National Centre of Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, who were responsible for the growth of a repository granting more visibility to the 32,000 publications that are part of the repository.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Mangala.jpg/image_preview" title="Mangala Sunder" height="130" width="177" alt="Mangala Sunder" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">Prof. Mangala Sunder of IIT Madras and Prof. G Baskaran of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, also participated in the event. Prof. Sunder said that it is for the kind of information that we talk about, which we want to make public for which champions like Dr. Jayakanth have been working on the sidelines but working so efficiently to get institution after institution to convert what is known as a rigid framework into a flexible more open policy of bringing their scientific content to their intellectual information content. He said that he works in the area of content development from the point of view of education and he understands the difficulty of bringing material to the public. <br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are many issues, such as issues about copyright, issues about people owning the information, issues about people feeling very rigid on what they want to say in the public, etc. Dr. Jayakanth has gone through all these exercises for the last 30 years in slowly creating the “little after little” what are called the waterways to finally see that everyone benefits. The linking of science, knowledge and sustainable development to open access to information, open access to research and open access to content completes the whole cycle of knowledge.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Baskaran.jpg/image_preview" title="Prof. Basakaran" height="177" width="117" alt="Prof. Basakaran" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">Prof. Baskaran said that it is a very well deserved award and Dr. Jayakanth has definitely raised the bar for future awardees. Prof. Baskaran stressed upon the aspects of open access. He said that as a theoretical physicist he understands the need for open access very well. Physicists, when they have new research results place them in arXiv, the open access repository for preprints in physics. Some people wonder what if some physicists deposit all kinds of articles in the arXiv. Experience has shown that 99 per cent of the articles appear in good journals later. He added that once it is put in the arXiv, the whole world gets access and a bad paper will be noticed and commented upon by many. No one likes to be the author of such a paper! He urged that other sciences, especially the life sciences should have a repository similar to arXiv and requested Prof. Swaminathan to take the intiative at MSSRF. <br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr />
<h2>Dr. Francis Jayakanth</h2>
<p align="left"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Francis1.jpg/image_preview" alt="Francis with the Award" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Francis with the Award" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Dr. Francis Jayakanth is a library-trained scientific assistant based at the National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), the information centre of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore. He has played a significant role in the establishment of India’s first institutional repository (IR) (<a class="external-link" href="http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in">http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in</a>). He now manages the IR and has provided technical support for establishing IRs in many other universities and institutes in India. He has been the key resource person at many events to train people in setting up IRs and open access journals. He has delivered presentations on IRs, open access journals, the OAI protocol, OAI compliance, and the benefits of open access to authors and institutions and the role of libraries. He has developed a free and open source software tool (CDSOAI), which is widely used. Dr. Jayakanth can indeed be considered an open access ‘renaissance man’, an advocate and technical expert in all aspect of open access development and an inspiration to all, both at the research and policy level.</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/francis-jayakanth-presentation" class="internal-link" title="Francis Jayakanth's Presentation">See Francis's presentation on Who Benefits from Open Access to Scholarly Literature?</a> [Powerpoint, 1523 KB]</p>
<p><b>See the video of the award function below:</b><b> </b></p>
<hr />
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYLtr00A.html?p=1" width="250"></iframe>
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" height="100" width="100">
<param name="src" value="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYLtr00A"><embed height="100" width="100" src="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYLtr00A" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed>
</object>
</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/francis-wins-ept-award'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/francis-wins-ept-award</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAwardOpen ContentVideoOpen AccessOpenness2013-08-03T05:36:54ZBlog EntryWill open access replace costly commercial publishing models?
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/will-open-access-replace-costly-commercial-publishing-models
<b>Cost of research journals going up while funds available are coming down, writes Vasudha Venugopal in an article published in the Hindu on February 19, 2012.</b>
<p>Technology has inherently changed the way science education is propagated. Digital libraries, wikis, webinars, videoconferences, open access and repositories — all seem to be excellent tools for sharing scientific knowledge.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/archive/00929/Open_Access_929199a.pdf">Download the PDF</a></p>
<p>But with the escalating cost of research journals and the economic and logistical challenges that often accompany attending a conference, the open access model is increasingly being recognised as an alternative to expensive commercial publishing models.</p>
<p>Consider the situation at, say, a biological sciences research firm in Chennai. At least 16 per cent of its total budget is spent on the subscription of journals; more than 50 per cent of that going to the two largest publishing companies. Experts say the cost of journals is increasing at an average of eight per cent a year. Further, many academics do not consider work to have been adequately shared if it has been merely published in over-priced journals. </p>
<h3>Boycott <br /></h3>
<p>Incidentally, last week, more than 5,700 researchers started boycotting Elsevier, a leading publisher of science journals, amid growing concerns at cost and accessibility. More than 3,000 academics have signed a petition that claims the publisher charges “exorbitantly high” prices for its journals and criticises its practice of selling journals in ‘bundles,' forcing libraries to buy a large set with many unwanted journals, or none at all. <br /><br />"Since 1950, the volume of research results started getting too large for the scientific societies, leading to the entry of commercial publishers into the field. The cost per journal and the number of such journals are proliferating, while the funds available are coming down,” says Francis Jayakanth, who has been instrumental in creating an institutional repository, ePrints@IISc, which has more than 32,000 publications by researchers. <br /><br />India has nearly 53 registered open access repositories that allow users to download and use documents free. <br /><br />Open access advocates say Indian papers appear in both Indian and foreign journals, roughly in equal proportions, but most Indian journals have a very poor circulation, many of them below 1,500; and most Indian papers appear in low-impact foreign journals. “Most scientists in India are forced to work in a situation of information poverty. Others are unable to access what Indian researchers are doing, leading to low visibility and low use of their work. Thus, Indian work is hardly cited. Both these handicaps can be overcome to a considerable extent if open access is adopted widely, both within and outside the country,” says Subbiah Arunachalam, an open access advocate. <br /><br />Experts say many U.S. universities, including Princeton, MIT and Harvard, have their own repositories. Institutions in India, too, need to set up open-access repositories to ensure their work is available to the public even if it ends up being published in an expensive journal. Even if these are made available in different repositories, one can still access them all if all the repositories are interoperable. </p>
<h3>Trustworthy</h3>
<p>The established method for an academic to circulate his work is to publish in a peer-reviewed journal of repute, and the reader, too, places some degree of trust in the quality of the work being presented. So will open access, with the huge volume of papers, change that? “Not at all, open access is not vanity publishing or self-publishing or about publications that scientists expect to be paid for. Since every paper is peer-reviewed, the quality is never compromised,” says Dr. Jayakanth.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/article2910344.ece">Read the article in Hindu</a>. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam has been quoted in it.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/will-open-access-replace-costly-commercial-publishing-models'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/will-open-access-replace-costly-commercial-publishing-models</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessOpen Access2012-02-23T09:12:10ZNews ItemAn Interview with Dr. Francis Jayakanth
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/interview-with-francis-jayakanth
<b>India has been losing out its best talents to the West, however, this trend could be reversed if we create adequate number of world-class institutions and research facilities, and our scientific productivity and quality of research will improve significantly, says Dr. Francis Jayakanth in an email interview with the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. </b>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>First of all congratulations for winning the inaugural EPT Award for Open Access</b>.<br />Thank you very much.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>When did you first take an interest in Open Access and what are your research interests?</b><br />I have always been impressed with the electronic pre-print servers like the <a class="external-link" href="http://arxiv.org/">arXiv</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://cogprints.org/">Cogprints</a>, etc. I wanted to do something similar for IISc research publications.<br /><br />One of the important activities of the National Centre for Science (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/">NCSI</a>), Indian Institute of Science (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.iisc.ernet.in/">IISc</a>) has been the training programme. Till recently, NCSI was conducting an 18-month training course called Information and Knowledge Management. This was targeted primarily at students graduating from Indian library schools, with a view to providing them with classroom and practical training in the application of ICT. Essentially, the aim was to train the students in how to provide state-of-the-art, computer-based information services. I have been closely associated with this training programme by offering courses and overseeing projects.<br /><br />As part of the training programme the students are expected do a project. Around the year 2001, one of our students, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/madhureshsinghal">Mr. Madhuresh Singhal</a> carried out a project work in implementing GNU Eprints.org software developed by the University of Southampton. Incidentally, ePrints is the first professional <i>software</i> platform for building high quality OAI-compliant repositories. The student project successfully demonstrated the self-archiving concept through institutional repositories. The project work was later implemented to set up the country’s first institutional repository, <a class="external-link" href="http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/41239/1/Modeling.pdf">eprints@IISc</a> . Ever since, I have been an OA practitioner and an OA advocate.<br /><br />I’m not a hard-core researcher. My work interests lies in using free and open source software for providing web-based information services.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Why Open Access is important to science and particularly India?</b><br />When researchers publish their works in journals and conference proceedings, they would want their works to be read, cited, and built upon by as wide an audience as possible. Much of the scientific publications are being published by commercial publishers. Subscription costs of such publications are very high, constantly increasing, and beyond the means of most of the libraries. The high subscription costs create an access barrier to the scientific literature because of which the publications do not get the kind of visibility that the researchers would like to. The lack of adequate visibility will reduce the potential impact of the publications. This in turn could affect the advancement of knowledge. It is therefore imperative that the access barrier to scientific literature created because of high subscription costs should be overcome and this could be achieved through OA publishing.<br /><br />The problems with respect to research literature that India and other developing countries have always faced are two-fold:<br />
<ul>
<li>Not being able to access high quality scientific literature because of the high subscriptions costs, and</li>
<li>Research reported in the national journals does not reach the global audience because most of the journals published from the country are not indexed by Web of Science (<a class="external-link" href="http://isiknowledge.com/">WoS</a>) and/or <a class="external-link" href="http://www.scopus.com/">Scopus</a> databases, which are leading <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_indexing">citation indexing</a> databases.<br /><br /></li>
</ul>
If all the journals that are being published in the country could migrate to open access platform then the visibility of research works reported in the journals published from the country will automatically improve with time. This has been the experience of several of the OA journals published by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.medknow.com/">MedKnow</a> and others.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>In terms of the number of papers published in refereed journals, the number of citations to these papers, citations per paper, and the number of international awards and recognitions won, India’s record is poor. What needs to be done to improve this?</b><br />For a long time now, our country has been losing out the best of the talents to mostly western and other countries. If this trend could be countered by the creation of adequate number of world-class institutions and research facilities, our country's scientific productivity and also quality of research done in the country will improve significantly. This may also trigger reverse brain-drain.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Indian scientists lack access and visibility. They find it tough to access what other scientists have done, due to the high costs of access and libraries in India can’t afford to subscribe to key journals needed by users. Also other researchers are not able to access what Indian researchers are doing leading to low visibility. How can we overcome these deficits? Will adoption of Open Access within and outside India overcome the aforesaid handicaps?</b><br />Access to scientific literature in the country has improved significantly during the last decade or so. This is largely because of the several library consortia that have emerged in the country during that period. However, the existing consortia and the ones that are likely to emerge in the coming years, is not the solution for the access barrier to scientific literature that exists today. There has to be a world-wide adaptation of OA to overcome the access barrier.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Do you support the movement towards making scientific publications as freely accessible as possible and create an institutional repository? What steps are being taken by the Indian Institute of Science to maintain an open access archive?</b><br />Yes. Open Access Journals and Open Access Archives or Institutional Repositories (IRs) are the two ways to facilitate OA to scholarly literature. As per the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.doaj.org/">DOAJ</a> statistics, today, there are close to 7500 peer reviewed OA journals and as per the Directory of Open Access Repositories (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.opendoar.org/">DOAR</a>) there are more than 2770 institutional repositories across the world.<br /><br />In a recent <a class="external-link" href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011273">study</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.hanken.fi/staff/bjork/">Bo-Christer Bjork</a> estimated that the overall percentage of scientific literature currently available OA is about 20 per cent. This includes both papers published in OA journals and those deposited in institutional repositories and directly on the Web. So, still a long way to go in achieving 100 per cent OA to scholarly literature! If all the research institutions set up their IRs and ensure that copies of post-prints are placed in the IRs then 100 per cent OA to scholarly literature could be achieved, at least, from now onwards.<a class="external-link" href="http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/"><br /><br />ePrints@IISc</a>, the OA institutional repository of IISc was established by NCSI in 2002. The repository holds more than 32,400 publications of IISc making the century-old institute’s research far more globally visible than before. NCSI has also provided technical help and support to several other institutes and universities in setting up their repositories and OA journals.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>What are the key challenges of the scholarly publications in India?</b><br />Poor visibility and readership of many of the journals published from the country affects the citations of the articles published in such journals. This in turn affects the impact factors (<a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor">IF</a>) of the journals. No author would like to publish in very low IF journals. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>What message would you give to funding agencies, the government and policy makers particularly for implementing a nation-wide mandate for Open Access?</b><br />Most of the research projects in the country are being funded by the government agencies. It is therefore imperative that we should have a nation-wide OA mandate for research publications that emerge from research projects funded from tax payers’ money. Such a mandate will not only help in enhancing the visibility of research done in the country; it may also help in avoiding duplication of research projects carried out in the country. </li>
</ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/interview-with-francis-jayakanth'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/interview-with-francis-jayakanth</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInterviewOpennessOpen Access2012-11-24T06:09:54ZBlog EntryResearch papers will be available in public domain
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/research-papers-in-public-domain
<b>IIT-Madras intends to make circle of knowledge complete, writes Vasudha Venugopal in this article published in the Hindu on 15 February 2012. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam is quoted in the article.</b>
<p>2012-13 was declared the year of science by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year, and there is a lot of effort being made all over the country to not only intensify the quantity and quality of research but also ensure greater access for all. For instance, IIT-Madras plans to make available its research papers in all disciplines online, in the public domain. The institute already provides e-learning through online web and video courses in engineering, science and humanities streams through NPTEL.</p>
<p>The attempt now is to convince faculty members to upload their research papers into the institution's repository, says Mangala Sunder Krishnan, Web Coordinator (NPTEL). The move will not only benefit students and faculty members but will also help the circle of knowledge to be complete, he says.</p>
<p>What IIT- Madras plans to do is follow an Open Access policy that would make the access of journals and scientific research public and many other educational organisations plan to follow suite. “Most research publications stay locked up in commercial journals and are inaccessible to many. Open Access is the best way to ensure that research produced in the developing world gets wider visibility,” says Francis Jayakanth, a library-trained scientific assistant based at the National Centre for Science Information, the information centre of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Mr. Jayakanth has been instrumental in creating an institutional repository ePrints@IISc that has over 32,000 publications by researchers.</p>
<p>Subbiah Arunachalam, distinguished fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society explains: “A research produced by the Tuberculosis Research Centre in Chennai which would be of great relevance to researchers, say in a university in Maharashtra, may not be even noticed by the scientists there. Both groups receive funds from the same source - Government of India - and yet what one does is not easily accessible to the other. “Open Access would bridge that gap and make information available to everyone,” he says.</p>
<p>Open Access repositories would help authors place their papers in an interoperable institutional open access archive and anyone with an Internet connection can access it. Researchers say that in most reputed journals, it takes almost six months to get a paper published, and most insist that the paper is removed from the internal repository of the author's institution once it is published. “But 70 per cent of the publishers are now fine with the authors taking the pre-print of their paper uploaded in the repository. And since in open access, every thing is peer reviewed, the quality is never compromised,” says Mr. Jayakanth.</p>
<p>While institutions such as IIT- Madras subscribe to over 2,000 journals, many colleges under Anna University and University of Madras have access to just about 1,500 journals. “There is almost Rs.10 -12 lakh that the institution spends on journal subscriptions so unless there is funding, many self-financed colleges prefer not to subscribe to journals and go for a few mandatory ones prescribed by AICTE. Students and researchers have no way to acquaint themselves with recent updates,” says D. Krishnan, professor, Anna University.</p>
<p>Even if you go through consortiums, you have to spend Rs.20 lakh which many smaller R&D organisations cannot afford to, adds P. Ramamoorthy, librarian at Sameer- Centre for Electromagnetics, a government-funded research agency. “The restrictions imposed by many commercial publishers do not allow one to legally share the published output of his result with his colleague. Open access will relive authors of such hassles,” he says. </p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/article2893901.ece">The original article was published in the Hindu</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/research-papers-in-public-domain'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/research-papers-in-public-domain</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessOpen Access2012-02-17T05:38:36ZNews ItemInaugural EPT Award for Dr. Francis Jayakanth
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/inaugural-ept-award-for-dr.-francis-jayakanth
<b></b>
<h2>Programme</h2>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>16.00</td>
<td>Welcome and introduction to the award<br /><strong>Subbiah Arunachalam</strong><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16.05</td>
<td>Presenting the award and felicitation<br /> <strong>Prof. M S Swaminathan</strong><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16.15</td>
<td>Acceptance speech<br /> <strong>Dr Francis Jayakanth</strong> <br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16.25</td>
<td>Felicitation by eminent scientists<br /><strong>Prof. G Baskaran</strong><br /><strong>Prof. K Mangala Sunder</strong><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16.35</td>
<td>Vote of thanks</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16.40</td>
<td>Tea</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Video
<iframe src="http://blip.tv/play/AYLtr00A.html?p=1" frameborder="0" height="250" width="250"></iframe><embed style="display:none" src="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYLtr00A" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/inaugural-ept-award-for-dr.-francis-jayakanth'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/inaugural-ept-award-for-dr.-francis-jayakanth</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessOpen Access2012-02-27T12:24:25ZEventInaugural EPT Award for Open Access
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/ept-award-for-open-access
<b>The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development is pleased to announce the winners of a new annual award to be made to individuals working in developing countries who have made a significant personal contribution to advancing the cause of open access (OA) and the free exchange of research findings. </b>
<p>We received 30 proposals from organisations in 17 developing countries on four continents, naming individuals who have worked hard to promote OA and who have achieved substantial progress. The selection of a single winner was extremely difficult as we received nominations for so many individuals who have made impressive strides by any or all of the following means:</p>
<ul><li>establishing OA institutional repositories;</li></ul>
<ul><li>setting up or encouraging conversion to OA journals;</li><li>achieving establishment of OA mandates requiring research to be OA on publication, or other policy developments;</li><li>advocating OA via seminars, publications, workshops, videos;</li><li>training others in the technology of setting up IRs;</li><li>preparing and establishing e-learning projects;</li><li>working towards the acceptance of Creative Commons licensing arrangements for research publications;</li><li>developing software for use in OA practices.<br /></li></ul>
<p>Because of the high standard of the applicants, we have decided to name a single winner, but also to recognise three other individuals who were very close runners-up. All will receive a certificate and the winner will receive in addition an engraved plaque in the next few weeks.</p>
<p>We are very happy to announce that the winner of the inaugural award is Dr Francis Jayakanth of the National Centre for Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. Dr Jayakanth played a significant role in the establishment of India’s first institutional repository (IR) (<a class="external-link" href="http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/">http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in</a>). He now manages the IR and has provided technical support for establishing IRs in many other universities and institutes in India. He has been the key resource person at many events to train people in setting up IRs and OA journals. He has delivered presentations on IRs, OA journals, the OAI protocol, OAI compliance, the benefits of OA to authors and institutions and the role of libraries. He has developed a free and open source software tool (CDSOAI), which is widely used.</p>
<p>The Indian Institute of Science is the most prestigious institute in India and its IR now holds >31,400 records, making the century-old institute's research far more globally visible than before. The University Grants Commission in India has been impressed by the IISC’s IR and has directed all universities in India to replicate this effort.</p>
<p>Dr Francis Jayakanth can indeed be considered an OA ‘renaissance man’, an advocate and technical expert in all aspect of Open Access development and an inspiration to all, both at the research and policy level. <br />The EPT is proud to congratulate Dr Jayakanth as our first Award winner. We believe this Award and the example of our first winner will inspire many others and lead to similarly impressive nominations in 2012.</p>
<p>The runners-up for this award were (in alphabetical order): </p>
<ul><li>Ina Smith, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa;</li><li>Tatyan Zayseva, Khazar University, Azerbaijan; </li><li>Xiaolin Zhang, National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences.</li></ul>
<p>The EPT wishes to congratulate them and all who have been proposed, since without exception they have made a significant personal contribution to the sharing of research findings across the world. We will be sharing some of their stories and successes on our blog over the next few weeks.</p>
<h3>Electronic Publishing Trust for Development</h3>
<p>Web site <a class="external-link" href="http://www.epublishingtrust.org">http://www.epublishingtrust.org</a><br />EPT Blog <a class="external-link" href="http://www.epublishingtrust.blogspot.com">http://www.epublishingtrust.blogspot.com<br /></a></p>
<h3>What is Open Access?</h3>
<p>Open Access provides the means to maximize the visibility, and thus the uptake and use, of research outputs. Open Access is the immediate (upon or before publication), online, free availability of research outputs without any of the restrictions on use commonly imposed by publisher copyright agreements. It is definitely not vanity publishing or self-publishing, nor about the literature that scholars might normally expect to be paid for, such as books for which they hope to earn royalty payments. It concerns the outputs that scholars normally give away free to be published – journal articles, conference papers and datasets of various kinds.</p>
<p>Not only scholars benefit from Open Access. They are the most obvious beneficiaries, perhaps, because their work gains instant worldwide visibility, and they also gain as readers if much more world research is available on an Open Access basis for them to access freely and read. But there are many other beneficiaries, too.</p>
<p>Research institutions benefit from having a management information tool that enables them to assess and monitor their research programmes, and they have a marketing tool that enables them to provide a shop window for their research efforts. The same advantages apply to external research funders who need to be able to access and keep track of outputs from their funding, and measure and assess how effectively their money has been spent. They also can ensure that the results of their spending have had the widest possible dissemination. </p>
<p>It is because Open Access is so much in the interest of research funders and employers that an increasing number of them around the world are introducing Open Access policies that require their funded researchers to provide Open Access to their work.</p>
<p>The advantages of Open Access for science and scholarship are, in brief:</p>
<ol><li>Open Access brings greater visibility and impact</li><li>Open Access moves research along faster</li><li>Open Access enables better management and assessment of research</li><li>Open Access provides the material on which the new semantic web tools for data-mining and text-mining can work, generating new knowledge from existing findings<br /></li></ol>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/ept-award-for-open-access'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/ept-award-for-open-access</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen Access2011-12-31T10:46:47ZNews ItemKnow your Users, Match their Needs!
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/know-your-users
<b>As Free Access to Law initiatives in the Global South enter into a new stage of maturity, they must be certain not to lose sight of their users’ needs. The following post gives a summary of the “Good Practices Handbook”, a research output of the collaborative project Free Access to Law — Is it Here to Stay? undertaken by LexUM (Canada) and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Society.</b>
<p></p>
<p>Almost ten years have passed since the Montreal Declaration on
Free Access to Law (FAL) was signed by eight legal information institutes and other
FAL initiatives. Today, the Free Access to Law Movement (FALM) is growing with over 30 initiatives having signed onto the Declaration and providing free, online
access to legal information. While the movement continues to gain momentum, the
big question no longer remains <em>why</em> we need
free access to law, but instead <em>how</em> FAL initiatives can continue to do so sustainably in the long-term. The principles of access
and justice underpinning the FALM have been well-argued and few would dispute the
notion that citizens ought to have access to the laws under which they are
governed. As the Montreal Declaration states: "Public legal information from
all countries and international institutions is part of the common heritage of
humanity…Maximizing access to his information promotes justice and the rule of
law" (2002).</p>
<p>Regardless of legal system or political context, the
importance of securing free online access to the law has been recognized from a
variety of perspectives. Whether FAL is considered a critical democratic
function or simply an essential efficiency within any legal system, it is
difficult to contest that the internet has increased the accessibility of and
ease with which legal information is being published and shared online. Setting
the ideological and practical foundations of the movement aside, effectively
demonstrating the impact of FAL initiatives and to secure their sustainability in
the long-term remains the next big challenge for the FALM. Today, there is a
growing necessity for grounded and realistic indicators that can validate some
of the long-held assumptions around the impacts and outcomes of FAL initiatives.
Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, there is also a need for a more
nuanced understanding of the factors that influence the sustainability of FAL
initiatives— particularly in resource-scarce and often nebulous legal systems of
the Global South.</p>
<p>This blog post provides some insight into the questions
above through a brief summary of the results of the study <a class="external-link" href="http://crdi.org/ar/ev-139395-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html">Free Access to Law—Is
it Here to Stay?</a> This global comparative study was carried out by LexUM (Canada)
and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for
Internet and Society. The project set out to begin providing answers to some of
these critical questions around the impacts and sustainability of the FALM. It
was initially hypothesized in the study that the sustainability of a FAL
initiative rests upon a particular string of contingent factors. To begin, a particular
condition would incentivize the creation of the FAL initiative — more often than
not meeting the unmet needs of those requiring access to legal information. Next, if the FAL initiative is able to provide
the service within a favourable context, it was suspected that it would produce
favourable outcomes for both users and society at large. In turn, if the FAL
initiative was able to provide benefits to users, it was theorized that these benefits
would then stimulate reinvestment into the FAL initiative — forming a positive
and sustainable feedback loop. </p>
<p>As the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/Best%20Practices%20Hand%20Book_03sept11.pdf">Good Practices Handbook</a> highlights, the research
hypothesis provided an accurate reading of what the sustainability chain of a
FAL initiative might look like in<em> practice</em>.
If unable to keep up with the evolving information requirements of their users,
this study suggests that FAL initiatives run the risk of FAL becoming outdated
and even outperformed by either government-based or private sector
initiatives. This is why FAL initiatives
must continue to be innovative and find new ways to meet users’ needs. Approaches take my include keeping their
collections up to date, fine-tuning their services or even reinventing
themselves through the provision of value-added services. Gathered from the
experiences of the eleven countries across Africa and Asia examined in this
study, the following is a brief summary of the nine “Good Practices” that emerging
FAL initiatives can consider:</p>
<ol><li><strong>The FAL initiative
should establish clear objectives</strong>: Before doing anything, the FAL initiative
should decide what exactly it’s setting out to do…critical components such as
content selection, targeted audience, expected reach, search functionalities
and other website features help determine priorities and evaluate capacity to
achieve these objectives.</li><li><strong>How to be small and
do big things</strong>: Most of the FAL initiatives studied as part of this project
were formed of small teams (often less than five individuals). Initially, this may
appear to pose a risk for sustainability. However, we saw a number of ways in
which small teams have proven to be innovative, flexible, and able to thrive in
environments of scarcity. However, as much as small teams can be seen as a
source of innovation, they may also pose a risk in the medium to long-term. </li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
require expertise in both IT and legal information</strong>: Legal information management
experts understand how the law is applied, how different texts and parts of
texts speak to one another, and how these documents are used. IT experts can
imagine a variety of ways to address these needs. If both forms of expertise is
not available within the team of a FAL initiative, institutional partnerships
provide promising sites for collaborative support. For example, the FALM
constitutes a rich source of expertise and has proven to be a site of
collaboration between established and emerging FAL initiatives. Further,
universities have proven to be a significant source of human and financial
resources for several FAL initiatives.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should look to where they are headed (but not too far ahead)</strong>: Because the
purpose of a FAL initiative is to provide free online access to the law, it
must secure access to this data for regular publication. How will legal
information be received and organized by the initiative? In what format will it
be published in? Early on, FAL initiatives need to develop both internal and
external workflow processes to ensure that the initiative is able to provide regular
access to updated information. Furthermore, an important finding of the study
suggests that context plays a much larger role in a project’s sustainability. Consideration
should be given to a country’s ICT infrastructure, the transparency of a
government and their access to information regimes, and the nature of the legal
information market when designing the workflows of an FAL initiative.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should work with the ICT infrastructure in place</strong>: The quality and
consistency of internet access varies across countries in the Global South. FAL
initiatives should remain aware of how stakeholders and users are accessing the
internet and develop their service accordingly. Considering the often
intermittent nature of internet connectivity in the Global South, providing
users with offline access to databases is a practical alternative.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should use Free and Open Source Software</strong>: FAL initiatives should maximise
their use of FLOSS. All FAL initiatives use FLOSS to some extent and without
these flexible and cost-effective alternatives, it would be safe to infer that
the FALM would have grown as quickly as it has.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should be sensitive to culture</strong>: FAL initiatives rely on stakeholders and
communities of users. Staying mindful of the professional and organizational
cultures within a country may provide the initiative with a source of community
support which may become a sustainability strategy. Further, integrated or parallel social
networking platforms can play an essential role in community-building around
the FAL initiatives and can also serve as another source of content in
resource-scarce environments.</li><li><strong>Find your users,
match their needs</strong>: Project goals and appropriate strategies should be based
on an in-depth understanding of the needs of those using the FAL initiative. As
the sustainability chain suggests, when FAL initiatives produce positive
outputs and outcomes, stakeholders will reinvest in the initiative to ensure
its sustainability. If a user’s needs are effectively met by an FAL initiative,
this group can provide either the resources or impetus for its continued
success. Identifying who your users are and staying aware of their needs is a
good way to secure reinvestment into the project.</li><li><strong>FAL initiatives
should diversify funding sources</strong>: This may be easier said than
done — reinvestment can be the most challenging aspect of sustaining a FAL
initiative. Early on, initiatives that receive donor-based funding benefit
substantially upon investment. However, these initiatives are put at
significant risk once initial seed funding has been depleted. Similarly, FAL
initiatives that partnerships with other during their start up phase face
similar fates as securing long-term service delivery can become a challenge.
Possible funding sources included throughout the study include, among others:
government, international development agencies or NGOs, the judiciary, law
societies and the sale of value-added services.</li></ol>
<p> </p>
<p>In addition to these good practices, this study has emphasized
the role the that the FALM has played in helping redefine online legal information as a public good. Each
of the case studies demonstrates in a unique way the value openness plays in a
legal information ecosystem, and how a robust digital legal information commons can be of
benefit to users. Traditionally, the legal information market has been dominated by a select
number of commercial players. In response, the FALM has created an important
transnational space within which conversations around the provision of and
access to legal information as a political right <em>rather</em> than a commodity to be bought and sold
can take place. Encouragingly, governments in the Global South are catching and FAL initiatives from the South have proven to be immense sources of innovation in their own right. In Indonesia, for example, FAL initiatives have laid the
groundwork for emerging government initiatives that are now prioritizing the provision of free, online access to legal and other government information. Today, I believe that we are witnessing an important paradigm
shift as governments are beginning to recognize that “access” to legal information is a
right to be held by the public.</p>
<p>Despite such headway, it is needless to say that FAL initiatives in the Global South
continue to face immense sustainability challenges. However, it is hoped that this
study can provide some practical insights for emerging initiatives
and partnerships. However, as more FAL initiatives begin entering into the next
stage of maturity and growth, it is more important than ever that they are
able to adapt to adverse environmental changes and form
long-lasting partnerships with information sources within government. Most
importantly, FAL initiatives must remain dynamic and responsive to users’
needs. To do so, they must be able to tailor and expand their services, offerings
and user-base. To secure their sustainability and relevance in the long term, they must also be continuously strengthening their ties and maintain open communication flows with
users. If FAL initiatives are able to successfully make the
transition from being supply side initiatives to becoming demand driven services,
the FALM will be well-positioned for another decade of sustainable growth. </p>
<p>Download the collection below:</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/Links%20in%20the%20Chain%20-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20I.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/pdf.png" title="Know your Users, Match their Needs!" height="16" width="16" alt="" class="subMenuTitle" /></a><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/good-practices.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Good Practices Handbook">Good Practices
Handbook </a>(426 kb)<br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/Links%20in%20the%20Chain%20-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20I.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/pdf.png" title="Know your Users, Match their Needs!" height="16" width="16" alt="" class="subMenuTitle" /></a><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/environmental-scan.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Environmental Scan Report">Environmental Scan Report</a> (860 kb)<br /><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/Links%20in%20the%20Chain%20-%20Volume%20I%20issue%20I.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Links in The Chain - Volume I"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/pdf.png" title="Know your Users, Match their Needs!" height="16" width="16" alt="" class="subMenuTitle" /></a><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/local-researchers-methodology-guide.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Local Researcher's Methodology Guide">Local Researcher's Methodology Guide</a> (1225 kb)</p>
<p>The full collection of case studies and the Good Practices
Handbook was originally published on the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/cij/acces-libre-au-droit/resultats">Project Website</a>. The Centre for Internet and Society oversaw the following case studies: <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/indiafinaljul11.pdf">India</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/hongkongfinaljul11.pdf">Hong Kong</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/indonesiafinaljul11.pdf">Indonesia</a> and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.informationjuridique.ca/docs/a2k/resultats/Berne_Final_2011_July.pdf">Philippines</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/know-your-users'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/know-your-users</a>
</p>
No publisherrebeccaResearchFeaturedOpen AccessOpennessPublications2012-02-27T15:06:14ZBlog EntryOpen Access Week begins in Bangalore
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/lecture-at-nal
<b>On Monday 24 October, the National Aerospace Laboratories in Bangalore held an event to mark the beginning of Open Access Week 2011</b>
<p>During the event, <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padmanabhan_Balaram">Professor Balaram</a> spoke on<strong> 'Issues of Access in Science Publishing'</strong>, and <a class="external-link" href="http://nal-ir.nal.res.in/view/creators/Venkatakrishnan=3AL=3A=3A.html">Dr. L Venkatakrishnan</a> gave a talk '<strong>Open Access: Promised Utopia or Eventual Reality?'</strong></p>
<div>Before the speakers, Shyam Chetty framed the discussion by suggesting that India currently lags behind other nations in the adoption of Open Access. He said that the Indian <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Scientific_and_Industrial_Research">Council of Scientific and Industrial Research </a>should lead an initiative to promote India's <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/OAworkshop2006/pdfs/NationalOAPolicyDCs.pdf">National Open Access Policy</a> and perhaps bring it into law. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Prof. Balaram spoke next, and brought some refreshing realism and complexity to the Open Access discussion. He noted that both as a reader and as an author he supports Open Access, but there are costs involved in making research available, and these will have to be covered in some way. He shared first-hand experience of expensive subscriptions for Indian institutions, and how even the IISc has cancelled many journal purchases.
In a <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/openness/professor-balaram-talks-open-access" class="external-link">later interview, Professor Balaram</a> discusses some solutions to these problems.
<div> </div>
<div>Prof. Balaram highlighted that Closed Access journals do add value to scholarship ― in terms of peer review, editing, and aggregation (the collection of related articles in useful ways). While Open Access journals may offer these services too, Prof. Balaram suggested that some of the strongest supporters of Closed Access journals are working academics who value the increased reputation and status they can offer. This lead him to expressing an opposition to institutional Open Access mandates. Instead, he encouraged an approach where academics are motivated to open their work for self-interest, rather than by obligation. </div>
<div>
<div> </div>
<div>Prof. Balaram also said that India must take an independent approach to Open Access and not expect western nations to lead the way. Increasingly India and China are seen as real competitors in the international field, and in the future may not receive concessions in journal subscriptions or other help currently offered to developing nations.
<div>
<div> </div>
<div>Dr Venkatakrishnan was more skeptical towards Open Access. He emphasized that the price to make an article freely available in a Closed Access journal could be over USD $3000. From this he suggested that the <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_journal">Gold Route</a> to Open Access lacked potential because the costs involved are prohibitive. This does leave out <a class="external-link" href="http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/OA_journal_business_models">alternative ways of financing</a> Open Access journals that do not involve the author paying for submission. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Dr. Venkatakrishnan<span class="Apple-style-span"> echoed Prof. Balaram in saying that a strong motivation to publish in top-tier Closed Access journals is the increased reputation or funding it can bring. </span>While it is true that academics can usually still upload their work to Open Access databases, <span class="Apple-style-span">Dr. </span>Venkatakrishnan<span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span">concluded that he did not know if Open Access was an 'open door' or a 'blind corner'. </span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span">This could be taken as a strange end to an Open Access celebration, but the implication seemed to be this: in order for more Indian academics to support Open Access, they must be convinced of the real benefits it can bring to their own reputation and career success.</span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<ul><li>For the event flier<a class="external-link" href="http://www.icast.org.in/events/oad2011.html"> click here</a></li><li>For details of Open Access Week, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.openaccessweek.org/">click here</a></li></ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/lecture-at-nal'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/lecture-at-nal</a>
</p>
No publisherTom DaneOpennessOpen Access2012-08-03T23:04:06ZBlog EntryOpen Access to Scholarly Literature in India: A Status Report: Call for Comments
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-to-scholarly-literature
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society welcomes comments on the first draft of "Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India: A Status Report". This report, on open access to scholarly literature, with a special focus on scientific literature, has been written by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam and Madhan Muthu. The report surveys the field of scholarly and scientific publication in India and provides a detailed history of the open access movement in India.</b>
<p>It notes that Indian science has "low but increasing research productivity helped by increasing investments on R&D, and low but moderately improving visibility", and that the best way to boost visibility and impact of Indian science are by pursuing a nation-wide open access policy.</p>
<p>Thus, it recommends that all publicly funded research in India should be made open access and provides suggestions on how this could best be achieved. It points out the need to go beyond open access mandates, to practical aspects like training of repository maintainers and of researchers for self-archiving. In addition, it points out the need for more effective advocacy and for a judicious mixture of both top-down and bottom-up approaches for bringing about the realization of the benefits of open access.</p>
<p>Please do write in to Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam (<a class="external-link" href="mailto: subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.com">subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.com</a>), Madhan Muthu (<a class="external-link" href="mailto:mu.madhan@gmail.com">mu.madhan@gmail.com</a>) and Pranesh Prakash (<a class="external-link" href="mailto:pranesh@cis-india.org">pranesh@cis-india.org</a>) with your suggestions, criticisms, or general comments that you may have by Friday, August 12, 2011.</p>
<div>Please click below to access the document.</div>
<div><br />
<ul>
<li><a class="internal-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-access-scholarly-literature.pdf" title="Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India - Status Report">Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India </a>[PDF, 1872 kb]</li>
<li><a class="internal-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-access-to-scholarly-literature.docx" title="Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India — A Status Report">Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India</a> [Word, 1964 kb]</li>
</ul>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<p><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>This draft report was prepared in April 2011 and the authors will update it soon.</i></span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-to-scholarly-literature'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-to-scholarly-literature</a>
</p>
No publisherProf. Subbiah Arunachalam and Madhan MuthuOpennessOpen Access2012-12-14T10:26:24ZBlog EntryQ&A on open access with Subbiah Arunachalam of the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore)
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-prof-arunachalam
<b>Amrit Dhir, a 1L at Harvard Law School, has been working with the Harvard Law School Library on open access activities. He recently had an opportunity to interview Subbiah Arunachalam of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in India. The interview was published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University on May 5, 2011.</b>
<p><i>Thanks to the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/">HLS Library</a> for permitting us to share this Q&A!</i></p>
<p><b>Amrit Dhir</b>: What is your association with the Bangalore-based <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/" class="external-link">Centre for Internet and Society</a> (CIS)?</p>
<p><b>Subbiah Arunachalam</b>: I am one of the founding members of the Board of the Centre for Internet and Society. Mr Sunil Abraham invited me to join and I agreed as I found the group to be a talented bunch of people much younger to me and interested in questions, the answers to which would be of interest to me.</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: What has been your involvement with the Open Access (OA) movement for the past ten years?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: For the past ten years, I have been literally breathing OA! I always believed that knowledge should be free and open, but my formal engagement with OA began in 2000. That was the year when Eugene Garfield, the well-known information scientist, turned 75. He has been a great influence in my life and so I wanted to celebrate his 75th birthday with a conference. Gene had written hundreds of essays and he had put all of them together in fifteen volumes (Essays of an Information Scientist). What is more, long before the formal movement for OA began, Gene had put all his essays - in fact, all his writings - up on the University of Pennsylvania website.</p>
<p>For the conference, I invited another friend of mine, Alan Gilchrist, Editor of Journal of Information Science, and a world leader in advancing knowledge about thesauri. For the second speaker I invited Stevan Harnad, as I had read his article on scholarly skywriting (which was included in Garfield's Essays). I was working as a volunteer at the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation whose main thrust was development, but my chairman Prof. M. S. Swaminathan helped me raise some funds. From then on I started dividing my time between development and promoting OA in India and the developing world. My prior experience as editor and publisher of science journals (at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Indian Academy of Sciences) was a great help. For one thing, I knew a large number of scientists and academics. For another, as I had no big official position I was free to make statements freely. And I took advantage of both.</p>
<p>In 2001, I persuaded the Indian Academy of Sciences to convene a meeting of editors of Indian S&T journals and convince them of the advantage of their journals going electronic. About 50 editors were trained in two three-day workshops. One of them, Dr. D. K. Sahu is today the world's leading OA publisher who neither charges the authors nor the readers [<a class="external-link" href="http://www.medknow.com/">http://www.medknow.com</a>].</p>
<p>In 2005, the Open Society Institute (OSI) invited me to Toronto to plan a conference. I had proposed to bring scientists from India, Brazil and China and to promote OA in these three countries. I believed then, and continue to believe now, that if OA takes roots in these three countries then it would be easy to promote it in the rest of the developing world. The conference itself was held at the Indian Institute of Science in November 2006, with support from OSI and the Indian Academy of Sciences. It was at this conference, with the help of Barbara Kirsop and Alma Swan, that we produced the Bangalore Declaration, which could be used by governments and funding agencies in developing countries to mandate OA.</p>
<p>In January 2006, I organized a full session on OA as part of the Annual Science Congress held at Hyderabad. In 2008, I spoke to Prof. Samir Brahmachari, Director General of <a class="external-link" href="http://rdpp.csir.res.in/csir_acsir/Home.aspx?MenuId=1">CSIR</a> and convinced him of the need to adopt OA. He accepted the idea immediately and opened up all the sixteen journals published by CSIR's publishing arm, NISCAIR. I persuaded the Indian Academy of Sciences to set up a repository for all papers by all Fellows and currently the repository is getting ready and I expect it to be available online in July or August. The Academy took nearly four years, but I am glad it is finally happening.</p>
<p>I have groomed a number of young people to take up OA advocacy and implementation. In particular, Muthu Madhan (now at ICRISAT) has done well. He has helped six institutions set up their repositories. I took him along with me (CIS funded his trip) to the International Conference on Repositories in Amsterdam jointly organized by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/">JISC</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.surf.nl/en/Pages/home.aspx">SURF</a> and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/">UKOLN</a> in 2009.</p>
<p>I have written about OA both on my own and in coauthorship with Peter Suber, Barbara Kirsop and Leslie Chan. I have given interviews to key outlets and spoken at many national and international conferences including two A2K conferences organized by Yale University, several Berlin conferences, and the ICSU-UNESCO conference where I was one of two keynote speakers.</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: What is the potential of OA, and what makes it unique to India?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: OA has tremendous potential not only to India, but to the world as a whole. But its value to developing countries is much greater than to advanced countries, because the serials crisis and the access to knowledge problems are felt far more acutely in developing countries. Currently higher education and R&D (Research and Development) are in an unprecedented expansion phase and therefore we would need huge investments to meet information needs if only traditional methods of access were available to us. As large publishing corporations are raising subscription costs year after year at an unacceptably high rate, Indian researchers and students would benefit if more and more scientists in the West were to make their work OA.</p>
<p>There is nothing unique about OA in India. Whatever applies to India applies to the larger developing countries (China and Brazil, South Africa). That is why I believe these four countries should work together in promoting OA.</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: What do you see as the future of the OA movement in India?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: As far as India is concerned, currently, a higher proportion of Indian work (12.5%) appears in OA journals than the world average (estimated to be between 8.5 and 10%). The two major Academies and CSIR in favor of OA. I and others are trying to persuade other funding agencies and research councils to adopt OA. It is a question of time before OA becomes accepted by at least some of the leading institutions. There are about 40 active repositories, but the number has started increasing.</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: What are the impediments to realizing that future? Are there any legal concerns or legal obstacles that you anticipate approaching?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: There are no impediments. At least I do not see any. You may then ask why the progress is slow. It is largely because of author inertia and general ignorance. Yes, ignorance. Not many scientists really know about what is possible and what is not possible with regard to depositing their papers in a repository. They are needlessly afraid of copyright infringements. Thus all the 'impediments' are imaginary!</p>
<p>When it comes to journals, it is easy. We publish the journals and we decide if we want to be closed or open. MedKnow publishes 150 journals, of which 148 are open. All 11 journals of the Indian Academy are open. Even when they entered into an agreement with Springer [Publishing], they retained the right to keep all of them open on their site!</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: How would you compare the institutional openness of India and the US to the potential and needs of OA?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: I have already explained why I believe OA is far more important to developing countries. But even in the West, the serials crisis is forcing librarians to adopt OA. In the West, prestigious institutions such as Harvard, MIT, NIH, Wellcome Trust, RCUK (Research Councils UK), have adopted OA and that has made a big difference. Now the US Congress is considering the FRPAA (Federal Research Public Access Act). Eventually, all institutions will have to adopt OA.</p>
<p>There is one advantage of institutions in the developing countries adopting OA that may be missed by many. Often research done in the South in problems like SARS, tsunami, HIV/AIDS, climate change will be of global relevance. These issues do not know any national boundaries.</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: You have spoken of a social mission and a human-rights-based justification for supporting greater OA, particularly with regard to the hard sciences and scientific research. What is the relationship between justice and OA, both on an international scale and as it relates to India more specifically?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: A very good question. When Kofi Annan was heading the United Nations, it came up with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). On top of the list was poverty alleviation. What use is all the science that we do if fellow human beings are unable to even buy food and keep dying of hunger and malnutrition? This is the basis for the argument on opening up of scientific knowledge as an issue of justice. In India, the government has invested millions on R&D in atomic energy, space science, new biology and biotechnology and so on, and yet more than 60 years after we had became a Republic, poverty is rampant, the gap between the rich and the poor is increasing and both the number of billionaires and the number of people below the poverty line are increasing every year. All our science and technology have not ensured basic necessities for the poor. We do not use what we know, and what we know is not known widely.</p>
<p>In an excellent article “The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance, and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector” in 22 Quarterly Journal of Economics 879 (2007), Robert Jensen of Harvard's Kennedy School used the example of how the introduction of mobile phones in coastal areas of Kerala opened up information and brought many benefits to the community as a whole and not just to fishing families.</p>
<p>There is another angle to the urgent need to reduce poverty, viz. the security angle. Two years ago, I was invited to write a short essay on information and livelihood and I began my essay with these words: "We live in a divided world where far too many people live in abject poverty. To help these people get out of poverty is good for the world as a whole, for great disparities in wealth will lead to violence and terrorism and no one can live in peace and harmony."</p>
<p>There is yet another issue. This is related to drugs and pharmaceuticals. Many pharma companies do not want to bring to market products from their latest research because the previous products are still doing well. Profit is the motive, and it trumps public good. Also, Western pharma companies send out scouts to the old world and learn from local wisdom the medicinal value of plants and herbs and take advantage but without sharing the profits with the local people. A clear case of the North exploiting the knowledge of the South. And yet their own drugs are all under patent protection!</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: Some see Indian civil society and even Indian government insisting on greater transparency and access to information, with such movements as the one behind the Right to Information (RTI) Act as an example. Are you optimistic about such efforts at governmental and legal reform? And, how does it relate to your work and the broader objectives you advocate?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: About two years ago, the Department of Biotechnology entered into a partnership with the Wellcome Trust. The was born with a view to providing generous fellowships to scientists at three stages of their careers. One of the features was that all papers published by these Fellows have to be OA. The Minister for science and technology (Mr Kapil Sibal at that time) announced this proudly. I wrote him that he should also make OA all papers by scientists receiving grants from DBT, but he did not bother to reply. There is a lot of political doublespeak. I also wrote to Members of Parliament belonging to all the major parties suggesting that they consider legislation similar to the one which brought OA to all NIH-funded research in the US. No one replied. The RTI Act and the recent happenings on the corruption front (the government yielding to the request of Gandhian Anna Hazare) are indeed very good. And I believe one day the need for OA will be recognized as important and worthy of legal status. But one may also achieve a lot through bottom-up approaches by talking to individual institutions, universities and scientists.</p>
<p>I am not losing hope. I will keep making my requests until OA is accepted as the norm.</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: How would you call upon American universities and institutes to act or reform in light of the OA measures you advocate?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: The larger the number of American universities, research institutions and funding agencies adopting OA, the better it would be for us, as we would have more papers in the open domain. More than that, we could cite their example and convince Indian institutions to adopt OA.</p>
<div class="pullquote">Read the original interview published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society <a class="external-link" href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/6825">here</a></div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-prof-arunachalam'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-prof-arunachalam</a>
</p>
No publishersubbiahInterviewOpen Access2023-11-01T12:41:47ZBlog EntryTowards Open and Equitable Access to Research and Knowledge for Development
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-equitable-access-to-research-knowledge
<b>There is growing recognition that the capacity to conduct research and to share the resulting knowledge is fundamental to all aspects of human development, from improving health care delivery to increasing food security, and from enhancing education to stronger evidence-based policy making. This article by Leslie Chan, Barbara Kirsop and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam was published in PLoS (Public Library of Science) on March 29, 2011.</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-equitable-access-to-research-knowledge'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-equitable-access-to-research-knowledge</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen Access2011-08-18T05:04:54ZBlog EntrySeminar on Open Access for Scientific Information
http://editors.cis-india.org/events/open-access
<b>Open-access provides free online access to quality scholarly material that can be defined as “open domain,” meaning publicly supported research information, and “open access,” so that it is copyrighted to be freely available scholarly material. Open-access publishing enables researchers in developing countries to establish priority for their research, which they could use later to defend their intellectual property. It removes excess barriers in terms of both price and permission, enhances national research capacity, and improves visibility for developing-country research. Open access thus enables a global platform for this research and collaboration and reciprocates the information flow from South to North among all countries.</b>
<p>In India, there is a large opportunity for open-access publishing. There are many non-commercial research and development institutions, both academic and research laboratories. For example, there are approximately 300 universities that offer both graduate and research programs. There are also many R&D laboratories operating within government science agencies, which cover domains like industrial research, defense research, agricultural research, medicine, ecology, environment, information technology, space, energy, and ocean development.</p>
<p>Many of these institutions, and also several professional societies, publish science journals. Tools like the Open Journal Systems could help many of these journals to come online in an open-access environment. Open Access is relevant to India because most research is funded from public money, institutional framework and information infrastructure, trained manpower and financial resources are adequately available. It widens distribution of information and knowledge and lowers the cost of reaching a fairly wide audience while maximising return on public money. The OA movement is being supported by research funding agencies, academic institutions, researchers and scientists, teachers, students, and members of the general public. </p>
<p>Open access publishing can foster the exchange of research results amongst scientists from different disciplines, thus facilitating interdisciplinary research, whilst providing access to research results to researchers world-wide, including from developing countries, as well as to an interested general public. </p>
<p>Access to and sharing of information, including scientific information, goes through dramatic changes because of rapidly emerging new communication and information technologies (ICTs) and the societal transformations that they generate. But what are the long-term strategies to efficiently harness the open access potential for developing new approaches to knowledge acquisition and sharing? What needs to be done to effectively integrate these strategies into forward looking and sustainable policy making? How can we harness the potential of open access to develop knowledge societies that are people-centred, inclusive and development oriented? What are the global environmental trends that will influence open access in the next few years? What are the main needs of the open access stakeholders in India and South Asia ? Which are the publishing models for open-access journals and what does it imply to finance and sustain open access journals in developing countries; how to overcome language and other barriers ? </p>
<p>These issues are of strategic relevance to UNESCO as they address key challenges linked to building knowledge societies, one of the overarching objectives of the Medium Term Strategy 2008-2013.</p>
<p>UNESCO, jointly with the Centre for Internet Society is well placed to mobilize interested stakeholders to develop efficient implementation strategies in the area of acquision and sharing of scientific information and to integrate them into forward looking and sustainable policies. </p>
<p>UNESCO believes that open access is an enriching part of the scholarly communication process that can and should co-exist with other forms of communication and publication, such as society-based publishing and conferencing activities. Open access publications are also more easily included and searchable in search engines and indexing databases.</p>
<p>In order to initiate a sub-regional dialogue on democratizing access to scientific and health-related information, on the economics of scientific publishing and the implications of the various open-access models and the copyright and intellectual property issues, UNESCO convenes a one day seminar on 16 March 2011 in New Delhi. The concept of « open access » and the inter-relationships between academic institutions, researchers, scientists and publishers will be examined, as well as the challenges and barriers which OA is currently facing in this part of the world. </p>
<h3>Overall objectives </h3>
<ul><li>Strengthen awareness of UNESCO’s stakeholders on the potential of open access in scientific knowledge sharing that are dramatically accelerated by ICTs; </li><li>Provide analysis for anticipating foreseeable trends end emerging challenges in order to enable Indian and South Asian stakeholders to develop strategies and policies to take them up;</li><li>Develop a partnership and collaboration among interested stakeholdesr in order to improve access to and sharing of scientific information and research through open access </li></ul>
<h3>Expected results </h3>
<div> </div>
<div>The discussion of the Open Access Seminar is expected to achieve the following results: </div>
<div>
<div>
<ul><li>UNESCO’s stakeholders enabled to understand trends and emerging challenges related to the impact of open access on scientific information acquisition and sharing; </li><li>Possible developments prospected in the area of scientific information sharing in the coming 5 years; </li><li>Specific technology generated trends, and their consequences for development in scientific information and research sharing </li><li>Highlight the collaborative and collective efforts and actions behind the Open Access movement</li><li>Discussions of best practices of Open Access Initiatives</li></ul>
</div>
<h3>Who should attend: </h3>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<ul><li>Science editors</li><li>Policy makers</li><li>Information professionals</li><li>Researchers </li><li>Open Access movement activists</li><li>Academics and all those interested in electronic publishing.</li></ul>
</div>
<h3>Terms of Reference:</h3>
</div>
<div><br />
<div>1) Initiatives within the open access movement (with focus on what all of this means for developing countries):</div>
<div>
<ul><li>discussion on the pros and cons of open access </li><li>different models used and paths to achieving open access to the health literature </li><li>research reports and open access </li><li>democratizing access to scientific and health-related information</li><li>economics of scientific publishing and implications of the various open-access models </li><li>copyright and intellectual property </li></ul>
</div>
<div>2) Open Access and the journals from developing countries</div>
<div>
<ul><li>what does it means to bring journals online </li><li>publishing models for open-access journals </li><li>financing and sustaining open access journals in developing countries </li><li>costs associated with open access in developing countries </li><li>language barriers and translation </li><li>training information specialists and users on searching and accessing health literature</li></ul>
<div> </div>
<div><em>This event is co-organised by UNESCO and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore</em></div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Download the agenda <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/advocacy/open-access-agenda" class="internal-link" title="Agenda">here</a></div>
<div> </div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/events/open-access'>http://editors.cis-india.org/events/open-access</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen Access2011-06-09T12:41:22ZEventDesign!publiC
http://editors.cis-india.org/events/design-public
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society in partnership with Centre for Knowledge Societies, Venkataramanan Associates, Centre for Law and Policy Research and LiveMint is organising Design!publiC on March 18, 2011. Design Public is a conversation about whether and how to bring design thinking to bear upon the challenges of government so as to promote governance innovation. </b>
<h3 style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Design.jpg/image_preview" alt="Design Public" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Design Public" /><br /></h3>
<h3><span class="Apple-style-span">Background</span></h3>
<p>The problem of governance is perhaps as old as society, as old as the rule of law. But it is only more recently -- perhaps the last five hundred years of modernity -- that human societies have been able to conceive of different models of government, different modalities of public administration, all having different effects on the configuration of society. The problem of governments, of governmentality, and of governance is always also the problem of how to change the very processes and procedures of government, so as to enhance the ends of the state and to promote the collective good. </p>
<p>Since the establishment of India’s republic, many kinds of changes have been made to the policies and practices of its state. We may think of, for instance, successive stages of land reforms, the privatization of large-scale and extractive industries, the subsequent abolition of the License Raj and so and so forth. We may also consider the computerization of state documents beginning in the 1980s, and more recently, the Right To Information Act (RTI). More recently there have been activist campaigns to reduce the discretionary powers of government and to thereby reduce the scope of corruption in public life. </p>
<p>While all these cases represent the continuous process of modification, reform, and change to government policy and even to its modes of functioning, this is not what we have in mind when we speak of ‘governance innovation.’ Rather, intend a specific process of ethnographic inquiry into the real needs of citizens, followed by an inclusive approach to reorganizing and representing that information in such a way that it may promote collaborative problem-solving and solutioneering through the application of design thinking. </p>
<p>The concept of design thinking has emerged only recently, and it has been used to describe approaches to problem solving that include: (i) redefining the fundamental challenges at hand, (ii) evaluating multiple possible options and solutions in parallel, and (iii) prioritizing and selecting those which are likely to achieve the greatest benefits for further consideration. This approach may also be iterative, allowing decisions to be made in general and specific ways as an organization gets closer and closer to the solution. Design thinking turns out to be not an individual but collective and social process, requiring small and large groups to be able to work together in relation to the available information about the task or challenge at hand. Design thinking can lead to innovative ideas, to new insights, and to new actionable directions for organizations. </p>
<p>This general approach to innovation -- and the central role of design thinking -- has emerged from the private sector over the last quarter century, and has enjoyed particular success in regards to the development of new technology products, services and experience. The question we would like to address in this conference is whether and how this approach can be employed for the transformation public and governmental systems.</p>
<h3>What is the Evidence that Design Thinking Positively Impacts Governments?</h3>
<p>Many European countries have government-supported design conglomerations for the purposes of enhancing business and the government’s interface with the public. Design Council in the UK not only works to create public identities but also helps formulate national design strategies that help the United Kingdom to differentiate its national brand and achieve broad national benefits. Elsewhere in the UK, a private organization, Think Public, and various governmental agencies, are working through a consultative approach with citizens to better target governmental services so as to maximize citizen benefits.</p>
<p>In the context of public health, the first major public health information system has been built in Canada, and in many ways it may serve as a reference and benchmark for other countries around the world. The first deployment of a public health information system in developing country contexts is in Ghana, where a specialized Resource Center is even now being conceived to enable the support and further development of this new system.</p>
<p>In India, early innovation research and concept development activities by the Center for Knowledge Societies for the Gates Foundation has shown promising results in terms of new opportunities to enhance the quality of health care delivery through the Bihar pilot itself, using the tools and techniques of ethnography, design, and user experience enhancement. In its studios in New Delhi and Bangalore, it has hosted innovation workshops with international health experts, public officials and other stakeholders to envision new kinds of technologies and solutions for improving public health delivery. In future, it may be possible to organize these kinds of efforts in the form of an Innovation Lab or Innovation Center. </p>
<p>Whereas, in the past, diverse attempts have been made to reform government, to make it more efficient, to reduce corruption and the arbitrariness of decisioning authority. Beneficial as these approaches may have been, they have not always been successful in fundamentally transforming the ways in which bureaucracies think about their mission, objectives and goals. They have not resulted in greater consumer orientation of these cadres, or greater public participation in the decision-making of these bureaucracies. These are the kinds of benefits that design thinking can bring to governmental and quasi-governmental bureaucracies. </p>
<p>In this conclave, our interest is to explore how design thinking and user-centered innovation might help such organizations better accomplish their mission and better serve their beneficiaries. We also seek to explore and establish particular modalities through which governance innovation can be achieved, as well as to identify key stakeholders and personalities gripped of the challenge of governance innovation. Our larger goal is to craft a path forward for integrating design thinking and innovation methodologies in the further re-envisioning, refashioning and improvement of public services in India and elsewhere in the world.</p>
<p>Specific Expected Outcomes</p>
<ul><li>A shared understanding and common vocabulary around design thinking and innovation</li><li>A review of insights and outcomes from the event by members of government with a view to routinizing and institutionalizing innovation in government</li><li>A documentation of case-studies, concepts and perspectives from different participants emerging from the conclave</li><li>An emerging community of thinkers and practitioners interested in working together to share information and insights to accelerate governance innovation</li><li>A consensus on the modalities and occasion for the conduct of a follow-up conclave, possibly in Bangalore as soon as September 2011</li></ul>
<h3>An Invitation to Dialogue </h3>
<p>Design Public is a conversation among a select group of high level thinkers and actors who care about public services design. No more than 50 persons will be in attendance. Presentations will be brief. Panel discussants will intersperse with the other participants for greater involvement and equal opportunity for dialogue and response. All attendees will be asked to participate in the emerging dialogue through the day. </p>
<h3>Draft Schedule</h3>
<p>
</p>
<p>10.00 am<br /><em>What do Designers do? </em><em>How can Physical, Informational and Interaction Design Impact the Everyday Life of Citizens?</em></p>
<ul><li>Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society (Moderator)</li><li>Aditya Dev Sood, CEO, Center for Knowledge Socities</li><li>Abhimanyu Kulkarni, Design Director, Philips Design</li><li>Younghee Jung, Senior Designer, Nokia Corporation</li><li>Daniela Sangiorgi, Lecturer, Lancaster University </li><li>Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Founder, Centre for Law and Policy Research</li><li>Naresh Narasimhan, Principal Architect, VA Group<br /></li></ul>
<p>11.00 am</p>
<p><em>How Can the Government Best Use Designers and Design Thinking?</em></p>
<ul><li>Aditya Dev Sood, CEO, Center for Knowledge Societies (Moderator)</li><li>Niels Hansen, Project Manager, MindLab</li><li>Aparna Piramal Raje, Design Thinker, Mint</li><li>Anant Shah, Program Officer, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation</li><li>Harsh Shrivastava, Consultant (Planning), Planning Commission of India</li><li>Kiran Dhingra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation</li><li>Shubhagato Dasgupta, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Policy Research</li><li>Steven Solnik, Member-Government Performance and Accountability, Ford Foundation </li></ul>
<p>
12.00 pm</p>
<p><em>How can Social / Media Promote Design and Governance Innovation? </em></p>
<ul><li>
Suresh Venkat, Executive Producer, CNBC TV18 (Moderator)</li><li>Vibodh Parthasarthy, Associate Professor, Jamia Milia Islamia</li><li>Yatish Rajawat, Editor-in-Chief, Business Bhaskar</li><li>R. Sukumar, Editor, Mint</li><li>Sashwati Banerjee, Executive Director, Sesame Workshop India</li><li>Aditya Mishra, Founder, Headstart Foundation</li></ul>
<p>1.00 pm </p>
<p>Working and Networking Lunch</p>
<p>2.00 pm</p>
<p>Innovation Workshopping Breakout Sessions</p>
<p>Track One: </p>
<ol><li><em>Conducting Ethnography to Inform the Innovation Process<br /></em>
<p>The group is responsible for coming up with an innovative approach
to curbing power theft in peri-urban locations in India. Many factors
are responsible for this phenomenon. What questions will you ask and how
will you collect information on the ground to inform any future
innovations you might come up with? (Case Study subject to change)</p>
</li><li><em>Brainstorming and Concepting in Response to Ethnographic Data<br /></em>
<p>The
group is responsible for conceptualizing a new ways to promote maternal
and child health using mobile devices. Data on this question has
already been collected and will be shown to you in the form of a brief
presentation. You must come up with as many different ideas or concepts
as possible using post-its. Then you must prioritize these concepts and
vote on the ones you would like to see implemented. (Case Study subject
to change)</p>
</li><li><em>Approaches to Institutionalizing Innovation in Government<br /></em>
<p>This
group will consider ways and means for accelerating and
institutionalizing innovation in governance, through for example, the
provision of knowledge, best practices, support, training, and
organizational change. Ideas may include, but not be restricted to new
kinds of handbooks, online sources, academic and applied training and
other ideas. Approaches should be evaluated and prioritized prior to
presentation back to the group.</p>
</li></ol>
<p>4.30 pm <br />Team Presentations (over tea served at tables) </p>
<p>5.00 pm<br /><em>What institutional and organizational models can best foster Governance Innovation?</em></p>
<ul><li>Amit Garg, Director, MXV Consulting (Moderator)<br /></li><li>Arun Maira, Member, Planning Commission & Member, National Innovation Council</li><li>R. Gopalakrishnan, Member Secretary, National Innovation Council</li><li>Mohammad Haleem Khan, Director, CAPART</li><li>D S Ravindran, CEO, Center of e-Governance, Government of Karnataka<br /></li><li>Aditya Dev Sood, CEO, Center for Knowledge Societies</li></ul>
<p>Other Notable Discussants and Interactants</p>
<ul><li>Anil Khachi, Deputy Director General, UIDAI</li><li>Narahari Mahato, Member of Parliament, AIFB</li><li>N. Cheluvaraya Swamy, Member of Parliament, JD(S)</li><li>Syed Azeez Pasha, Member of Parliament, CPI</li><li>Moinul Hassan, Member of Parliament, CPM</li><li>Amit Garg, Director, MXV Consulting</li><li>William Bissell, Managing Director, FabIndia</li><li>Kalpana Awasthi, Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to Sam Pitroda</li><li>Abhimanyu Kulkarni, Design Director, Philips Design</li><li>D. Raja, Member of Parliament, CPI</li><li>Josh Glazeroff, Visa Chief, US Embassy</li><li>Pooja Sood, Curator and Director, Khoj Foundation</li><li>Ravina Agarwal, Program Officer, Ford Foundation</li><li>Nita Soans, Advisor, Center for Knowledge Societies</li><li>Ekta Ohri, Head of Project Operations, Center for Knowledge Societies</li></ul>
<h3>Individual Participation</h3>
<p>In order to make each voice count, entry to the conclave will be by arrangement only. Others who are truly interested, should please drop us a few lines on how they would like to contribute and we will be glad to get back in touch. </p>
<p>There are no registration fees. However, we would like to see participants take their own initiative in covering their own travel costs and making their own arrangements for stay so far as possible. If specific needs are perceived, please communicate them to the organizers. </p>
<h3>Institutional Participation</h3>
<p>Confederations of industry, associations of management, departments of government and diverse development sector and civil society organizations are invited to express their interest in supporting this event. </p>
<p><span class="Apple-style-span"><strong>Organizers</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span">Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS)</span></li><li>Center for Internet and Society (CIS)</li></ul>
<p><strong>Sponsors<br /></strong></p>
<ul><li>Venkatramanan Associates (VA)</li><li>Center for Law and Policy (CLP)</li></ul>
<p><strong>Date and Venue</strong><br />The date for the event has been decided for Friday, the 18th of March, 2011. It will be held at the Taj Vivanta in Central Delhi.</p>
<p><strong>Thought Leadership and Dialogue<br /></strong>Dr. Aditya Dev Sood, CEO, Center for Knowledge Societies<br />aditya@cks.in</p>
<p>Naresh Narasimhan, Principal, VA Associates <br />naresh@vagroup.com</p>
<p>Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Founder, Center for Law and Policy <br />sudhir.krishnaswamy@ashiralaw.co.in</p>
<h3><span class="Apple-style-span">Participation Enquiries</span></h3>
<p>Sumeet Malhotra, Business Development Manager<br />sumeet@cks.in</p>
<ul><li>Download the book <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/design-public.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Design! Public">here</a> [PDF, 2.8 MB]</li><li>Download the case studies <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/case-studies.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Case Studies">here</a> [PDF, 641 KB]</li><li>Download the glossary <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/glossary.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Glossary">here</a><br /></li></ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/events/design-public'>http://editors.cis-india.org/events/design-public</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen Access2011-06-03T13:27:22ZEvent