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Exploring Knowledge Repositories on Water Resources in India
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-exploring-knowledge-repositories-on-water-resources-in-india
<b>This research study explores knowledge repositories on water resources in India, with a focus on how the digital transition has impacted the process of creation & access to these resources and possible collaborations to build open digital repositories around water. The research was undertaken by Subodh Kulkarni, with editorial inputs by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Chiara Furtado. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2021–2022.</b>
<p>Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Exploring_Knowledge_repositories_on_Water_resources_in_India"><strong>here</strong></a>.</p>
<hr />
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Water is the most precious natural resource for the existence of all living organisms on earth. As human beings have not treated it respectfully in recent years, there are increasing challenges with accessibility and availability of water across large parts of the world today. In India, the groundwater levels are depleting at an alarming rate due to over exploitation<sup>.[1]</sup> The quality of surface water reserves is degenerating due to pollution caused by discharge of wastewater, sewage and untreated industrial effluents.<sup><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Exploring_Knowledge_repositories_on_Water_resources_in_India#cite_note-2">[2]</a></sup> The condition of rivers is getting worse due to illegal and unregulated use of these resources across India. Due to damming almost all the rivers flow for only 8-10 months in a year. Above all, the pollution caused due to solid wastes and effluents have destroyed living organisms and aquatic life. Therefore most of the rivers in India are called ‘dying rivers’.<sup><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Exploring_Knowledge_repositories_on_Water_resources_in_India#cite_note-3">[3]</a></sup> There have been several discussions and debates happening around this degradation of rivers, especially in the last decade.<sup><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Exploring_Knowledge_repositories_on_Water_resources_in_India#cite_note-4">[4]</a></sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Efforts by various organisations are afoot to document the state of affairs, spread awareness and undertake activities on the ground with community participation. Citizen-led efforts have also been instrumental in strengthening several water conservation efforts in India. It is seen that these peoples’ movements have been further strengthened due to empowerment through enhanced awareness of these issues around conservation, and better access to knowledge on the subject, especially through scientific studies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">CIS-A2K has initiated <a title="CIS-A2K/Events/Partnerships under Project Jal Bodh - Knowledge resource on Water" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Partnerships_under_Project_Jal_Bodh_-_Knowledge_resource_on_Water">Project Jalbodh</a> in 2017 in collaboration with a few organisations to generate water related content. During one of the ‘River dialogues’, a CIS-A2K member was invited to introduce Wikimedia projects to the organisations working on water resources. In the discussions, it was revealed that there is negligible content about rivers, water pollution, floods, irrigation system etc. in Wikimedia projects. Following this, an analysis of content on these subjects on Marathi, Hindi & English Wikipedia and media on Wikimedia Commons was undertaken. The need to develop structured categorisation of content was also felt. As the organisations are trying their best to disseminate knowledge about water issues, they realised the potential of Wikimedia projects due to the high level of searchable content available on these platforms which can be accessed by the general public. In keeping with these objectives, over the last two years, various workshops were conducted with organisations working at the grassroots to develop the structure of articles, categorisation and re-licensing of source material on these topics across various Wikimedia projects. <a class="text external" href="http://tarunbharatsangh.in/" rel="nofollow">Tarun Bharat Sangh</a> is leading this process, and has uploaded <a title="c:Category:Books published by Tarun Bharat Sangh, India" class="extiw" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_published_by_Tarun_Bharat_Sangh,_India">90 books & reports on Wikimedia Commons</a> under free licences, and created articles on rivers in Marathi, Hindi and English Wikipedia projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">During these content generation events it was realised that the organisations are working closely with communities which are conversant mostly with local or regional Indian languages only. The availability and access to water related resources in these languages is therefore an important issue. The communities are in need of simple, accessible and ready to use content in various forms. They also require a platform on which they can document/archive their water conservation efforts for other communities to take lessons and motivation from these projects.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Research Questions</h2>
<p>This study was framed by the following questions:</p>
<ol>
<li>How has the digital transition impacted the process of creation and access to water related resources in India.</li>
<li>What are possible collaborations and processes to build open digital repositories around water, with special reference to rivers.</li></ol>
<h2></h2>
<h2>Methods</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The study adopted a qualitative approach, with the method comprising online/offline, semi-structured interviews with organisations working in the water resources sector. Based on desk research and conversations with existing partners in the sector, a long list of organisations was developed.(See Annexure I). Further, eight organisations were shortlisted for interviews based on their experience and impact of work in the water conservation sector. Due to various constraints, eventually interviews with three organisations were completed. The interview questionnaire focused on the nature, objective and scope of the offline and online resources available, human resources involved, language aspects, documentation practices, methods of dissemination, utility, accessibility, training value of the material, intellectual property rights (IPR) policies and public outreach efforts. These interviews were conducted online and in-person and recorded with consent from the participants, along with a clear explanation on the objectives of the study and the data collection. As mentioned above, there were a few constraints with the research process and methods adopted, as well as external factors. These included restrictions on travel and in-person meetings due to the COVID 19 pandemic, and challenges with online platforms. Some of the organisations were not comfortable with online or telephonic interviews and insisted upon physical interactions. The online interviews were less effective with the organisations as they were unaware about the free & open knowledge platforms like Wikimedia, Internet Archive etc. In addition to this, introductory sessions were conducted to give them a background to the work of the programme and context of the study. A general challenge here was also logistical issues related to scheduling conversations etc. given that personnel were located across different departments.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Description of Organisations Interviewed</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Advanced Centre for Water Resources Development and Management [ACWADAM]'</strong><em> </em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://www.acwadam.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=featured&Itemid=101" rel="nofollow">ACWADAM</a> is an organisation dedicated to establish a groundwater management agenda in India. It is a premier education and action research institution engaged in developing and disseminating knowledge on groundwater management. It is also involved in facilitation of projects on groundwater management through action research programmes, training and policy advocacy, with a collaborative, participatory approach. ACWADAM's mission is to facilitate groundwater management programmes in partnership with various organisations spread across the country. Over the years, it has developed expertise on aquifer-based groundwater management based on the science of hydrogeology.</p>
<div><strong>Action for Agricultural Renewal in Maharashtra [AFARM]</strong></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://www.afarm.org/index" rel="nofollow">AFARM</a> was founded in 1969 as an apex Institution to coordinate programmes of voluntary organisations engaged in providing drinking water and agricultural extension services to villages in drought affected Maharashtra. It is one of the pioneering networking organisations in the country working in the areas of sustainable agriculture, irrigation, disaster relief and drinking water resource management. It acts as a platform for several civil society organisations for the promotion of sustainable and equitable development. The emphasis is on capacity building of organisations through action research, advocacy and field projects at grassroots. AFARM is providing support and consultancy at the policy level.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>BAIF Development Research Foundation [BAIF]</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://baif.org.in/" rel="nofollow">BAIF</a> was established on the strong foundation of Gandhian values with the aim to improve quality of life through development research and capacity building. BAIF’s vision is to build a self-reliant rural society assured of food security, safe drinking water, good health, gender equity, low child mortality, literacy, high moral values and clean environment. It is striving towards the mission to create opportunities of gainful self-employment for the rural and tribal families with a focus on disadvantaged sections, ensuring sustainable livelihood, healthy environment, better quality of life and good human values. BAIF believes in field research, effective use of local resources, extension of appropriate technologies and upgradation of skills and capabilities with community participation.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Observations</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Availability of digital datasets on water resource projects:</strong> Many organisations in the sector rely on online information and databases on sites such as – <a class="text external" href="https://censusindia.gov.in/census.website/" rel="nofollow">Census of India</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://mausam.imd.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">IMD</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://earth.google.com/web/" rel="nofollow">Google Earth</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/home/index.php" rel="nofollow">Bhuvan</a>, <a class="text external" href="http://cgwb.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">CGWB</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://gsda.maharashtra.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">GSDA</a>, <a class="text external" href="http://mrsac.maharashtra.gov.in/mahagsda/" rel="nofollow">MRSAC</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://bhulekh.mahabhumi.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Bhumi Abhilekh</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://www.surveyofindia.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Survey of India</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://www.indiawaterportal.org/" rel="nofollow">India Water Portal</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://farmer.gov.in/stateagridepartments.aspx" rel="nofollow">Agriculture Department</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://wrd.maharashtra.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Irrigation Department</a>, <a class="text external" href="http://moef.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Forest Department</a>, <a class="text external" href="https://maharain.maharashtra.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Maharain</a> etc. Many of the global datasets on water resources and related topics such as agriculture, population, topography, forestry, climate change etc. are also in the public domain. However, the updating of data is not done regularly. For example, we have to refer to census data for 2011 even in 2022. Many of the datasets are also at a macro level, providing very little granular data. The water resource projects mostly need micro level data which is collected through on-ground surveys.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Effectiveness of digital platforms, and challenges with internet coverage:</strong> Organisations have found the use of digital platforms and tools effective for quick exchange of common training modules, process videos, drawings and manuals, as part of their water resource projects. The digital format has also been very effective for dissemination of advisories, alerts etc. through smartphones, which have enabled better access to information on gadgets quickly. However, two-way communication is necessary when timely solutions to queries of the farmers are to be provided, and that has been difficult to set up in a sustained manner through a digital format.<br />Many organisations in the sector also engage in capacity-building efforts for staff, volunteers and communities. When building these communities and mobilising them for action, the process needs spontaneous feedback, live conversations, reading the expressions and actual interactions with each other. All these things are completely missing from virtual interactions. These organisational processes and capacity-building efforts were grossly hampered during the pandemic due to a reliance on online meetings alone.<br />There are still challenges of internet connectivity in rural and remote areas where the communities are involved in water management projects. The consistency of bandwidth is a major issue when it comes to streaming of audio-visual content, uploading of content, online workshops, etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Lack of documentation skills, and challenges with language:</strong> Most of the documents used in water resources related projects are technical in nature. The technical team invests more time in the implementation, hence the time and skills required for documentation are limited. This gap between technical skills and documentation skills is challenging. There are ample structures, technological methods, apps etc. for collecting the data but at the same time, the resources for data collection or structured data development are not sufficiently provided. There are also several language-related challenges at the field level. Crucial parts of the training and awareness material need to be translated in the local languages as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Mobilisation and motivation for communities and wider public:</strong> The offline and online content is not very effective to mobilise or motivate the people involved in action at the field level in water conservation efforts. The organisers are exploring all the modes of communication and content available, but there is no alternative for human leadership.<br />Some organisations like Paani Foundation have beautifully captured the success stories of these efforts in dramatic short films. These films inspire the public temporarily, but the content can not be used often. Also, the production costs of such content are high resulting in very few options for wider outreach to engage a general audience.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Negligible content about water sector in public domain or Wikimedia projects in local languages:</strong> All the organisations agree upon the lack of searchable content on water related topics on the internet and in the public domain through projects like Wikimedia. The activists looking for solutions on some technical issues, the community searching for good projects in other parts of India or the planners looking for some structured databases on impact of projects, all of them get very little content on the internet. The local language content on water resources has almost negligible presence.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Need for a comprehensive portal giving information to stakeholders at different levels:</strong> The different stakeholders concerned with water resources seek information and data on various levels and diverse formats according to application and purpose. As of now, no such comprehensive platform in multiple languages exists which caters to these needs. The requirements include a wide range like, sample design of water conservation structures, contour maps of region, rainfall data, estimates of raw material, ground water aquifer maps, water pollution parameters, operation of dams, irrigation systems, water policies, water treaties, government notifications, etc. A well structured and categorised knowledge repository and database on water resources is the need of the hour. Such a knowledge base would strongly support the actions on the ground.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Recommendations</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Developing a Process Documentation Strategy:</strong> The continuous changes in knowledge resources and data regarding various topics related to water resources need to be documented from time to time. The dynamic nature of water related issues requires a proactive process documentation strategy for the organisation as well as the citizen science groups in the society. The ideal example is the trajectory of the monsoon season in India every year and the rainfall in various agro-climatic regions. The watershed conservation projects, river rejuvenation programs, pollution control projects are long term processes with long term impacts. The journey of several years is painstaking, needs patience and struggles on the ground with constant motivational efforts. The persons directly engaged in these efforts may not be able to spend time on documentation of the many resources that are a result of these efforts. Hence, a solid process documentation strategy is required. The process documentation is also crucial for assessment of project impact on environment, livelihoods, economy, geography and people. There are also citizen movements which have been active for a long time, which are instrumental in giving birth to new laws, rules, guidelines, notifications, etc. The different milestones and turning points in these processes are to be documented in time. This documentation can guide the larger citizens’ movements to design their strategies and to resolve issues arising during the course of this work, and across different thematic areas as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Accessible datasets open for all in the public domain:</strong> There is an important need to compile the datasets on water resources developed by different agencies with people’s participation and government funding for the planning of public works or schemes. The open access to such reliable and factual datasets in the public domain serves the purpose of transparency and accountability of public infrastructure programmes. This facility for society would provide impetus to rigorous analysis, studies, research and innovative designing of public infrastructure. The processing and presentation of data in visual formats, including infographics can boost understanding, awareness, and logical thinking processes among enthusiasts who would like to engage with water conservation efforts. Different perspectives can emerge after relating and comparing datasets. The networking of agencies, organisations, experts and citizen forums would further develop complementary datasets. This synergy will definitely create a community data pool beneficial for everyone.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Digital and open access content development for capacity building of field level activists:</strong> Various organisations have developed training material for field level activists in different formats. Most of this is not online or digitised. Through networking efforts, the integration could be done to develop systematic modules for capacity building. The modules would be hosted as Open Educational Resources (OERs) on Wikimedia projects or other free knowledge platforms. The topic wise categories will make the selection easier. These categories can include local water source, rivers, waste water disposal, pollution, water based livelihoods, water conservation treatments etc. The format combining course work with some hands-on experiments is beneficial to facilitate the process of self-study, self-assessment and self-design. This online repository can be accessed by the field activists working on water resources anytime, anywhere when they need guidance to resolve issues or trouble-shooting on site.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Orientation of organisations towards free knowledge platforms and Wikimedia projects:</strong> Over the years, the organisations working in this sector have created valuable material for wider circulation to create awareness and empower communities. These resources have been used effectively and in a few locations for a certain period of time. The outreach and dissemination through integration of these resources will have more impact in the coming years if digital platforms are utilised efficiently. The basic orientation of the organisations regarding such free knowledge digital platforms, including copyright issues, Creative Commons licences, digitisation process and internet technologies is necessary to kick start this knowledge dissemination movement. Some pilot projects could be executed to demonstrate the potential of Wikimedia projects in database generation, documentation of case studies, audio-visual repositories and reference libraries.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;"><br /></h2>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">References<br /></h2>
<ol><li>"Groundwater". edugreen.teri.res.in. Retrieved 2022-09-28.</li><li>"‘Discharge of untreated industrial effluents, sewage major source of river pollution’". The Indian Express. 2018-12-21. Retrieved 2022-09-28.</li><li>Naresh Singaravelu & Harshita Mishra (6 June 2019). "Rivers in India: a reality check". https://www.thehindu.com/. The Hindu. Retrieved 28 Sep 2022.</li><li>"Living rivers, dying rivers: Everything you wanted to know about rivers in India | India Water Portal". www.indiawaterportal.org. Retrieved 2022-09-28.</li></ol>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-exploring-knowledge-repositories-on-water-resources-in-india'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-exploring-knowledge-repositories-on-water-resources-in-india</a>
</p>
No publishersubodhAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen Content2022-10-21T13:23:24ZBlog EntryInfrastructural Needs of Indian Language Wikisource Projects
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-infrastructural-needs-of-indian-language-wikisource-projects
<b>This is a short study on identifying the infrastructural gaps on Indian language Wikisource projects, and potential strategies to address the same. The study was undertaken by Jayantha Nath, Puthiya Purayil Sneha and Satdeep Gill, with writing and editorial oversight by Puthiya Purayil Sneha and an external review by Divyank Katira. This is part of a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2021-22.</b>
<p>Read this report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Infrastructural_Needs_of_Indian_Language_Wikisource_Projects"><strong>here</strong></a>.</p>
<hr />
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This research project is an effort to understand some of the infrastructural needs of Wikisource platforms in India. With a focus on technological capacity, resources and training, this short pilot study collected baseline data from <a title="Indic Wikisource Community" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Indic_Wikisource_Community">Indian language Wikisource communities</a> to identify key knowledge gaps and areas of improvement. The final report here offers an overview of the current challenges in this space, and some learnings and recommendations on potential strategies to address these gaps, including through collaborative intervention and training.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Context</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a title="Wikisource" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource">Wikisource</a> projects have been an important part of the open knowledge movement in India, as it is a hub of out of copyright and freely licensed texts in a number of languages from across the world. With a focus on creating a ‘growing free content online library of source texts, as well as translations of source texts in any language', it functions as an important open knowledge repository that supports content development on various sister projects such as <a title="Wikipedia" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia">Wikipedia</a>, <a title="Wikiquote" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiquote">Wikiquote</a> etc. <a title="Wikisource" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource">Wikisource</a> projects in Indian languages have seen tremendous growth, especially over the last decade with increased efforts in content donation under free licences, digitization initiatives and availability of source texts. There have also been several advancements in Indic language computing and availability of digital infrastructure, such as more Indian language fonts, many with Unicode support, and increased flexibility in working with texts due to <a title="en:Optical character recognition" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition">Optical Character Recognition (OCR)</a> technologies. There has also been a general growth in awareness about the need for sourcing and making available more content in Indian languages, and better access to platforms like Wikisource has aided these efforts to a great extent.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However, several Indian language communities also continue to grapple with persistent challenges in this space, across diverse Wikimedia projects. Similarly, with Wikisource, there have been concerns about a lack of active participation and efforts towards bringing more content on the platform, including translations, and encouraging the use of source texts across projects among others. While a majority of the contributors are comfortable with <a title="wikisource:Help:Transclusion" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:Transclusion">transcribing texts</a>, more technical tasks such as importing new books, creating Index pages and transcluding books are left to a very small number of contributors. These point to a lack of not just awareness and resources, but also a need for capacity-building efforts to address the skill gaps, improvements in digital infrastructures to resolve basic issues with platforms, and diversification of the scope of work undertaken. For instance, the most recent <a title="Community Wishlist Survey 2022" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022">Community Wishlist Survey 2022</a> highlights some basic fixes that need attention− such as bugs with the search and replace function to improve search and mass uploads −to more advanced work such as expanding existing functionality in indexing, integrating structured data and <a title="Content translation group" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Content_translation_group">translation tools</a> and functionalities across Indian languages, to name a few.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A research needs assessment survey conducted by CIS-A2K last year also highlighted the need for better technological support for Wikimedia projects, and capacity-building in important areas of work in the Indian language communities. While this is not specific to Wikisource alone, observations by community members and active Wikisource contributors over the last few years illustrate that many of these concerns and knowledge gaps are prevalent in this community as well. This study was therefore an attempt to identify these challenges, by collecting baseline data on key areas of work in Indian language Wikisource projects, beginning with a focus on selected language communities, and areas of interest. The attempt was also to enable contributors to achieve a more detailed understanding of the requirements of communities, in the contexts of certain languages, and aid in developing potential strategies to address them.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Research objectives</h2>
<p>The study had two areas of focus:</p>
<ul>
<li>What are the key challenges with working on Indian language Wikisource projects currently? These may include anything from obstacles in Wikisource workflow, policies and open licences, to challenges such as quality of content and lack of community engagement?</li>
<li>What are gap areas and spaces for improvement in the infrastructure of these platforms, especially related to technological capacity, resources and training?</li></ul>
<h2>Research methods</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The study adopted a mixed methods approach, comprising a survey and interviews with community members. The survey focussed on key areas of ongoing work, and potential challenges for Wikisource projects in India - including technological support, skill-building, policies on content donation and curation, and open access and licensing. The survey was opened to all Wikisource communities and publicised on relevant mailing lists and community platforms. Simultaneously, a detailed interview questionnaire was also prepared, along with the selection criteria for interviews with community members. The project team worked with one short-term research assistant over a 2–3-month period for the data collection through interviews and surveys. The research assistant also provided translation support as needed and worked closely in coordinating with community members.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The criteria considered for selection of the language communities for the study were language family and size, amount of content on Wikisource (according to bytes/number of proofread pages), recent activity and a good track record/sustained progress and challenges with the same over the last several years. External factors, such as visibility and prevalence of the languages on other online platforms, technical and cultural resources and complexities of working with certain languages etc. were also considered during the selection process. Keeping these in mind, the languages selected for this study were as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://ta.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Tamil Wikisource</a> (One of the largest Wikisource communities in India, which has considerable content, is active and has seen steady growth over the last few years)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://as.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Assamese Wikisource</a> (A growing Wikisource community, which has also seen a lot of activity in recent years)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><a class="text external" href="https://ml.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Malayalam Wikisource</a> (A large and active Wikisource community, which in recent years has some decline in engagement, despite good resources and activity on other Wiki platforms)</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Using a purposive sampling technique, the team identified community members for interviews across these three languages and reached out over the course of six months in order to conduct semi-structured interviews. The criteria for selection of interviewees included a mix of senior/experienced and new contributors, those working across several projects and languages, those with expertise in specific/advanced technical areas of Wikisource, licensing and content donation efforts, and keeping in mind gender parity within the sample. There were however several challenges with this exercise, including basic barriers such as bad internet and phone connectivity, digital fatigue and unavailability of people due to the second wave of the pandemic, and limited time on Wikimedia projects. As a result, this method was unsuccessful, as it managed to gather very limited data for the study. The timeline of the survey was also extended as a result, and it received a total of 21 responses. The survey data offers several insights into some of these key areas of work and challenges, and the following is a report based on an analysis of this limited data set and observations on the same. Given the limited sample size and final dataset, it would be important to note that we may need several steps before the observations/findings may be considered to be representative at any scale.</p>
<h2>Observations and Learnings</h2>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As mentioned earlier, the dataset comprised of 21 respondents on the survey, many of them contributors across diverse Wikimedia projects including English and Indian language Wikipedia projects, <a title="Wikisource" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource">Wikisource</a>, <a title="Wikibooks" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks">Wikibooks</a>, <a title="Wikidata" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata">Wikidata</a>, <a title="Wikiquote" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiquote">Wikiquote</a>, <a title="Wiktionary" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary">Wiktionary</a>, <a title="Wikivoyage" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage">Wikivoyage</a>, <a title="Wikimedia Commons" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Commons">Wikimedia Commons</a>, software such as Media Wiki, and initiatives like Wikimedia in Education. The respondents ranged across nine languages (in alphabetical order) – <a class="external text" href="https://as.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Assamese</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://bn.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Bengali</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://en.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">English</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://hi.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Hindi</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://kn.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Kannada</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://mr.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Marathi</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://ml.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Malayalam</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://pa.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Punjabi</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://te.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Telugu</a> and <a class="external text" href="https://ta.wikisource.org/" rel="nofollow">Tamil</a>. Several of them are also part of user groups working in some of these languages. The experience of the contributors’ ranges from 6 months to 12 years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Almost all the respondents note that contributions towards proofreading, and bringing more content on the <a title="Wikisource" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource">Wikisource projects</a> (including work on related processes by the <a title="Volunteer Response Team" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Response_Team">Volunteer Response Team</a>, previously known as <a title="Open-source Ticket Request System" class="mw-redirect" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open-source_Ticket_Request_System">Open Source Ticket Request System</a>, and OCR) have been key milestones in their work, either as individuals or communities. Some respondents have also pointed out some new work such as audio books, and working on technological aspects, especially with gadgets and best practices shared by other global communities. The data offers some key insights into the kinds of challenges currently faced by <a title="Indic Wikisource Community" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Indic_Wikisource_Community">Indian language Wikisource contributors</a>, and what could be potential areas of improvement.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As noted in Fig.1, an overwhelming percentage of the respondents noted that ‘capacity-building and training’ (81%) is an area that needs the most improvement, followed closely by ‘community engagement’ (66%) and ‘technological infrastructure’ (57%). These are key areas that show repetitive patterns across the data set, in terms of recurring challenges as well. As noted by respondents, training in Wikisource workflows, procedure and guidance, learning to use advanced templates/techniques, recruiting new volunteers etc. have been key challenges. Community engagement has seen a dip, especially over last year with the pandemic and related decline in activity on projects, as well as events and therefore opportunities to meet. There is a need for more contributors and strategies to encourage work and retain them on the projects. Scanning and post-production processing of scans emerged as a significant challenge, given lack of resources and infrastructure, and related issues such as poor quality of scanned work and no uniformity in the book selection criteria. There are also some areas of technical support such as broken tools on Wikisource projects, missing symbols in some language tool bars, and an abundance of formatting tags which could present barriers for new contributors.</p>
<p>The following are some of the responses and observations in specific areas mentioned above:</p>
</td>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Figure2.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Figure 2" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Capacity-building and training</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As most contributors would be well aware, capacity-building and technological infrastructure are two closely connected aspects of Wikimedia projects. The responses under this thematic reflect the same, in terms of a need for better training in optimising the use of available and advanced technical skills for Wikisource projects. This includes training on specific skills and processes such as <a title="Scanning old books" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scanning_old_books">scanning</a>, <a title="en:Optical character recognition" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition">text conversion</a>, <a title="wikisource:Help:Beginner's guide to proofreading" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:Beginner%27s_guide_to_proofreading">formatting</a>, sourcing, <a title="wikisource:Help:Transclusion" class="extiw" href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:Transclusion">transclusion</a>, creating gadgets, writing bots. There is a need for better writing and spelling skills to improve the quality of content generated. The survey also suggested potential ways to address these skill gaps, all of which were seen as relevant by a majority of respondents (66.7%). [See Fig 2]</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Community Engagement</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Community engagement ranked second in terms of the challenges noted by respondents on the survey. The survey also looked at engagement in comparison with Wikipedia projects, as it has been observed that the latter see more active participation. This was confirmed by some of the responses as well. Some of the main reasons for lack of participation as noted by respondents is that Wikisource is a specialised project, that needs a specific skill-set and demands time and effort, hence may not appeal to all contributors. Also, it has lesser content and visibility compared to some of the Wikipedias or other projects which may be more easily updated. Thus, there is a need for actively recruiting new volunteers, and capacity-building to enable more contributions, as well as targeted outreach efforts in spaces related to literature and books to enhance discoverability. Some respondents also mentioned that a lack of awareness, coordination and interaction among contributors could be potential reasons. Finally, there are also external factors such as balancing volunteer work with other commitments such as family and financial problems, many contributors being students who move on to full-time careers, effects of the pandemic and paucity of time and interaction, and loss of interest over time in the projects.</p>
<p>Again, efforts to address community engagement need some strategic measures, including but not limited to community interaction, incentives and better visibility for work in, as noted in Fig.3.</p>
<h3>Technological infrastructure</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Technological infrastructure, which is one of the key areas of focus for this study, has also been a persistent challenge for Indian language communities, also given the resource-heavy work any form of computing with Indic languages entails. While some respondents did not notice any specific issues in their communities, there were some patterns or gaps that were reflected across communities. There is a need for basic hardware like scanners and good computers, or rather centralised facilities for scanning and good internet connectivity in order to cover more collections and regional areas. In addition to this, there is also a need for technical improvements such as easy-to-use widgets, gadgets and better tags to enhance formatting work as part of the transcription of texts, incorporating certain signs and symbols within toolbars, spell-checker, full list of syntaxes while proofreading, and stages for fixing mistakes and adding formatting tags. An important observation was that some language communities access and edit Wikisource on mobile phones, so there is a need for a mobile application that can provide a seamless editing experience, and connect more people with the projects. As mentioned earlier, there are also several technical fixes such as a number of pending bugs in projects. A related requirement therefore is for MediaWiki developers with good language skills to work on translation of interfaces. A few respondents also mentioned additional challenges such as improvement of new books, Graphical User Interface (GUI) and page layout, and the functionality to view Wikisource in other formats as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Some specific areas of improvement were also assessed on the survey, drawing upon a review of the <a title="Community Wishlist Survey" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey">community wishlists</a> for the last few years. These included Optical Character Recognition (OCR), translation, visual editor, transclusion, user interface, search function and export of books. While all these functionalities did not receive responses from the entire set, many found these to be key challenges. OCR received the most responses (19), with 31.6% assessing this at 1 (needs minimal updates, functional with space for innovation). Translation received 18 responses, with 38.9% marking this at 4 (major challenges, requires focused work). Similarly, transclusion also received 18 responses with about 27.8% voting at 5 (significant challenges, requires long-term effort and resources). Visual editor, search function and export of books all received 17 responses each, with a majority in all three assessing these as 5. Of these search function had more people assessing the functionality at 5 (41.2%), followed closely by visual editor and export of books (35.3% each). User interface received 16 responses, with 31.3 % of respondents assessing it at 5 as well.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Wikisource.png/@@images/5072e098-7223-42ce-b52b-71503241c5e4.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Open Access and Content Creation</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In addition to the above, content curation and related aspects of open access and relicensing are also spaces with prevalent knowledge gaps in terms of protocols and best practices, which poses a challenge for content generation on Wikisource projects. Lack of awareness about Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and relicensing in fact has been a significant impediment in content donation efforts, across projects. In this survey, a large number of respondents (42.6%) also said they were either unaware of these issues with Wikisource or about IPR itself, or mentioned that it was not applicable in this context. Among the challenges/issues mentioned, the need for simple, easily accessible advocacy material in print about open access was prominent, in order to encourage content creators/authors to share work on open licences. It was also noted that this process may be difficult for people who are not well-versed in the technical/legal aspects of the project, especially in terms of tracking down individual creators for consent to re-license and share their work. Respondents also noted that this work needs support from institutions to help set up collaborations, such as with educational organisations, publishing houses and authors, as also an understanding of official documentation and wider promotion etc. which may encourage more people to share content on open licences.</p>
<p>All of these aspects are further reflected in terms of strategies to address these issues as well, as observed in Fig. 4.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A similar disparity exists with content curation best practices as well, with a majority of respondents noting that their respective communities do not have clearly defined protocols for content curation. While such benchmarking is naturally difficult given several socio-cultural and linguistic subjectivities of each project, this also means that what makes it to Wikisource in a particular language can be defined by many factors, which also informs the quality, types and formats of content produced. Potential methods to address this include developing guidelines for content creation, and forms of review by experts as well as community members, all of which ranked high in the survey responses. ( See Fig 5)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As we did not receive enough responses on the interview questionnaires, there was not much additional qualitative data that could be gathered. There are however resonances with the survey responses, namely in terms of technical/hardware challenges such as poor quality of scanning, and the need for an app which is user-friendly and will further facilitate mobile editing, especially in areas with limited digital infrastructure and access. Some observations include the importance of the <a title="Volunteer Response Team" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Response_Team">OTRS process</a> in adding new content, and the need for better online and offline training, especially for new volunteers, in technical skills. Similarly, collaborations with educational institutions and local print media could be useful in creating more awareness, and therefore tapping into more content and resources in terms of new volunteers. Additionally, there are also some interesting observations on individual communities working on connecting work across projects, for example Wikisource and Wikiquote.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Conclusions and Recommendations</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While the scope of the study had to be reduced significantly given several methodological challenges and external factors as mentioned earlier, the analysis of data does offer some significant learnings on the current challenges prevalent across Indian language Wikisource projects. Needless to say, many of these are also fairly contextual and nuanced, depending on how well-resourced certain languages are, given factors such as basic internet connectivity and digital literacy. The following is a short summary of key recommendations from this exercise.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Technological Infrastructure:</strong> Across the board, gaps in development of technological infrastructure have been prominent, ranging from basic fixes to advanced tools and user-friendly apps that may help mitigate some of the issues related to access. It is also notable that early challenges such as OCR and translation do not present as significant obstacles here (but continue to remain areas of ongoing work); features such as the visual editor, search and export functionalities emerged as continual challenges. The need for a user-friendly mobile app is also an important observation here. Some of this work is also quite resource-intensive in terms of funding; it would be prudent to look at collaborations with related organisations and local fundraising efforts that may help facilitate the same.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Capacity-Building:</strong> Similarly, capacity-building efforts need to be strengthened within communities, given the nature of work which is specialised and often quite technical( for example the process of transclusion). In addition to bringing in new volunteers, and equipping them with the requisite skill-sets to contribute effectively, there is a need for contributors with advanced skill-sets who may be able to address more technical challenges. Efforts here could include reaching out to the wider free and open source communities for external expertise, and working on a collaborative model of workshopping around strategic issues, and developing relevant skill-sets. Community-engagement: As noted by many respondents, bringing in new volunteers and their retention on projects has been a continual challenge, also due to the factors mentioned above. Improvements in technical infrastructure and capacity-building would help address some of these challenges as well. In addition to this, as noted by respondents, developing proactive collaborations with diverse institutions and individuals (educational/media/creative practice) would help widen networks, hence creating better awareness and visibility for work, such as through social media content and may also foster better engagement.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Content Curation and Open Access:</strong> As is widely understood, discourse around open access and relicensing is layered, and the protocols often vary widely depending on linguistic factors and cultural context. Instead of developing benchmarks, it may be prudent therefore to develop accessible content on existing, global relicensing protocols, in translation across languages. These may be further used by communities to understand and engage better with efforts in content donation. Guidelines for content curation will again need to be similarly developed and modified, keeping in mind how policies also evolve and change. An important consideration here in addition to quality, is also that of ethics of access and use, especially by communities themselves.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This short study was an effort to map some of the prevalent infrastructural challenges that underlie work on Indian language Wikisource projects. The observations from this report may offer useful insights in thinking through and developing strategies to address these gaps, through collaborative efforts in training and building resources for projects.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-infrastructural-needs-of-indian-language-wikisource-projects'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-infrastructural-needs-of-indian-language-wikisource-projects</a>
</p>
No publisherPuthiya Purayil SnehaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen Content2022-10-21T13:21:20ZBlog EntryMapping Content on Gender and Sexuality in Indian Languages
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-mapping-content-on-gender-and-sexuality-in-indian-languages
<b>This research study explores content production processes on gender and sexuality in Indian languages, its digital documentation and factors that affect its availability and use on open access platforms. The research was undertaken by Yashashwini Srinivas, with editorial inputs by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Torsha Sarkar. This research was part of short-term studies undertaken at the CIS-A2K programme 2021-22.</b>
<p>Read the report on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <a class="external-link" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Mapping_Content_on_Gender_and_Sexuality_in_Indian_Languages">here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Mapping Content on Gender and Sexuality in Indian languages is a research project that studies the content production process on gender and sexuality in Indian languages and challenges it with its digital documentation. It examines the diverse nature of content creation on these topics, processes of its digitalisation and related challenges that contribute to the disparity in its availability and use on open knowledge platforms such as Wikimedia projects, and potential strategies to address the same.<br /><br />Through conversations with individuals and institutions working on gender, sexuality and allied topics like feminism, with a focus on women, non-binary and LGBTQIA+ related content, the study explores various aspects of content creation across multiple Indian languages, its access and use. Based on analysing this data and drawing on ongoing work within the mainstream discourse on gender and sexuality, the report offers a set of observations on ways to address challenges related to the gender gap in the content creation process on open knowledge platforms.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Context and Methods</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Collaborative knowledge production platforms such as Wikimedia projects have recognised the existence of a <a title="Gender gap" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_gap">gender gap and bias</a> across its projects, understood largely as disparities in participation by and content related to women and, by extension, individuals across diverse gender and sexual identities. As observed in global literature as well as by work done by Indian language communities (with a focus largely on women Wikimedians), the gap is a result of various infrastructural and socio-cultural factors, including limited access to devices and the internet; balancing professional, domestic and volunteer work; lack of technical capacity-building and communication skills; limited presence in leadership positions, and the need for safe and healthy working environments among others. Several efforts have been made globally and in Indian language communities to address these challenges.<br /><br />The issue of the gender gap, or indeed the challenges identified, are not unique to Wikimedia projects alone but are reflective of gender disparities in the public sphere and across the internet more broadly. Key learning from previous work in this space has been the need to connect these conversations and efforts to bridge the gender gap with the wider public discourse related to content creation on gender and sexuality online and in Indian languages. This study aimed to map such content with perspectives drawn from diverse gender and sexual identities. Importantly, it sought to understand better some of the infrastructural and cultural factors that shape creating such content and making it publicly available in diverse languages.<br /><br />This study was done across four Indian languages - Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu (while English remained inevitable), focusing on content under two sub-themes– a. Cultural History and b. Feminist Production/Publication. The respondents in the study included organisations and individuals working in the areas of gender, sexuality and allied areas like feminist interventions and publishing, with a focus on writers, translators, artists, and multi-format content creators and curators. The study adopted a qualitative approach and comprised 19 semi-structured interviews (including four focused group discussions with organisations). Owing to the pandemic, all interactions for this study were done through telephonic conversation, email and virtual conferencing. These interactions have helped us understand the process of content creation in these areas. These problems manifest as gendered disparities in engagement with online platforms and potential solutions to address the same.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Key Research Areas</h2>
<p>The three major thematic areas this research study focused on are as follows.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Nature of the Knowledge Produced</strong><br />Content production on gender and sexuality in Indian languages spans several areas, including education, activism, advocacy and rights and justice, to name a few, given the location of much early writing in this space within the women’s rights and several other social movements in India. Important observations on the nature of this content by respondents include the emergence of a feminist critique across fields and disciplines, active interventions in the public discourse around gender and sexuality and the need for an intersectional approach to the process of content production. The growth of content in Indian languages and their increased availability on online platforms is also an important step towards addressing the predominance of Anglocentric and academic perspectives in these areas of research and work.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Digital Spaces, and movement of Content from Paper to Pixel</strong><br />The cohort of the participants of this study has pointed out the evolution of the internet and digital tools from a luxury to a necessity but also acknowledged the widespread disparity in their access and use. However, the interesting outcome of this has been the transformation of traditional publishing methods and the emergence of cost-efficient space to produce content in various formats (like on social media) which fosters wider dissemination and engagement. However, increasing digital content production also comes with the need for advancements in digital literacy, resources and infrastructure. Digitalisation and open access to content on gender and sexuality in Indian languages is, therefore, a resource-intensive process, with related challenges such as copyright restrictions and technical limitations to access and use of Indian language content etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Indian Languages</strong><br />The content creation process on gender and sexuality in Indian languages is complex given the country's diversity. Still, socio-cultural factors continue to determine the growth and use of languages, often resulting from asymmetries of power amongst diverse communities. This includes the marginalisation of certain forms of language use and content production processes that are not seen as within the ambit of dominant languages. Further, the lack of a gender-neutral vocabulary across many Indian languages and the significant challenges in the translation are important issues that emerged in this space. While the translation of content on gender and sexuality into Indian languages from English and other foreign languages is challenging due to the lack of a gender-neutral and conceptual vocabulary, as noted earlier; the lack of reverse translations and limitations within publishing and wider circulation of content are some of the factors that continue to affect work in this space.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Learnings</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The learnings from this study outline the many challenges in content production on gender and sexuality, especially in Indian languages and its availability in digital spaces. These include the need to recognise that gendered disparities result from asymmetries of power, thus calling for a more critical outlook and intersectional approach towards the processes of content production (and related work such as translation, digitisation and archiving). They also offer several strategies and best practices drawn from observations by the respondents to address some of these gaps in content creation and circulation to ensure sustainable knowledge production ecosystems.<br /><br />These include the dire need to bridge technical and infrastructural gaps, facilitate visibility and engagement with content through collaborations with key institutions and individuals in this space, and capacity-building through developing pedagogy and tools. Further, there is a need to diversify the approach towards creating and sourcing content and creating safe working environments by developing redressal mechanisms for marginalised and vulnerable communities. As Wikimedia projects constitute a major part of the digital knowledge ecosystem and have been working towards more diversity and inclusion across their projects, a sustained approach to bridge these gaps may be adopted in the Indian context. This would contribute immensely to efforts to bridge the gender gap across Wikimedia projects and in the larger digital public sphere.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-mapping-content-on-gender-and-sexuality-in-indian-languages'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-mapping-content-on-gender-and-sexuality-in-indian-languages</a>
</p>
No publisherYashashwini SrinivasCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen Content2022-10-21T13:03:20ZBlog EntryDigitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-of-o-bharat
<b>The digitization project of O Bharat, a historic biweekly published between 1912 to 1949 in Goa was completed through collaboration of different organizations. The trustees of Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust initiated the project in collaboration with Marathi department of Goa University, Bhakti Dnyan Marg Sanstha and Goa Central Library. The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge Programme facilitated the project with technical and financial assistance. Two local students scanned 12000 pages in 8 days. The year wise volumes of O Bharat are now freely available on Wikimedia Commons in the form of archive.</b>
<table class="plain">
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/OBharatPortuguese.jpg" alt="O Bharat Portuguese" class="image-inline" title="O Bharat Portuguese" /></th><th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_OBharatMarathi.jpg" alt="O Bharat Marathi" class="image-inline" title="O Bharat Marathi" /></th>
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<td>Above: Front page of O Bharat in Portuguese</td>
<td>Above: Front page of O Bharat in Marathi</td>
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<h3>Context</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It all started like this. During the Wikimedia session at Goa University in October 2021, it was realised that there is very little documentation about the ‘Goa Liberation Struggle’ on Wikimedia projects. So, in the meeting Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar from the Marathi language department took the lead to develop a project around this theme.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The exhaustive list of freedom fighters, major incidents in history, the places related with struggle, monuments and memorials was prepared. The next day, to have a glimpse of the situation on ground, we toured a few places and <a class="text external" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Monuments_and_memorials_in_Goa">monuments in South Goa</a>. As we were shocked to see the sorry state of the memorials, we came across a monument of Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai known as Bharatkar (an editor of O Bharat), in a lush green forest near Quepem village. Being curious to know about the history of O Bharat publication, Prof. Vinay introduced us to the grandson of Bharatkar, Adv. Khagendra Desai who founded <a class="text external" href="http://www.bharatkar.info/" rel="nofollow">Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust</a>, non-profit organisation in Goa to archive the works of Bharatkar.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As both of us share the same vision, CIS-A2K partnered with Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust, to relicense and digitise freedom fighter Bharatkar’s ‘O Bharat,’ a Marathi-Portuguese bilingual weekly, currently housed at <a class="text external" href="http://centrallibrary.goa.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Goa Central Public Library</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">About the 36 Year Run of ‘O Bharat’ upto India’s Independence</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Freedom fighter, social reformer and journalist 'Bharat'kar Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai, (7th Nov 1885 - 15th Aug 1949), started 'O Bharat' (in Portuguese) or 'Bharat' (in Marathi) on 6th November 1912. For 36 years thereafter, Bharatkar courageously protested the Portuguese occupation, relentlessly advocated radical and progressive social reforms and doggedly championed the cause of an independent and sovereign Indian Goa.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Partnerships</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The partnerships with various stakeholders were developed after a <a class="text external" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Digitisation_review_and_partnerships_in_Goa">series of discussions</a> and official communications. The Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust obtained official permissions from the State Government departments for the access of O Bharat volumes in the library. Goa Central Public Library provided access to the bound volumes of O Bharat and permission to scan them. Another local organisation, Bhakti Dnyan Marg Sanstha in association with Goa University Marathi Department identified few students for the digitisation.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The trustees of Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust relicensed the two volumes of selected editorials published in 2018 and the whole O Bharat issues into CC-BY-SA 4.0. We conducted digitisation training with Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar and students, Shravani Parab and Shridhar Raut, from Goa University to scan 12000 pages in 8 days. The officials of Goa Central Public Library cooperated in access to original volumes and in the process of digitisation. The Chief Minister of Goa inaugurated the <a class="text external" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:O_Bharat">project on Wikimedia Commons</a> on India’s 75th Independence day, 15 August 2022. The year wise volumes of ‘O Bharat’ are now freely accessible to anyone in the world at any time anywhere. The uploading of the volumes is in progress.</p>
<h3>Media links</h3>
<p>The event of launching digitised content on Wikimedia was very well received by the people in Goa. The researchers, students, readers and journalists will have this reference value content while exploring the history of Goa. Various national and local media published the news covering all the aspects of this archive. The links are given below -</p>
<ul>
<li><a class="text external" href="https://epaper.dainikgomantak.com/FlashClient/Show_Story_IPad.aspx?storySrc=http://epaper-sakal-application.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/DainikGomantakEpaperData/DainikGomantak/GOA/2022/08/18/Main/DainikGomantak_Goa_2022_08_18_Main_DA_013/588_1306_1362_2406.jpg&uname=" rel="nofollow">News in Gomantak</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="https://epaper.navhindtimes.in/" rel="nofollow">News in Navhind Times</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="http://epaper.thegoan.net/m5/3564268/Goan-Varta/Goan-Varta#page/3/1" rel="nofollow">News in Goan Varta</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="http://epaper.navprabha.com/" rel="nofollow">News in Navprabha</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p>This was originally published on <a class="external-link" href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/September_2022/Contents/India_report">Wikimedia Blog</a> in September 2022</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-of-o-bharat'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-of-o-bharat</a>
</p>
No publishersubodhCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaGLAMWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen ContentOpenness2022-10-11T14:53:58ZBlog EntryDigitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-o-bharat
<b>It all started like this. During the Wikimedia session at Goa University in October 2021, it was realised that there is very little documentation about the ‘Goa Liberation Struggle’ on Wikimedia projects. So, in the meeting Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar from the Marathi language department took the lead to develop a project around this theme.</b>
<h3><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Bharat.png" alt="Bharat" class="image-inline" title="Bharat" /></h3>
<h3>Context</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>The exhaustive list of freedom fighters, major incidents in history, the places related with struggle, monuments and memorials was prepared. The next day, to have a glimpse of the situation on ground, we toured a few places and </span><a class="text external" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Monuments_and_memorials_in_Goa">monuments in South Goa</a><span>. As we were shocked to see the sorry state of the memorials, we came across a monument of Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai known as Bharatkar (an editor of O Bharat), in a lush green forest near Quepem village. Being curious to know about the history of O Bharat publication, Prof. Vinay introduced us to the grandson of Bharatkar, Adv. Khagendra Desai who founded </span><a class="text external" href="http://www.bharatkar.info/" rel="nofollow">Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust</a><span>, non-profit organisation in Goa to archive the works of Bharatkar.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As both of us share the same vision, CIS-A2K partnered with Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust, to relicense and digitise freedom fighter Bharatkar’s ‘O Bharat,’ a Marathi-Portuguese bilingual weekly, currently housed at <a class="text external" href="http://centrallibrary.goa.gov.in/" rel="nofollow">Goa Central Public Library</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">About the 36 Year Run of ‘O Bharat’ upto India’s Independence</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Freedom fighter, social reformer and journalist 'Bharat'kar Govind Pundalik Hegde Desai, (7th Nov 1885 - 15th Aug 1949), started 'O Bharat' (in Portuguese) or 'Bharat' (in Marathi) on 6th November 1912. For 36 years thereafter, Bharatkar courageously protested the Portuguese occupation, relentlessly advocated radical and progressive social reforms and doggedly championed the cause of an independent and sovereign Indian Goa.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Partnerships</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The partnerships with various stakeholders were developed after a <a class="text external" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Digitisation_review_and_partnerships_in_Goa">series of discussions</a> and official communications. The Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust obtained official permissions from the State Government departments for the access of O Bharat volumes in the library. Goa Central Public Library provided access to the bound volumes of O Bharat and permission to scan them. Another local organisation, Bhakti Dnyan Marg Sanstha in association with Goa University Marathi Department identified few students for the digitisation.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Digitisation process and launch on Wikimedia Commons</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The trustees of Bharatkar Hegde Desai Trust relicensed the two volumes of selected editorials published in 2018 and the whole O Bharat issues into CC-BY-SA 4.0. We conducted digitisation training with Prof. Vinay Madgaonkar and students, Shravani Parab and Shridhar Raut, from Goa University to scan 12000 pages in 8 days. The officials of Goa Central Public Library cooperated in access to original volumes and in the process of digitisation. <span>The Chief Minister of Goa inaugurated the </span><a class="text external" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:O_Bharat">project on Wikimedia Commons</a><span> on India’s 75th Independence day, 15 August 2022. The year wise volumes of ‘O Bharat’ are now freely accessible to anyone in the world at any time anywhere. The uploading of the volumes is in progress.</span></p>
<h3>Media links</h3>
<p>The event of launching digitised content on Wikimedia was very well received by the people in Goa. The researchers, students, readers and journalists will have this reference value content while exploring the history of Goa. Various national and local media published the news covering all the aspects of this archive. The links are given below -</p>
<ul>
<li><a class="text external" href="https://epaper.dainikgomantak.com/FlashClient/Show_Story_IPad.aspx?storySrc=http://epaper-sakal-application.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/DainikGomantakEpaperData/DainikGomantak/GOA/2022/08/18/Main/DainikGomantak_Goa_2022_08_18_Main_DA_013/588_1306_1362_2406.jpg&uname=" rel="nofollow">News in Gomantak</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="https://epaper.navhindtimes.in/" rel="nofollow">News in Navhind Times</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="http://epaper.thegoan.net/m5/3564268/Goan-Varta/Goan-Varta#page/3/1" rel="nofollow">News in Goan Varta</a></li>
<li><a class="text external" href="http://epaper.navprabha.com/" rel="nofollow">News in Navprabha</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p><span>This was originally published on </span><a class="external-link" href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/September_2022/Contents/India_report">Wikimedia Blog</a><span> in September 2022</span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-o-bharat'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-o-bharat</a>
</p>
No publishersubodhCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaA2K ResearchOpen ContentOpenness2022-10-11T13:11:15ZBlog EntryCIS Signs MoU with Odia Virtual Academy
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-signs-mou-with-odia-virtual-academy
<b>On October 26, 2018, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Odia Virtual Academy (OVA) to work on drafting an open content policy for the state, to promote use of Wikimedia projects by various user types and to ensure sustainability of Wikimedia projects, and to facilitate development of relevant free and open source software projects. This partnership between OVA and CIS will be carried out from December 2018 to November 2019, and we are sharing an overview of the activities and their objectives in this post.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The internet is increasingly significant as a knowledge repository today. Especially relevant in this context is the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which contains information on almost every topic under the sun, across many languages spoken globally, and is used extensively all people to seek information and produce knowledge.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">From past one year (since July 2017), The Government of Odisha has been actively participating in the open knowledge movement by publishing the content of their seven websites and eight social media accounts under Creative Commons 4.0 International license. This active collaboration with Government of Odisha and an active Odia Wikimedia community seeking to create and distribute knowledge in Odia language over the internet has resulted in improving 1,200 articles on different Wikimedia projects, and together has received a near about 16 Million page views. Further, the Government of Odisha adopting an open content policy will provide a significant boost in institutionalising creation, sharing, and re-use of open knowledge resources - including government documents, official statistics, open educational resources, and open cultural resources - in Odia language.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://ova.gov.in/en/" target="_blank">Odia Virtual Academy (OVA)</a> is an organisation established by Government of Odisha for development, promotion and popularization of Odia language, literature, and lexicography for general use. It is an organised initiative to encourage expeditious evolution and popularisation of Odia books, magazines, journals, old songs, manuscripts, assembly speeches, and archival records by digitising and providing internet based resources and opportunities for all odia people living across the globe.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On October 26, 2018, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) signed a MoU with the Odia Virtual Academy to work on drafting an open content policy for the state, to promote use of Wikimedia projects by various user types and to ensure sustainability of Wikimedia projects, and to facilitate development of relevant free and open source software projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This partnership between OVA and CIS will be carried out from December 2018 to November 2019, and its activities are structured by the following objectives:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Open Content Policy for the Government of Odisha:</b> The open content policy will include guidelines for the use of open licenses and open standards to enable the resource (text, resources or otherwise) publishing entity to share resources in a manner that it can be easily and freely be accessed, shared, and re-used by entities, without asking for prior permission, while ensuring that full attribution to the creator/publisher is provided and the resources are not misused, or the creator/publisher is not misrepresented in the process.<br /><br /></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Developing Digital and Open Knowledge Resources in Odia Language:</b> The CIS team will undertake awareness-building, training, and outreach activities to develop Odia language content on Wikimedia ecosystem, as well as to enable content creators from across institutions, with a focus on state government officials at district headquarters and college students. The broad mandate of the digital resource generation workshop is to introduce teachers, students, and interested citizens to tools of collaborative knowledge production on the internet and methods for generating new online content or reintroduce offline content in Odia language.<br /><br /></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>‘Revive Odia’ Activities:</b> Odia as a language has a long tradition and has been medium of expression for the native speakers of Odisha. While Odia as a language of communication is not under any immediate threat, its role and responsibility as a language of Knowledge needs to be examined carefully. ‘Revive Odia’ activities have a simple objective: <i>To bring Odia under limelight in the digital domain</i>. Wikimedia projects in Odia language are working actively to increase the presence of Odia language on the Internet. If such projects can be supported new projects can be incubated, Odia will emerge as the language of knowledge production and distribution as well.<br /><br /></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) Partnerships:</b> Wikimedia ecosystem offer several platforms for using the power and opportunities of internet to (digitally) preserve, enable access to, and creative re-use of historical, cultural, and social artefacts, and channel the expertise of local populations to build narratives around these artefacts. The CIS team is particularly interested in initiating engagement with public GLAM institutions at various locations and levels, and work with academic and research community to build scientific metadata of these objects. The metadata will be used to represent the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of Odisha in projects such as Wikidata.<br /><br /></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Building and Supporting FOSS for Odia Language:</b> To promote and enable usage of Odia language on the web, the CIS team will facilitate development of an Odia font, an input tool, and a spell-check dictionary - all of which will be released as FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) resources.</li>
</ul>
<p>To undertake these activities, CIS will receive a grant of Rs 20,00,000 (~$28,000) from OVA.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-signs-mou-with-odia-virtual-academy'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-signs-mou-with-odia-virtual-academy</a>
</p>
No publishersaileshOpen Educational ResourcesCIS-A2KOpen LicenseAccess to KnowledgeOpen DataWikipediaOpen ContentOdia WikipediaOpen AccessWikimedia2018-12-20T00:24:44ZBlog EntryShould Indian Researchers Pay to Get their Work Published
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/eprints-iisc-ernet-october-29-2016-muthu-madhan-siva-shankar-kimidi-subbiah-gunasekaran-subbiah-arunachalam-should-indian-researchers-pay-to-get-their-work-published
<b>We raise the financial and ethical issue of paying for getting papers published in professional journals. Indian researchers have published more than 37,000 papers in over 880 open access journals from 61 countries in the five years 2010-14 as seen from Science Citation Index Expanded. This accounts for about 14.4% of India’s overall publication output, considerably higher than the 11.6% from the world. Indian authors have used 488 OA journals levying article processing charge (APC), ranging from INR 500 to US$5,000, in the five years to publish about 15,400 papers.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The research paper jointly authored by Muthu Madhan, Siva Shankar Kimidi, Subbiah Gunasekharan, and Subbiah Arunachalam was published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/54926/1/Post-print_APC_paper.pdf">Indian Institute of Science Repository</a> on October 29, 2016.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">More than half of these papers were published in just 13 journals. PLoS One and Current Science are the OA journals Indian researchers use most often. Most leading Indian journals are open access and they do not charge APC. Use of OA journals levying APC has increased over the four years from 242 journals and 2557 papers in 2010 to 328 journals and 3,634 papers in 2014. There has been an increase in the use of non-APC journals as well, but at a lower pace. About 27% of all Indian papers in OA journals are in ‘Clinical Medicine,’ and 11.7% in ‘Chemistry.’ Indian researchers have used nine mega journals to publish 3,100 papers. We estimate that India is potentially spending about US$2.4 million annually on APCs and suggest that it would be prudent for Indian authors to make their work freely available through interoperable repositories, a trend that is growing significantly in Latin America and China, especially when research is facing a funding crunch.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We further suggest bringing all Indian OA journals on to a single platform similar to SciELO, and all repositories be harvested by CSIR-URDIP which is already managing the OA repositories of the laboratories of CSIR, DBT and DST. Such resource sharing will not only result in enhanced efficiency and reduced overall costs but also facilitate use of standard metadata among repositories.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">More than two decades ago Harnad posted his subversive proposal to a mailing list in which he called on researchers “to make copies of all the papers they published in scholarly journals freely available on the internet.”<sup>1,2</sup> Many researchers now make their papers freely available either by publishing them in open access (OA) journals or by placing them in repositories or websites. Indeed, a 2013 report asserted that by 2011 “free availability of a majority of papers has been reached in general science and technology, in biomedical research, biology, and mathematics, and statistics,” and that the number of open access papers has been growing by about 2% a year.<sup>3</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Journals make papers open access in two ways: OA journals make all papers open access immediately on publication, and hybrid OA journals make selected papers open access. Most OA journals listed in the <i>Directory of Open Access Journals</i> (<i>DOAJ</i>) do not charge to make a paper open access<i>. Current Science </i>is such a journal. Many OA journals – about 26% according to Solomon and Björk<sup>4</sup> – and all hybrid OA journals levy an article processing charge (APC) to provide OA to a paper. However, according to Crotty,<sup>5 </sup>the majority of OA papers are published by paying an APC. The APC levied by journals used by Indian researchers is in the range INR 500 (~US$8) - US$5,000.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">OA journal publishing, particularly by commercial publishers and in the field of biomedicine, is growing rapidly. According to <i>DOAJ</i> there are 9,192 OA journals as of 2 September 2016 published from 130 countries and one can access more than 2.27 million articles. Currently, <i>DOAJ </i>is growing at the net rate of 6 titles per day.<sup>6</sup> The <i>Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources</i> (<i>ROAD</i>) lists 14,031 OA journals published from some 140 countries.<sup>7</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Repositories, where full texts of research publications are deposited and made available online, are of two kinds: central repositories, such as <i>arXiv</i>, and distributed (or institutional) repositories, such as the University of Southampton institutional research repository, <eprints.soton.ac.uk>, the first of its kind. <b> </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Here we are concerned only with the open access journals which make all content open access immediately on publication. Further, our interest is in papers from India that are published in journals levying APC. The question we are particularly interested in is, ‘is paid open access affordable for India?’ And, even if it is affordable, should we go for it?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We assessed the current status of the use of OA journals by Indian researchers using bibliometric analysis of data gathered from <i>Web of Science – Science Citation Index Expanded</i> (<i>SCIE</i>). We used this analysis to find out the number of papers Indian researchers have published in OA journals charging APC, leading to an estimate of the amount the country as a whole would potentially have spent on APC costs, and to see if publishing in paid OA journals led to higher levels of citations.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Methodology</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We searched for articles, letters, proceedings papers and reviews from India in OA journals</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">indexed in <i>SCIE</i> in the five years 2010-2014. The search made on 11 January 2016 resulted in</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">37,122 papers. Of these, 44 papers resulting from five international collaborations (CMS,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">ATLAS, ALICE, STAR and FAITH), and appearing in journals such as <i>Physics Letters B</i>, <i>New Journal of Physics</i>, <i>Nuclear Physics B</i> and <i>BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders</i>, had a very large number of authors (running to several hundreds). We removed them from the data set as they hindered processing the data. Thus we considered 37,078 papers. We downloaded full bibliographic data for all these and analysed the data using Visual FoxPro and found that Indian researchers have used 881 OA journals in which to publish these papers. We visited the web site of each of these journals during January- February 2016 to find out information on APCs levied by them. Also we classified the journals into 22 major field categories following the <i>Essential Science Indicators </i>(ESI) classification. This classification does not allocate journals to multiple fields. We identified papers in which at least one author was from a country other than India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Using the same strategy as used for Indian publications, we recorded the number of papers published by 12 other countries and the proportion of OA papers (data gathered on 29 January 2016).</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Results</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We present here the key findings. Details of our bibliometric analysis are available from the</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">authors and will soon be presented in a report.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Use of OA journals by researchers</i><b> – </b>In the five years considered, SCIE had indexed 6,460,105 papers, of which 748,127 (or 11.58%) were in OA journals. In Fig. 1<b>,</b> we present the share of proportion of journal publications which have appeared in OA journals in 13 countries in the 5year period 2010-2014. Brazil has the highest proportion (close to one in three papers), with</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India coming a distant second (one in seven papers). That Brazil leads is not surprising. Long before the OA movement began, the funding community led by the São Paulo Science</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Foundation (FAPSEP) and the information community led by the Latin American and Caribbean</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Center on Health Sciences Information recognized the need for strengthening the visibility of the Brazilian journals, and initiated the SciELO movement in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, in 1997, which later spread to Chile and the rest of Ibero-America and South Africa.<sup>8</sup> As Vessuri et al.<sup>9</sup> have pointed out, a strong sense of public mission among Latin American universities, coupled with the realization that OA improves the presence and impact of Latin American research publications led Latin America to develop its own knowledge exchange mechanisms on its own terms.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Estimates of the proportion of open access papers vary widely depending on the source used and when the estimate was made. For example, by analysing journals indexed in <i>Scopus</i> we found that 4,231 of the 22,460 active titles (as of 6 February 2016) were OA (as seen from <i>DOAJ</i> on September 2015) and were listed in either or both of <i>DOAJ</i> and <i>ROAD</i>.<sup>10</sup> Of the more than</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">12,000 journals covered by <i>Web of Science,</i> 1,313 journals are OA as of October 2015 as listed</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">by <i>DOAJ</i>.<sup>11</sup> Analyzing data from <i>Google Scholar</i>, Jamali and Nabavi showed that more than 61% of papers were accessible in full text.<sup>12</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Use of journals charging APC</i> - In 2010, Indian researchers had published their work in 479 OA journals, of which 237 did not charge APC. The number of OA journals used by Indian researchers to publish their work is increasing (Table 1). It has risen from 445 in 2009<sup>13</sup> to 611 in 2014. More than half of the 611 journals levy APC.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Not all journals charging APC have a fixed APC. There are many models. Of the 881 <i>SCIE</i>indexed OA journals which Indian researchers have used, 488 charge a fee: 437 charge a fixed APC, 49 levy page charges, and two charge a non-refundable submission fee. Contrary to</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Crotty’s observation that the majority of OA papers are published by paying an APC,<sup>5</sup> Indian authors publish a larger number of papers in non-APC journals. However, papers published in journals levying APC are cited a larger number of times on average.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The APC OA journal used most often by Indian researchers in the five-year period is <i>PLoS One</i> with a total publication count of 2,404 and average cites per paper (CPP) of 7.32. Starting with 78 papers in 2009,<sup>13</sup> the number increased to 724 papers from India in 2014. Indeed, <i>Current Science</i>, which comes next in the list with 2,334 papers with a CPP of 1.74, was the leader until 2011.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Overseas collaboration </i>- All authors are from India in 30,152 of the 37,078 papers published by Indian researchers in the 881 OA journals; this includes papers in which all authors are from the same institution as well as papers with authors from more than one Indian institution. These papers have been cited 78,722 times for a CPP of 2.61. There are 6,926 papers with at least one author from an address outside India, and these have been cited 39,031 times for a CPP of 5.63.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Indian researchers have collaborated with authors from some 115 countries. Collaborators are mainly from USA (2,191 papers), UK (815 papers) and Germany (708 papers).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Country of journal publication </i>- Indian authors have published in OA journals from 61 countries. More than half (18,781) were published in 48 Indian journals, six of which charge APC. As one would expect, US and UK journals followed Indian journals in the number of papers published: 7,647 papers were published in 149 US journals of which 107 charge APC, and 2,834 papers were published in 172 UK journals of which 162 charge APC. Indian researchers have published</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">675 papers in 54 Brazilian OA journals of which nine levy APC, 229 papers in 9 Chilean OA journals of which two levy APC, 231 papers in 14 journals published from China of which five charge APC in the five yeras. In these five years Indian authors have published 652 papers in seven Nigerian APC journals. Of these, all but one were delisted from <i>Web of Science</i> after a few years of coverage. Such delisting is all too common. Of the 881 journals studied here, only 263 have been used by Indian researchers in all five years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i> </i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Citations to papers published in journals levying APC</i> – Number of papers by Indian researchers in 57 journals charging APC and publishing at least 10 papers from India and has a CPP of not less than 10 are listed in Table 2. Table 3 lists the 10 journals that do not levy APC and have been cited at least 10 times on average in the five years. Three journals, viz. <i>Nucleic Acids Research</i>, <i>PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases</i>, and <i>BMC Genomics</i>, all of which charge an APC of well over US$2,000, have published more than 100 papers from India. In all three journals, CPP of Indian papers are less than CPP of the journal as a whole, and there is a big difference between the CPP of papers written solely by Indian authors and that of those written in collaboration with foreign authors. For example, <i>Nucleic Acids Research</i> has published 138 papers from India (CPP 14.09) out of a total of 6,614. The journal’s average CPP for the 5-year period is 25.29 as against India’s CPP of 14.09. The 80 papers entirely written by Indian researchers has a CPP of less than 10, and the CPP of the 58 papers with foreign collaborators is more than 22.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As many as 92 papers have appeared in 10 OA journals which do not charge APC, none of which are from India, and these have been cited more than 15 times on average. Of the 92 papers, 41 were published in the <i>Bulletin of the World Health Organization</i> at a CPP of about 12.5. In contrast, the CPP of the 478 papers published in the journal during the five years is above 15.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Use of mega journals- </i>Indian authors have published 3,100 papers in nine mega journals where the papers are accepted without applying the usual standards of strict peer review if they are perceived to be technically sound (Table 4).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Papers classified by field - </i>It is in Clinical Medicine that Indian researchers have published in the largest number of OA journals (208) as well as contributing the largest number of papers (10,036). They have published in 88 journals in the field of Plant and Animal Science, but have published a much larger number of papers in both Chemistry and Biology & Biochemistry in a smaller number of journals.<i> </i></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Discussion</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over 14.4% of the 37,122 papers from India as seen from <i>SCIE</i> have been published in OA journals. The actual number of OA papers from India will be much larger since, for example,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Scopus</i> is likely to have indexed a larger number of such papers. Additionally, there are papers published in hybrid OA journals and papers published in non-OA journals that are made open access by placing them in institutional or central repositories or freely available through author websites, which indicates that there is a welcome growing awareness of the need for making one’s work OA. Our earlier study<sup>13</sup> has revealed that some 16% of Indian papers were pulished in OA journals indexed in SCIE 2009, but in that study we had considered all categories of papers from OA journals collected comprehensively from various sources.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Potential spend on APC seen in perspective </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We estimated the total APC for all 14,293 papers published by Indian authors in OA journals charging a fixed APC (leaving out 7% of all OA papers charging variable APC). We found there is an average cost of ~ US$1,173 per paper. We compared this figure with the costs on APCs incurred by institutions elsewhere.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">From a survey of a large sample of journals listed in DOAJ carried out in 2014, Morrison <i>et al</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">reported an average APC of US$964.<sup>14</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Wellcome Trust, which supports payment of charges incurred by their grantees, reported a total spend of about £4.7 million paid for 2,556 papers, published in OA or hybrid journals, in 2013-14 at an average APC of £1,837. Close to 60% of these papers were published in the journals of the five leading publishers, and of these 68% were in hybrid journals. In 2014-15, the</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Charity Open Access Fund, comprising the Trust and five other funders, had paid more than £5.6 million towards APCs for 2,942 papers at an average cost of £1,914.<sup>15</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In its report dated March 2015, RCUK indicated an average APC of £1,600, based on APC paid for 6,504 papers from 55 universities during the two years 2013-14 and 2014-15. The average APC paid varies from university to university, from £778 for the School of Oriental & African</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Studies to £2,248 for Durham University.<sup>16</sup> Over the 15-month period April 2013 – July 2014,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Leeds University alone had paid publishers a little over £270,000, of which about £10,000 was for colour and page charges. For the 166 RCUK funded papers for which APCs were paid during the review period, the average cost of APC was £1,626.74.<sup>17 </sup>University of Cambridge spent</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">£936,000 towards APC in 2014. For the 495 RCUK funded papers the average cost was £1,891.<sup>18</sup> Besides this, the university has also supported payment of page and colour charges and has paid for researchers to join memberships that offer a discount for APCs out of the RCUK fund. There is a growing concern in the university if they should be spending so much money on</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">APCs.<sup>18</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Björk and Solomon, in their report submitted to a consortium of European funding agencies in March 2014, had estimated the average APC from a study of journals indexed in <i>Scopus</i> for at least two years to be US$ 1,418.<sup>19</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Gerritsma reported that in 2013, the Netherlands had spent €4 million towards 3,314 papers published in OA journals charging APC and in hybrid journals, and indexed in <i>SCIE</i>, at an average APC of €1,220.<sup>20 </sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In 2015, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) spent over €418,000 on APCs for 288 papers in Gold OA journals (average €2,376) and €2.38 million on APCs for 913 papers (average €1,453). In addition FWF incurred an expenditure of €273,600 on other costs.<sup>21</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The variation is to be expected, as the sampled journals vary and in the case of India a substantial number of low-APC journals would have been used. Wang et al. have found that the level of APCs varies with the region. European and North American APC OA journals have average</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">APC of more than US$2000, while Asian, African and South American APC OA journals have average APC of less than US$1000.<sup>22</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">If we assume that APC was paid in full for all the 14,297 papers (4,775 with foreign collaborators and 9,522 by exclusively Indian authors) published by Indian authors in OA journals charging APC, the total expenditure would be around US$16.75 million. This figure does not include the APC for the other 7% of papers published in journals charging APC on the basis of number of pages, submission fee, and so on. Nor does it include the expenditure on OA papers published in hybrid journals. These journals usually charge much more than journals with fixed APC. According to Björk and Solomon (2014), the average APC for publication charged by hybrid journals published by subscription publishers (such as Elsevier and Wiley) is US$</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">2,727, almost double that chaged by fully OA journals published by non-subscription publishers (such as PLoS), US$ 1,418.<sup>19</sup> It is possible that APCs for many papers jointly authored with foreign collaborators might have been paid by the other party. Also, in some cases authors might have been granted either a fee waiver or a discount. Allowing for these possibilities, we may assume that the sum spent would still be very high, more than<b> ~</b>US$12 million, or an average of US$2.4 million a year. This amount is in addition to the national expenditure on its academic and research library budget. Data releaesed early this year as part of the Natioanl Institutional Ranking Framework (https://www.nirfindia.org/Ranking) exercise reveal that the academic and library budget is by no means small.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b> </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Author pays model has failed </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In the initial years of the ‘author pays’ OA journals, the hope was that OA publishing would be cheaper than subscription publishing. Eisen claimed that APC would go down “and will continue to do so, asymptotically approaching zero.”<sup>23</sup> What we see in reality, however, is that the APC charged by <i>PLoS One</i> has gone up from US$1,250 when it was founded in December 2006 to US$1,450 now. The APC charged by <i>PLoS Biology</i> and <i>PLoS Medicine</i> has increased from</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">US$1,500 at launch in 2003 to US$2,900 in 2012, a rise of 93% in nine years.<sup>23</sup> The situation at</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">BioMed Central is no different. Comparing the APC levied by the 165 BMC titles between 2010 and 2016, Wheatly has shown that for many titles there has been a substantial rise.<sup>24</sup> Neylon, a former employee of PLoS had recently conceded that “no functional market is emerging and it</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(APC model) might be the wrong economic model.”<sup>25</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When the high energy physics community and librarians from more than 20 countries negotiated with publishers to make key journals OA, it resulted in a contract with 11 publishers that would ensure they could make 10 journals OA immediately on publication and, in return, continue to make the profits they were making earlier with the subscription model. From its inception in</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">January 2014, SCOAP<sup>3</sup> is making papers available on an OA basis and it charges an average</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">APC of US$1,165.<sup>26</sup> According to Morrison,<sup>6</sup> <a href="https://scoap3.org/">“</a><a href="https://scoap3.org/">SCOAP</a><a href="https://scoap3.org/"><sup>3</sup></a> <a href="https://scoap3.org/">n</a>early doubled in size this past year</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(87% annual growth) for a total of 4,690 documents,” and “the <a href="http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?bibid=AAAAA&colors=7&lang=en">Electronic Journals Library</a> added 3,612 journals that can be read free-of-charge in the past year, for a total of 52,000 journals, a</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">7% growth rate.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As early as 1999, Rosenzweig<sup>27</sup> pointed out that the world of knowledge was being “kidnapped and held for ransom” by commercial publishers who have “turned renegade, exiling themselves from the academic enterprise, and focusing entirely on making the most money for their stockholders” and in the process “restricting the flow of knowledge.” Laakso and Björk have pointed out that today commercial publishers are the most common publisher of OA papers and the number of papers published by them jumped from 13,400 in 2005 to 119,900 in 2011.<sup>28</sup> Björk and Solomon<sup>19</sup> have shown that “among the established OA publishers with journals listed in <i>Scopus</i>, the average APC grew by about 5% a year over the two years 2012 – 2013.” Taking such increases into account, India’s APC bill is bound to grow far beyond the US$2.4 million in the future. These cost increases are unpredictable, making it difficult for organizations willing to pay APC to make appropriate provisions in their budgets.</p>
<h3><sub>Affordable OA publishing</sub></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Concerned about the high subscription costs and audience-limiting access rules of many traditional journals and the high levels of APCs charged by OA journals, many editorial boards broke away from publishers of such journals ‘in order to launch a comparable journal with a friendlier publisher or less-restrictive access policy.’<sup> 29</sup> The most recent example is the <i>en masse</i> resignation of Rooryck and the other members of the editorial board of <i>Lingua</i> to start <i>Glossa</i>.<sup>30</sup> An early example was the resignation of the editor of <i>Evolutionary Ecology</i> along with many members of the editorial board to start <i>Evolutionary Ecology Research</i> in 1998.<sup>29 </sup>Suber maintains a list of such ‘Journal declarations of independence.’<sup>29</sup> Gowers, a strong opponent of publishers making tall claims about the value they add to publications and the huge subscription prices they charge, has launched an <i>arXiv</i> overlay journal called <i>Discreet Analysis</i>, owned by a group of researchers, in which the overall cost per article will be well below $30.<sup>31</sup> His idea is to demonstrate that “in the internet age, and in particular in an age when it is becoming routine for mathematicians to deposit their articles on the <i>arXiv</i> before they submit them to journals, the only important function left for journals is organizing peer review.”<sup> 31</sup> How will these journals survive? Initially, the Association of Dutch Universities and The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research will fund <i>Glossa </i>so it can be completely free for both authors and readers, and the Open Libraries of the Humanities will take over the funding after five years.<sup>32 </sup>Seed money from the University of Cambridge will see through <i>Discreet Analysis in</i> the first five years.<sup>31 </sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"It’s important [that these alternative models] acquire a reputation and prestige that people can feel it’s okay to submit to them — rather than the more established traditional journals — without damaging their careers," Gowers says.<sup>32</sup> "We need an alternative, cheap system sitting there — at which point the commercial publishers will become redundant."<sup>33</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Should Indian researchers spend a large sum on APCs?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Why do authors choose to publish in certain journals? Scientists want their work not only to be seen and read but also to be appreciated and cited. For them publications are the culmination of their research and a means of achieving prestige and visibility. Moreover, the journals in which authors publish play an important role in the way the global community of scientists and funding agencies evaluate a scientist. Authors choose journals that would bring them maximum visibility, prestige and citations. Although there have been many discssions in recent times about the place of citations in scholarly communication and the undue importance paid to journal impact factors,<sup>34</sup> scientists of all age groups look forward to their papers being cited repeatedly and quickly, and journals proudly advertise their impact factors on their cover pages. Scientists do not really care if a journal is OA or if it charges APC (as long as their institution or funder is ready to cover the costs), nor surprisingly are they chary of surrendering all rights to their paper to the publisher. Many journals charging APC satisfy authors’expectations to a lesser or greater extent and authors are able to find the ones that would accept their papers. In addition, many of the journals run by major commercial publishers are run professionally and their unified graphical appearance gives them an identity. As scholarly communication moves from print to online, these publishers take advantage of emerging technological tools and standards to offer the research community ever better ways of presenting their content and they also energetically market their journals. PLoS, which was started with a view to fighting the commercial publishers, has spent US$3 million on software development in 2013-14 and more than US$413,000 on marketing and advertising in addition to expenses on promotion.<sup>35</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The question, from the point ofview of authors, is, “is it all right to spend huge sums for getting papers published in OA journals?” No, says Balaram, former director of Indian Institute of Science. He believes that Indian researchers should not use government funds – money given for research - to subsidize non-Indian journals, and that the money spent on APCs could be better spent on research per se or on libraries.<sup>36</sup> Williams-Jones and colleagues belive that “for many sectors of academe, ‘paying to publish’ is ethically suspicious.<sup>37 </sup>Such an ethical concern has also been raised by Wilson and Golonka.<sup>38</sup> There are other voices from the global South opposed to OA through APC. Babini of the Latin American Social Science Council asserts that paying huge sums as APC could increase the overall costs of research and financially undermine a nation’s research and scientific publishing ecosystem.<sup>39</sup> Nilsen says paying to publish represents a new apartheid system, and that “we need to move away from a system where someone decides who should have access to what.”<sup>40 </sup>For the sake of the global public good, Nilsen recommends that we should abandon the discriminative APC-based publishing practice and adopt open access through repositories.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The APC model of OA is not serving the true purpose of OA, which aims to create a level playing field for access to research. The APC levied by <i>PLoS Biology</i> and <i>PLoS Medicine</i> is roughly equal to half of a month’s salary for an assistant professor in the United States, but more than two months of salary for an assistant professor in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Moreover, at a time when science is facing a funding crunch, it would be prudent for Indian researchers and research institutions to refrain from paying APCs to journals. A few months ago, both Rao and Swaminathan lamented the shortage of funds for research,<sup>41,42</sup> and more recently the Ministry of Human Resource Development announced some budgetary cuts for Indian Institutes of Technology<sup>43</sup> and the Ministry of Science & Technlogy has told the CSIR laboratories to fund reseach by themselves and to convert ongoing projects into for-profit ventures.<sup>44</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>What is the alternative model for making research OA?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What is the alternative to publishing in paid OA journals? Balaram suggests that the authors could publish their papers without paying APC and still make them open through interoperable institutional repositories.<sup>36,45</sup> Joshi has explained the advantages of depositing one’s papers in such repositories.<sup>46</sup> Authors may wonder if making a paper available through such a repository is equivalent to publishing in an OA or hybrid OA journal. The answer is yes, very nearly. Journals may insist on an embargo and they may let the author deposit only the author postprint (the refereed version). Experts such as Harnad would recommend the adoption of OA through repositories worldwide so that institutions could cancel subscriptions and use the savings to pay for the much lower-priced, affordable, sustainable OA journals.<sup>47</sup> Use of repositories is picking up around the world. According to Morrison,<sup>6</sup> “Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (<i>BASE</i>) repositories collectively added more than 4.7 million documents this quarter for a total of just under 89 million documents,” and “the number of journals actively participating in <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/"><i>PubMed</i></a> <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/"><i>Central</i></a><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/">,</a> making all content immediately freely accessible, and making all content open access, continues to grow.” <a href="https://arxiv.org/"><i>arXiv</i></a> <a href="https://arxiv.org/">g</a>rew by over 107,000 documents to over 1.1 million documents during the last year.<sup>6</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>What is happening in India? </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are many OA journals in India, and 337 have been listed in <i>DOAJ </i>(as on 3 September 2016). These include journals published by leading Academies, societies and government organizations such as CSIR-NISCAIR, DESIDOC, ICMR, and ICAR, and these are free to authors and readers. MedKnow, although part of a private publishing group, publishes a large number of OA titles, most of which again are free to both authors and readers. But not all Indian OA journals are on a single platform like SciELO. Apart from a few exceptions like MedKnow journals, others do not offer all the web features and metrics that leading publishers offer, which is surprising considering the wealth of technological skills available in the country.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Another platform specifically designed to provide open access to journals published in developing countries is Bioline International, a not-for-profit partnership committed to providing open access to quality research journals and reducing the South to North knowledge gap. Bioline currently supports 36 journals from 16 countries<b>.</b> The download statistics of Bioline journals (http://www.bioline.org.br/stats) are very impressive. Kirsop, a founding member of</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Bioline International, told us “Within a single month in 2016, some 1.5 million full text articles were downloaded – equivalent to approximately 18 million per annum – showing the value attached to publications resulting from research carried out in regions of the global south, often referred to as ‘the missing science’, but nevertheless essential to achieve a global understanding in such areas as health and the environment.” (Personal communication, 13 April 2016).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Organizations such as CSIR, DBT and DST have already adopted a policy of making research produced in their own laboratories, as well as research they support in other institutions, open access through placing the accepted papers in institutional open access repositories.<sup>48,49 </sup>CSIR-</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">URDIP, Pune, has set up a central platform for OA repositories and harvesting from all three organizations and these could be accessed at http://www.csircentral.net/ and http://sciencecentral.in/. Unfortunately, many laboratories under these apex bodies have not taken the OA policy seriously, nor there seems to be any will on the part of the apex bodies to implement the policy forcefully.These repositories are interoperable and have adopted the best international practices. ICAR also has an open access policy, but it does not seem to have much traction.<sup>50</sup> There are also many institutional repositories (listed in http://roar.eprints.org/), some of them well populated, but others are languishing, largely due to the indifference of scientists.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">By contrast, China seems to have made considerable progress. It was only in 2014 that the</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(NSFC) issued open access policies.<sup>51</sup> By mid-March 2016 , the Open Repository of the</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">NSFC included 135,000 research papers published between 1998 and 2015 by authors from 1,305 institutions. These research papers have already been downloaded more than 669,000 times. CAS now has two OA portals, namely the Institutional Repository Grid of Chinese Academy of Sciences, with content from 102 repositories, and the China Open Access Journal Portal, with content from hundreds of journals.<sup>52</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Latin America has witnessed the emergence of strong cooperative scholarly publishing ventures, such as SciELO (www.scielo.org) which hosts about 1,250 journals, and Redalyc</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(www.redalyc.org) which hosts, 1,095 journals. Of these more than 2,300 journals, 1,300 do not charge APC and others charge only a modest fee.<sup>53</sup> A SPARC report says, “SciELO and Redalyc do raise the visibility and accessibility of the journals they host, particularly with their local communities. These types of networked meta-publishers allow for central governance of policies, procedures and controls, but are intentionally decentralized to support the development of local capacity and infrastructure ensuring greater sustainability and alignment with local policies and priorities.”<sup>54 </sup>With these efforts, Latin America has become a model for affordable OA journal publishing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Even so, researchers in Latin America continue to publish a very large proportion of their papers in non-OA journals. For example, as shown in Table 1, in the five years 2010-14, more than 65% of papers from Brazil were published in non-OA journals. The simplest way to make the large volume of non-OA papers freely available is to set up many institutional repositories and populate them quickly. Efforts are already under way in several countries and indeed a network of repositories from nine countries is coordinated by <i>La Referencia</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">(http://lareferencia.redclara.net/rfr/), and there are legislations in place in Argentina, Mexico and</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Peru to make publicly funded research freely available through repositories.<sup>55</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>What needs to be done?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Compared with developments in Latin America and China, India is clearly lagging behind in making her research freely accessible. How can this be changed? We believe that making all research freely accessible through interoperable OA repositories is the ideal solution. According to Houghton and Swan,<sup> 56</sup> till the time we reach an all Gold OA (OA through journals) world, Green OA (OA through repositories) may well be the most immediate and cost-effective way to support knowledge transfer and enable innovation across the economy. We suggest the following actions.</p>
<ol style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Populate OA repositories that are already there, as empty and sparsely populated repositories will not reflect well on the research community.</li>
<li>Set up repositories in institutions where one does not exist. Academic and research librarians can play an important role in setting up and populating repositories.</li>
<li>Academic and research organizations (at the state and central levels, as well as apex bodies), which do not have an OA policy, should adopt a policy similar to those of DBT, DST and CSIR and implement the same.</li>
<li>As part of the implementation, funding agencies and heads of organizations should have a compliance monitoring mechanism that would reward those who deposit their papers, and persuade those who do not.</li>
<li>If the policies of all agencies are aligned, it would bring about many advantages such as ease of compliance, optimization of workflow, and sharing of data and best practices.<sup>57</sup></li>
<li>All organizations may join the CSIR-URDIP effort so that a nation wide platform could emerge for OA repositories. Such resource sharing will not only result in enhanced efficiency and reduced overall costs but also, as demonstrated by HAL, France, facilitate “coherent meta-data description, connection to national authority files, quicker take up of new technologies (e.g. visualisation and data mining) and better connection with international initiatives.”<sup>58</sup></li>
<li>Funding agencies and research organizations that are so far unconcerned about their funds being used to meet APCs should stop supporting this practice. </li>
<li>A cadre of scholarly communication workforce should be developed for building institutional repositories and persuading researchers to upload materials.</li>
</ol>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Conclusion</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">If India and China follow the Latin American model of hosting all or most of their journals on a single decentralized platform and make as many journals as possible OA, and if India, China and Latin America vigorously promote a culture of OA repositories and encourage researchers to self-archive their publications, that would have a great impact on making science and scholarship open, not only in these regions but around the world. All of this can happen only with the willing participation of the scientific community. As Harnad would say, ‘Self-archive unto others as you would have them self-archive unto you’.<sup>59</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">If, instead, researchers continue to pay publishers exorbitant APCs, as Poynder points out, there will soon be a crisis over the cost of APCs, which would hit research the world over, but research in the developing world will be hit harder.<sup>60</sup> As long as we continue to use APC based journals, we cannot expect to make access to research affordable to all.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Acknowledgement</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We are grateful to Peter Suber and Ms Barbara Kirsop for their valuable comments.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b> </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b> </b></p>
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<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Fig1.jpg" alt="Fig 1" class="image-inline" title="Fig 1" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Figure 1.</b> Share of papers published by different countries in open access journals indexed in <i>SCIE</i>, 2010-2014.* Data gathered on 29 February 2016. Great Britain includes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">*Only articles, letters, proceedings papers, and reviews are considered.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Table 1.</b> Distribution of research papers published by Indian scientists in open access journals by publishing year</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[Data gathered on 11 January 2016]</p>
<table class="grid listing" style="text-align: justify; ">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">
<p>Year</p>
</td>
<td colspan="3">
<p>OA journals (APC)</p>
</td>
<td colspan="3">
<p>OA journals (non-APC)</p>
</td>
<td colspan="3">
<p>All OA journals</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>No. of journals</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>No. of papers</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Sum of citations</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>No. of journals</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>No. of papers</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Sum of citations</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>No. of journals</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>No. of papers</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Sum of citations</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>2010</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>242</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>2557</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>17550</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>237</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>4131</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>16301</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>479</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>6688</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>33851</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>2011</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>263</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>3067</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>17367</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>244</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>4280</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>12645</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>507</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>7347</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>30012</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>2012</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>308</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>2800</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>15715</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>251</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>4157</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>9276</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>559</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>6957</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>24991</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>2013</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>326</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>3335</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>12635</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>268</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>4457</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>6257</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>594</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>7792</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>18892</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>2014</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>328</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>3634</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>6950</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>283</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>4660</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>3057</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>611</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>8294</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>10007</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Total</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>15393</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>70217</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>21685</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>47536</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>37078</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>117753</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Table 2.</b> OA journals charging APC in which Indian authors have published at least 10 papers that have been cited not less than 10 times on average in the five years</p>
<table class="grid listing" style="text-align: justify; ">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Journal</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Publishing country<sup>*</sup></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>No. of papers</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Sum of citations</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CPP</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>APC</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Nucleic Acids Research</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>138</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1945</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>14.09</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$2,770</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>US</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>126</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1409</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>11.18</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$2,250</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>BMC Genomics</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>123</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1330</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>10.81</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$2,145</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>International Journal of Nanomedicine</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>NZ</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>94</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1555</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>16.54</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>€1,843</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>DE</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>65</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1116</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>17.17</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>€25<sup>#</sup></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>BMC Plant Biology</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>44</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>579</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>13.16</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$2,145</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>PLoS Pathogens</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>US</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>42</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>781</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>18.60</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$2,250</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Molecular Cancer</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>34</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>540</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>15.88</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$2,145</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>International Journal of Molecular Sciences</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CH</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>28</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>298</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>10.64</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CHF1,600</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Molecules</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CH</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>28</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>300</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>10.71</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CHF1,800</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>PLoS Computational Biology</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>US</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>25</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>342</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>13.68</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$2,250</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>PLoS Medicine</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>US</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>25</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>721</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>28.84</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$2,900</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>DNA Research</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>24</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>542</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>22.58</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$750</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>PLoS Genetics</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>US</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>24</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>354</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>14.75</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$2,250</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Biogeosciences</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>DE</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>23</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>294</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>12.78</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>€25<sup>#</sup></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CH</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>22</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>278</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>12.64</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CHF1,600</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Journal of Translational Medicine</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>15</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>238</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>15.87</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$2,145</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Marine Drugs</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CH</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>14</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>256</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>18.29</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CHF1,800</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Journal of Neuroinflammation</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>12</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>179</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>14.92</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$450</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Science and Technology of Advanced Materials</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>12</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>181</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>15.08</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$1,600</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>BMC Medicine</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>11</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>374</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>34.00</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$2,785</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Remote Sensing</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CH</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>11</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>125</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>11.36</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CHF1,600</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Cryosphere</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>DE</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>10</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>112</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>11.20</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>€25<sup>#</sup></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Progress in Electromagnetics Research-PIER</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>US</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>10</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>128</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>12.80</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$200</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Articles in 33 other journals with CPP > 10</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>117</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1930</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>16.50</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Total</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1077</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>15907</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>ISO 3166 country code</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><sup>#</sup>Page charges</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Table 3.</b> Non-APC journals in which Indian authors have published their papers that have been cited not less than 10 times on average in the five years</p>
<table class="grid listing" style="text-align: justify; ">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Journal</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Publishing country<sup>*</sup></p>
</td>
<td>
<p>No. of papers</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Sum of citations</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CPP</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Bulletin of The World Health Organization</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CH</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>41</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>515</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>12.56</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CA</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>14</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>173</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>12.36</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Environmental Health Perspectives</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>US</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>10</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>188</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>18.80</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Journal of Machine Learning Research</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>US</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>10</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>118</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>11.80</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Materials Today</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>4</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>81</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>20.25</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Earth System Science Data</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>DE</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>3</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>88</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>29.33</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Revista Mexicana de Astronomia Y Astrofisica</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>MX</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>3</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>181</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>60.33</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Geologicas</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>MX</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>3</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>41</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>13.67</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Folia Neuropathologica</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>PL</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>2</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>23</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>11.50</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Upsala Journal of Medical Sciences</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>2</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>20</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>10.00</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>ISO 3166 country code</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Table 4</b>. Mega journals used by Indian researchers</p>
<table class="grid listing" style="text-align: justify; ">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Journal</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Publishing country<sup>*</sup></p>
</td>
<td>
<p>No. of papers</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Sum of citations</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CPP</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>APC</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>PLoS One</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>US</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>2404</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>17587</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>7.32</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$1,495</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Scientific Reports</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>222</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1523</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>6.86</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>£990</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>AIP Advances</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>US</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>196</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>645</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>3.29</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$1,350</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Springer Plus</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>CH</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>170</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>235</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1.38</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$1,290</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>BMJ Open</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>56</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>148</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>2.64</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>£1,350</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>FEBS Open Bio</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>21</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>86</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>4.10</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$1350</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>PeerJ</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>13</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>33</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>2.54</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$695</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Biology Open</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>GB</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>9</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>9</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>1.00</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$1,495</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>G3 - Genes Genomes Genetics</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>US</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>9</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>83</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>9.22</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>$1,950</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>3100</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>20349</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>6.56</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>ISO 3166 country code</li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/eprints-iisc-ernet-october-29-2016-muthu-madhan-siva-shankar-kimidi-subbiah-gunasekaran-subbiah-arunachalam-should-indian-researchers-pay-to-get-their-work-published'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/eprints-iisc-ernet-october-29-2016-muthu-madhan-siva-shankar-kimidi-subbiah-gunasekaran-subbiah-arunachalam-should-indian-researchers-pay-to-get-their-work-published</a>
</p>
No publisherMuthu Madhan, Siva Shankar Kimidi, Subbiah Gunasekaran and Subbiah ArunachalamOpennessOpen ScienceOpen ContentOpen Access2016-10-29T14:47:52ZBlog EntrySoftware Freedom Pledge
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-pledge-2015
<b>On September 19, 2015, celebrated globally as Software Freedom Day, a number of enthusiasts got together and collectively took a pledge.</b>
<br />
<p>We, who have gathered together for <a href="http://softwarefreedomday.org/">Software Freedom Day 2015</a>, believe that software freedom is both a matter of ethical principle as well as a matter of pragmatism, and is necessary for a democratic, open society.</p>
<p>We believe that it is desirable that all people, but especially governments, use, contribute to, and spread open standards, free/libre/open source software, open APIs, openly-licensed content (including open data, open access, and open education resources), leading to a vibrant public domain, and ensure that all of the above are accessible for all, including persons with disabilities and other marginalised sections of society.</p>
<p>Given that, we pledge to:</p>
<ul>
<li>use and spread free software amongst our family, friends, and neighbours, both in person and virtually.</li>
<li>demand that services we use in turn use open standards and open APIs, and thus be available for all using free/libre/open source software, without the payment of any royalties.</li>
<li>raise the issue of software freedom with our democratic representatives, to seek that they in turn respect and promote these principles.</li>
<li>as far as possible, making our own work openly available, and seek to convince our employers, publishers, producers, and other persons who might be in a position to restrict </li>
<li>work against any laws, policies — corporate or governmental — or technical restrictions that seek to prevent people from full exercise of their rights, and which are contrary to the above principles.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
<p>Signed by:</p>
<p>Abhaya Agarwal <br />
Ananth Subray <br />
Asutosha Sarangi <br />
Chirag Sarthi J <br />
Prakash Hebballi <br />
Pranesh Prakash <br />
Ralph Andrade <br />
Subhashish Panigrahi <br />
Tito Dutta <br />
Veethika Mishra</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-pledge-2015'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-pledge-2015</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsOpen SourceAccess to KnowledgeFLOSSOpen ContentFOSSEventTechnological Protection Measures2015-09-25T12:26:09ZBlog EntryOpen Letter to the Vatican: Request for Holy See to Comment on IPR
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-letter-to-the-vatican-request-for-holy-see-to-comment-on-ipr
<b>Due to the Holy See’s demonstrated pro-access position to medicines and published materials for persons with disabilities, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) requested for His Excellency, Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, to also consider copyrights, patents or IPR more generally, as the Holy See’s Permanent Observer at WIPO. We strongly encourage other organizations and civil society groups to modify this letter, as needed, and to contact the Holy See Mission to the United Nations (and WIPO) in Geneva in order to help us prompt His Excellency to contribute to the international dialogue on IPR.</b>
<hr />
<p>You may view the original letter sent by CIS <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-original-open-letter-to-the-vatican-request-for-holy-see-to-comment-on-ipr" class="internal-link">here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p>His Excellency, Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, Apostolic Nuncio<br />Holy See Mission to the United Nations in Geneva<br />P.O. Box 28<br />1292 Chambésy<br />Geneva, Switzerland<br />mission.holy-see@ties.itu.int<br />+41 22 758 98 20</p>
<p><strong>Friday, January 24, 2014<br /><br /></strong></p>
<p align="justify">Your Excellency Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi,</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Subject: Call for the Holy See’s comment on Intellectual Property Rights</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p align="justify">On behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore, India, I, Samantha Cassar, write to Your Excellency’s opinion on copyrights, patents and intellectual property rights.</p>
<p align="justify">We are a not-for-profit, non-governmental research organization that works on addressing policy issues related to access to knowledge and intellectual property law reform (http://cis-india.org/a2k), and accessibility for persons with disabilities (http://cis-india.org/accessibility) among other areas related to internet and information and communication technologies.</p>
<p align="justify">CIS is an accredited organization with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and a regular participant at the meetings of the Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights (SCCR), the Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP), as well as the Committee on Development and Intellectual Property.</p>
<p align="justify">At the outset, we commend Your Excellency for signing the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled. As one of the contributors to this treaty, we appreciate the concern of the Holy See for those who are marginalised within our information society by their disabilities.</p>
<p align="justify">As Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director from CIS noted at Marrakesh during the adoption of this treaty, “When copyright doesn't serve public welfare, states must intervene, and the law must change to promote human rights, the freedom of expression and to receive and impart information, and to protect authors and consumers.” We are happy to see this being done through a treaty as such.</p>
<p align="justify">Also said by Your Excellency, within the Holy See’s statement at the 9th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), “Among the most damaging concessions developing countries make in regional and bilateral agreements are those enhancing the monopolies on life-saving medicines, which reduce access and affordability and those that provide excessive legal rights to foreign investors, limiting the policy space for nations to promote sustainable and inclusive development.”</p>
<p align="justify">Given the Holy See’s demonstrated standpoint on the accessing of medicines and published works, we at the Centre for Internet and Society would like to request Your Excellency to also consider <strong>copyrights, patents or more generally, intellectual property rights (IPR)</strong>, as Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva.</p>
<p align="justify">On behalf of CIS, I am honoured to be writing to Your Excellency and for this request to be considered. Due to the ability of copyright and other forms of IPR to obstruct the access of one’s own human rights and even the sustainable development of one’s country, we feel this area must be crucially considered within an international dialogue—not only from a place of political strategy but also from principles of mercy and compassion.</p>
<p align="justify">With meetings approaching for both <strong>WIPO’s Standing Committee on the Law of Patents</strong> (January 27-31, 2014) and <strong>WIPO’s Committee on Development and Intellectual Property</strong> (May 19-23, 2014), we are very excited at the possibility of the Holy See enriching this discussion, and hope for such a contribution to take place when the international community is listening—at these meetings, or in any other form.<br /><br /></p>
<p>With Every Best Wish,<br />Sincerely Yours,</p>
<p><br />Samantha Cassar<br /><br />Programme Associate<br />The Centre for Internet & Society</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-letter-to-the-vatican-request-for-holy-see-to-comment-on-ipr'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-letter-to-the-vatican-request-for-holy-see-to-comment-on-ipr</a>
</p>
No publishersamanthaAccess to KnowledgeCopyrightPublic AccountabilityIntellectual Property RightsOpen Content2014-01-31T07:14:07ZBlog EntryHow Can We Make Open Education Truly Open?
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dml-central-nishant-shah-november-22-2013-how-can-we-make-open-education-truly-open
<b>I have spent the last month being unpopular. I have been in conversation with many ‘Open Everything’ activists and practitioners. At each instance, we got stuck because I insisted that we begin by defining what ‘Open’ means in the easy abuse that it is subject to.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Dr. Nishant Shah's article was originally <a class="external-link" href="http://dmlcentral.net/blog/nishant-shah/how-can-we-make-open-education-truly-open">published in DML Central</a> on November 22.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It has been a difficult, if slightly tedious exercise, because not only was there a lack of consensus around what constitutes openness, but also a collective confusion about what we mean when we attribute openness to an object, a process or to people. It was easy to define openness as opposed to a closed system – attributes of transparency, ownership, collaboration and a multidirectional panopticon were invoked in trying to understand the form, function and role of openness. However, it was quickly clear that even with people who are on the same side of the battle-lines around openness, there is a disjunction in their imagination of what an <a href="http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/">Open Society</a> can mean. Hence, the ‘Open’ in ‘<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_government">Open Government</a>’ for instance, had very little cross-over with the ‘Open’ in ‘<a href="http://www.openeducation.net/">Open Education</a>’. Apart from the larger infrastructure industry that supports the various implementations of Open systems ranging from participatory governments to Digital Humanities, there seems to be silos of openness that co-exist but do not converse.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One of the ways of doing away with the cultures of ambiguity that seem to have developed around Openness, where it is the object of inquiry, the process through which inquiries are made, the lens of critique and the aspiration of movements, perhaps need to be unpacked. And one of the ways of doing this would be to shift the focus from Open as an adjective to Open as a verb – to focus not on what it is, but what it works towards. This shift in thinking of Open as a verb, allows to produce a political critique of the Open paradigm, which is otherwise often missed out in the self-avowed goodness of Open movements.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This is probably a good space for me to declare that I am not an Openness dis-evangelist. I appreciate, endorse and celebrate the values of collaboration, engagement, participation, access and empowerment that Open movements work with and indeed belong to quite a handful of them. However, I do want to move away from the Open as self-explanatory and ask the more difficult questions – What is it that we are opening? Who are we opening it for? What is the Open working towards? In whose service and to what purposes? So when I look at ‘Open Education’, I don’t just want to look at how we open up education for mass access but also how do we make transparent the politics that surround the opening up of education.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Open as an Adjective vs Open as a Verb</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One of the most celebrated accounts of open education has found its impetus in two distinct narratives – the first is that the University as we have inherited it is in ruins. The University has been described as inadequate, in desperate need of change to fit the requirements of the contemporary times we live in. The second is that education and learning are in a moment of crisis. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does entail the development of new pedagogic and technological structures which can construct new modes of engaging with knowledge practices. Both of these narratives are more or less taken for granted. There are staged battles between those who swear by MOOCs as the answer and those who swear at MOOCs as amplification of the problem; or between those who call for more public investment in education and learning and those who think that privatising education is the way forward. But in all these debates, which often take the tones of sombre zealots who argue over the nature of the divine, there is almost no questioning of the idea that the university is in crisis. Thus, when it comes to Open Education disputants, they never question the narrative of the university in crisis, but merely in how to resolve this crisis.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2013/08/6021?page=show">Sharmila Rege</a>, a Dalit-feminist and an educator at the Pune University in India, who had made it her life work to critically intervene in debates around education and its intersections with social and political processes, suggests that what we need to do is reverse engineer the generation of this crisis. While the University seems to be ubiquitously crumbling across the globe – despite the fact that an historically unprecedented portion of the global population is enrolled in education programmes – this narrative of ruin is not new. Indeed, nor is the narrative of Openness. In Rege’s material history of education and gender in India, she invokes the figure of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/4865098/Sharmila_Rege_1964-2013_Tribute_to_a_Phule-Ambedkarite_Feminist_Welder">Savitribai Phule</a>, the icon of India’s modernity, who, as an educated woman dedicated her life to ‘opening up’ education for those who were underprivileged and broken. Along with her husband, a modernist and a social reformer, Phule was the prototype feminist and development worker who radically opened up the modern education system in Maharashtra to those who were the intended beneficiaries but more often than not, excluded from the benefits that the system promised. In fact, as Rege shows us, in Phule’s account of the world, the university was essentially a system that justified its existence through the principles of openness and inclusion which we have now separated from it. While it might be a fallacy to claim these visions for a universal education system, it is still worth recognising that in different forms and formats, the establishment of the public education system has necessarily been one of openness.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When then, did this open system suddenly become closed? When did the university, which was a response to the closed education systems that were limited to the upper castes and classes of India, enter a state of crisis? In India, especially with the huge public discourse around affirmative action, quotas and reservations for different underprivileged communities, and the continued investment in public education infrastructure – the number of private universities, when you compare them with the developed North, is ridiculously low – we really need to figure out what it is that the university failed to do in its visions of openness for itself. Rege suggests that the generation of the crisis narrative for the university is actually a response to the university as an open structure. In the 1990s, with the renewed focus on universal education in the country, especially after the epoch marking agitations against affirmative actions which included massive mobilisations of upper class and caste students against the recommendations of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandal_Commission">Mandal Commissions</a> for continued reservation of seats for women and dalits, the university was at its open best. Both in terms of infrastructure, public policy and regulatory mechanisms, we had created universities that invited participation and presence of bodies which were otherwise systemically excluded from education processes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over the next two decades, the university then, has become a more inclusive space. It is populated with unexpected bodies and subjects. It has been de-gentrified and has been heralded as one of the few public institutions where a critique of sectarian and preferential politics has emerged. According to Rege, it is this very opening up of the University to women and Dalits, and the ‘vulgarization’ of education that led to the engineering of a crisis in the narratives around the university. This crisis, propelled equally by a neo-liberal development agenda and the need to create exclusive and exclusionary spaces for the elites of the country who did not necessarily want to find their privilege by escaping to the Ivy League universities in the North-West, sustains the idea that the university is in shambles and hence proposes the new Open Education movements, of which the MOOCs and the private universities are the two key embodiments. In a country that is starkly divided across linguistic and technology access lines, it is clear that both these structures, which are the key advocates of Open Education and learning, are in the service of those who can afford it. Or in other words, it is clear that the new openness movements, while they propose to be in the service of mass, distributed and universal education, are <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2013/11/sebastian_thrun_and_udacity_distance_learning_is_unsuccessful_for_most_students.html">actually very urban, Anglophone, and available to a very small fraction of the society</a> that already had privileged access to different and varied education resources historically.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These Open Education policies now offer alternatives to the public education model by suggesting that it is in crisis and thus finding viable options. These alternatives further demand that the Public University, becomes a professionalised space that produces workers and skilled labour for the new information and knowledge industries, while the more privileged sites of critical philosophy, thought and art move on to safer havens where those with rights of entitlement can study them in peace. The open Digital Humanities projects or the institution of private and satellite university campuses, which continue with their ad hoc, de-skilled, meritocratic logic of working with adjuncts and temporary knowledge workers, invest more in the technological development which is again a masculine domain of privilege even in countries like India where we witness massive mobilisation of people being trained to work in the IT industries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This reverse engineering of what Open Education can mean in a country like India probably has similar narratives of the context and generation of the crisis across different geographies and time-zones. Openness, with the euphoria and the promise of radical transformation often produces this ellipsis that fails to see the larger structures that inform and shape the open education policies and regulations. In its closeness to the Big Data proponents, it even makes us believe that open education is about data and information management, forgetting that these practices have a direct implication on the material conditions that have been historically shaped. Just like we have developed a critique of well-intentioned development agendas that are purportedly pro-poor but eventually only benefit the wealthy by depositing more power in their coffers, openness in education and in governance needs to be re-examined more closely. Yes, Openness has some fantastic virtues that we need to aspire towards. But to open something, it first needs to be closed. And especially when it comes to the modern education system, we need to question the closeness that is easily attributed to and presumed for the public university. It is time to not only implement open education, but also see the larger constellations of privilege and inequity that often get elided in the blanket acceptance of the Open as necessarily the good or the desirable.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dml-central-nishant-shah-november-22-2013-how-can-we-make-open-education-truly-open'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dml-central-nishant-shah-november-22-2013-how-can-we-make-open-education-truly-open</a>
</p>
No publishernishantOpennessOpen ContentAccess to Knowledge2013-11-30T08:45:55ZBlog EntryOSOD 2013: International Workshop on Open Science and Open Data
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/international-workshop-open-science-and-open-data
<b>Nehaa Chaudhari was a panelist at the International Workshop on Open Science and Open Data, 2013, held on October 07, 2013 at the Indian Statistical Institute. She gave a presentation on "Government Copyright and the Open Access Conundrum" </b>
<p>Parts of this presentation draw from <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blog/yojana-august-2013-pranesh-prakash-copyrights-and-copywrongs-why-the-govt-should-embrace-the-public-domain" class="external-link">Pranesh Prakash's views on Government Copyright</a>. Special thanks to Bhairav Acharya for his valuable inputs and feedback.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Documentation Research and Training Centre, Indian Statistical Institute along with Creative Commons USA held this workshop. The main objective of this workshop was to bring together international experts, practitioners and advocates of Open Access to information to discuss and contemplate on key issues contributing to Open Science. The workshop also aimed to serve as a platform for institutions, academicians, scientists and researchers interested in Open Science to exchange thoughts and processes 'How To' create Open content within legal framework.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Key Speakers</h3>
<ol>
<li><span><b>Puneet Kishor</b> (Policy Coordinator for Science and Data, Creative Commons)</span></li>
<li><span> <b>ARD Prasad</b> (DRTC, Indian Statistical Institute, India)<br /></span></li>
<li><span><b>Devika P. Madalli</b> (DRTC, Indian Statistical Institute, India)</span><span><span><b> </b></span><span><b> </b></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><b>Giridhar Manepalli</b> (CNRI, USA)</span><span><span><b> </b></span><span><b> </b></span></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><span><b>Usha Munshi</b> (Indian Institute of Public Administartion, India)</span><span><span><b> </b></span><span><b> </b></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><span><span><b>Subbiah Arunachalam </b>(Information Scientist, India)</span><span><span><b> </b></span><span><b> </b></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><span><span><span><b>Sridhar Parishetty</b> (</span></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span><span>Centre for Inclusive Governance, Bangalore)</span><span><span><b> </b></span><span><b> </b></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><span><span><span><span><b>Nehaa Chaudhari</b> (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore)</span><span><span><b> </b></span><span><b> </b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><b>R. Prabhakar</b> (India Biodiversity Portal, Bangalore)<span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><b>Nisha Thompson</b> (Arghyam)<span><b> </b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li> <span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><b>Yashas Shetty</b> (Srishti, Centre For Experimental Media Arts, Bangalore) </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ol> <ol> </ol>
<hr />
<ul>
<li> <a class="external-link" href="http://drtc.isibang.ac.in/osod/programme">Read the agenda here</a></li>
<li>Download Nehaa's presentation titled <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/osod-2013.ppt" class="internal-link">Government Accessibility and Copyright Conundrum here</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/international-workshop-open-science-and-open-data'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/international-workshop-open-science-and-open-data</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessOpen ContentOpen AccessAccess to Knowledge2013-10-22T11:02:49ZNews ItemMy First Wikipedia Training Workshop – Theatre Outreach Unit, University of Hyderabad
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop
<b>On March 8, 2013, a day-long Telugu Wikipedia training workshop was organized by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team at the Golden Threshold, Nampally, Hyderabad in collaboration with Theatre Outreach Unit, University of Hyderabad. This blog post gives a concise account of the event.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b><a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge">CIS-A2K</a></b> had planned a day long <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org">Telugu Wikipedia</a> training workshop in collaboration with Telugu Wikipedians at the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.efluniversity.ac.in/">English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU)</a>, Hyderabad on March 8, 2013. The intention was to target research students at EFLU who are using Telugu material or working on topics related to Telugu and Andhra Pradesh. This event was also to be part of the Wiki Women’s month events across India. However, this event had to be cancelled in the last minute as a Research Student of EFLU committed suicide on the campus and there was major unrest. The faculty from EFLU though had informed of the possible cancellation of the event earlier, had only confirmed it on March 7, 2013. <b><a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%95%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%BF:%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%B9%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%AE%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%A6%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%A6%E0%B1%80%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%8D">Rahmanuddin Shaik</a></b> (Telugu SIG, <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India_chapter">Wikimedia India Chapter</a>) and <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%95%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%BF:Rajasekhar1961"><b>Dr. Rajasekhar</b> </a>(Telugu Wikipedia Administrator) had already blocked an entire day for this training workshop. In fact a lot of background work was already done for the EFLU event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When I got the news of cancellation of the workshop, initially I was very dejected at the thought of informing the two active Telugu Wikipedians about it, which I had to do. As my tickets were anyhow booked to Hyderabad and there was no point cancelling them, as I was already on my way to catch the flight, I decided to go ahead with my journey. I made some couple of quick calls and with some effort managed to organize a Wikipedia Training Workshop in collaboration with the <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%A5%E0%B0%BF%E0%B0%AF%E0%B1%87%E0%B0%9F%E0%B0%B0%E0%B1%8D_%E0%B0%94%E0%B0%9F%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%B0%E0%B1%80%E0%B0%9A%E0%B1%8D_%E0%B0%AF%E0%B1%82%E0%B0%A8%E0%B0%BF%E0%B0%9F%E0%B1%8D_%28%E0%B0%9F%E0%B0%BF.%E0%B0%93.%E0%B0%AF%E0%B1%81%29">Theatre Outreach Unit (TOU)</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.uohyd.ac.in/">University of Hyderabad (UoH)</a>. I was anyhow planning on visiting them to explore an institutional collaboration. The Project Director of TOU Dr. Peddi Ramarao, though agreed to spread the word about the workshop, yet was not sure how many would turn up at such a short notice of one night.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/TOUphoto2forCIS.png" title="TOU Training photo 2" height="364" width="486" alt="null" class="image-inline" /></th> <th>
<p>Rahmanuddin and Dr. Rajasekhar giving hands-on training to edit Telugu Wikipedia at Golden Threshold, Hyderabad</p>
</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So on March 8, 2013 Rahmanuddin, Dr. Rajasekhar and I landed at the <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%97%E0%B1%8B%E0%B0%B2%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%86%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%8D_%E0%B0%A4%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%B0%E0%B1%86%E0%B0%B7%E0%B1%8B%E0%B0%B2%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%8D">Golden Threshold</a> hoping against hope to see at least 3 or 4 participants. But alas there were only 2 people when we reached the venue by 10 a.m.. By 10.25 a.m. we had 9 participants, which excited us all. The training workshop began with an introduction of all the participants. Following this a presentation was made on the significance of Wikipedia in the digital era and how Indian language-Wikipedias are pivotal in preserving the vernacular language and culture. This session was interactive with participants asking many questions. Dr. Peddi Ramarao, later, spoke about his experience of using Wikipedia as a reference tool and how he got introduced to contributing Wikipedia. Further, the discussion went on to the poor quality of articles on Telugu Wikipedia and how the participants can take part in improving the existing articles and contribute new articles. Rahmanuddin and Rajasekhar practically demonstrated the process of editing on <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org">Telugu Wikipedia</a>. This was followed by a hands-on session where the participants actively participated in creating their Wikipedia User name on Telugu Wikipedia and did editing of few articles. The training programme was to officially end at Lunch time but even post lunch some of the participants were enthusiastic about learning more nuances of contributing on Telugu Wikipedia. The hands-on session thus continued until 4 p.m.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Post the Wikipedia training programme, I have had interactions with the Project Director of TOU to explore possible future collaborations. TOU, UoH agreed to offer space to host all Telugu Wikipedia meet-ups. As the Golden Threshold space was in the central part of the city, having this infrastructure accessible was a major boost for the Telugu Wikipedia community in Hyderabad. Further, in the discussions we have agreed to collaborate with TOU, UoH in hosting the first mega Telugu Wikipedia community event <i>Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013</i>.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/TOUphoto3forCIS.png" title="TOU Training photo 3" height="261" width="348" alt="null" class="image-inline" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>Telugu Wikipedia Orientation in progress</b></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3><b>Outcomes and Impact:</b></h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Out of the 9 new Users, who were trained during this workshop, 5 people have done more than 5 edits.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">One person has become a very active editor on Telugu Wikipedia with more than 1000 edits in 3 months. A detailed account of this event was put up by this user on Telugu Wikipedia here <a href="#fn*" name="fr*">[*]</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Because of CIS-A2K’s efforts, Telugu Wikipedians in Hyderabad now have a good meeting space.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The availability of this space has also encouraged the Telugu Wikipedians to meet more often than before. Since March 8, 2013 Telugu Wikipedians had a total of 6 meet-ups, and all these were held at Golden Threshold.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Golden Threshold also became a venue for hosting <i>Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013</i>.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">This visit to Hyderabad triggered a discussion about organizing <i>Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam</i>, which was successfully organized in a month’s time.</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Looking back, though this event was done as a last minute measure without many expectations, yet it turned out to be a lucky break! Especially, because this was my first ever event as the CIS-A2K Programme Director. It will remain a very memorable one. More so because it was done in collaboration with two of the active Telugu Wikipedians. Even more so because it has created some positive energy for the Telugu Wikipedia community, which has since then become a home turf.</p>
<hr />
<p>[<a href="#fr*" name="fn*">*</a>]. <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/17WYq7X">http://bit.ly/17WYq7X</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop</a>
</p>
No publishervishnuDigital ActivismArtAccess to KnowledgeDigital AccessWikimediaWikipediaCyberculturesTelugu WikipediaOpen ContentCommunitiesOpennessMeetingEvent2013-08-19T06:51:16ZBlog EntryWikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-introductory-session
<b>On May 13, 2013, the Access to Knowledge team led by Subhashish Panigrahi conducted a Wikipedia Introductory Session at the National Informatics Centre in New Delhi for the consultants working for Data and India portal. This session was aimed to emphasize how these portals and their useful data could be used on Wikipedia to create good quality articles.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Recently <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/" class="external-link">Centre for Internet and Society</a>'s <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge">Access To Knowledge</a> team was invited to demonstrate the usefulness of Wikipedia for the consultants of <a class="external-link" href="http://www.nic.in/">National Informatics Centre</a> (NIC) working for the <a class="external-link" href="http://data.gov.in/">Data.gov.in</a> and the <a class="external-link" href="http://india.gov.in/">National Portal of India</a> at NIC's New Delhi office. Data portal being one of the very important open data portal of the Government of India has worked immensely to populate over 2400 datasets from 32 departments participating in it.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many of the data need to be transcribed in popular medias especially on web. Wikipedia being world's largest online encyclopedia could be one such primary platform to use these useful data. <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Psubhashish">Subhashish</a> from A2K team explained the usefulness of Wikipedia for the people associated with this project. The session went with discussing about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_policies">policies</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style">Manual of style</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars">Five pillars of Wikipedia</a> followed by a demonstration of editing articles on English Wikipedia. Post editing session there was a discussion session about the notability and how to check accuracy of articles by using valid references.</p>
<hr />
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<p class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a> <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/11DMH5w">http://bit.ly/11DMH5w</a></p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-introductory-session'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-introductory-session</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpen StandardsDigital GovernanceDigital AccessOpen DataOpen ContentOpen AccessOpennessOpen Innovation2013-07-17T06:33:20ZBlog EntryUse made of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers to Publish their Findings
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/use-made-of-open-access-journals-by-indian-researchers-to-publish-their-findings
<b>Most of the papers published in the more than 360 Indian open access journals are by Indian researchers. But how many papers do they publish in high impact international open access journals? We have looked at India’s contribution to all seven Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals, 10 BioMed Central (BMC) ournals and Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports. Indian crystallographers have published more than 2,000 structure reports in Acta Crystallographica, second only to China in number of papers, but have a much better citations per paper average than USA, Britain, Germany and France, China and South Korea. India’s contribution to BMC and PLoS journals, on the other hand, is modest at best. We suggest that the better option for India is institutional self-archiving.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong><span class="person_name">Muthu, Madhan</span> and <span class="person_name">Subbiah, Arunachalam</span> (2011) <em>Use made of open access journals by Indian researchers to publish their findings.</em> Current Science, 100 (9). pp. 1297-1306.</strong><strong> <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/use-of-open-access-journals-for-publishing-findings" class="internal-link">Download the full research paper</a></strong></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">How aware are Indian researchers of open access (OA) and its advantages 10 years after Stevan Harnad<a name="fr1"></a> visited India and spoke about the need for adopting OA archiving? To answer this question, we looked at India’s participation in both OA institutional archiving and Indian researchers using OA journals to publish their findings. In this article, our emphasis is on the use made of selected high impact OA journals, particularly Public Library of Science (PLoS) and BioMed Central (BMC) journals and Acta Crytallographica Section E, the three leading publishers of open access papers in terms of number of papers published annually.<a name="fr2"></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Registry of Open Access Repository (ROAR)<a name="fr3"></a> lists 2,047 repositories (data gathered on 17 December) of which 59 are from India. Included in the 59 repositories are the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR) journals repository, the Institute of Integrative Omics and Applied Biotechnology Journal repository and repetitive entries of five institutional repositories, viz. EPrints@CMFRI, EPrints@IIMK, EPrints@MKU, repository of INFLIBNET and the repository at the Cochin University of Science and Technology. Many Indian repositories listed in ROAR are inactive. There are at least five other Indian repositories not listed in ROAR, viz. Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, and Vidyanidhi, Mysore, both repositories of theses; International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Ministry of Earth Sciences and SARAI. In all, there are 33 OA repositories in India which include 24 institutional repositories, 4 subject repositories and 5 dedicated theses and dissertation repositories. The quality of tese repositories varies widely as well as their maintenance. Considering that there are more than 450 universities and several hundred research laboratories in the government, corporate and the non-government sectors, one would expect a very large number of institutional repositories in India. Furthermore, many of these repositories are not filling fast enough.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Out of the 5,897 OA journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals or DOAJ (data accessed on 17 December 2010)<a name="fr4"></a> 276 are from India. Another database, Open J-Gate 5 , developed by the Bangalore-based Informatics India, lists 7,967 OA periodicals worldwide which include 4,773 peer-reviewed journals including 339 peer-reviewed Indian journals (Figure 1). There are a few other Indian OA journals which are yet to be listed in DOAJ and indexed in Open J-Gate. For example, two journals published by the Indian National Science Academy (Indian Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics and Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy) and two journals published by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences and Indian Journal of Animal Sciences) are neither indexed in Open J-Gate nor listed in DOAJ. DOAJ does not index Indian Journal of Natural Products and Resources (formerly known as Natural Product Radiance), published by NISCAIR. In all, there are more than 360 Indian OA journals. Needless to say a vast majority of papers, published in the Indian OA journals, are mostly written by Indian researchers. Incidentally, two Indian journal publishers, viz. Indian Academy of Sciences and MedKnow Publications figure in the top 14 OA journal publishers in the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) survey. <a name="fr5"></a> Our focus here is papers published by Indian researchers in high-impact OA journals published outside India. We chose all seven journals published by PLoS, 10 BMC journals and Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports. We gathered data from the Science Citation Index – Expanded section of Web of Science between 11 and 29 December 2010. Countries were assigned to papers based on addresses in the by-line. If three authors then the paper was assigned to all three countries. Therefore, the sum of papers from different countries will be far more than the actual number of papers indexed in Web of Science.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Results</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>BioMed Central Journals</strong><br />BioMed Central, established in May 2000, is the world’s leading OA publisher<a name="fr6"></a> in the fields of medical research and biology and publishes 208 OA journals as noted on 28 December 2010. Not all of them commenced publication at the same time, not even the same year. Different journals started publication in different years. So far these journals together have published 99,717 articles, including 83,893 original research papers and 15,824 other types of articles (Table 1). Indian researchers have published 1,872 original research papers and 92 other types of articles (such as review articles) in these 208 journals. To see India’s record in perspective, we have provided data for 11 other countries. These include the other three BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa and China), South Korea and Israel, both of which have scientific enterprises comparable in size to that of India, and six advanced countries. USA stands out with close to 29,300 papers, followed by Great Britain (9,464 papers) and Germany (9,340 papers). China is way ahead of other BASIC countries, and India is ahead of Israel, Korea and South Africa in the number of papers published. Brazil is ahead of India in total number of papers but falls behind in the number of original research papers. It will be interesting to see why researchers from Brazil publish such a large number of review articles.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Of these 208 journals, only 77 have been listed in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 2009 and assigned an impact factor. (For a journal to get indexed in JCR it should have been in existence for longer than two years). We list in Table 2 those journals with impact factor greater than 4.000. Among BMC journals, Genome Biology has the highest impact factor (6.626). Other high impact factor journals are Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases (5.825), BMC Biology (5.636) and Breast Cancer Research (5.326). The following nine journals have published more than 2,000 papers so far (since they became OA journals): BMC Bioinformatics (4,078), BMC Genomics (3,204), Critical Care (2,787), BMC Public Health (2,580), Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica (2,575), BMC Cancer (2,344), Arthritis Research and Therapy (2,286), Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research (2,255) and Genome Biology (2,069). Ten journals have published more than 1000 papers but less than 2000. Four journals have published less than 100 papers. Five journals have citations per paper (CPP) higher than 10. These are Genome Biology (18.35), Veterinary Research (12.27), Genetics Selection Evolution (11.71), Respiratory Research (11.03) and Breast Cancer Research (10.33).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The number of papers published by authors in India in 10 BMC journals during 2003–2010 (data gathered on 13December 2010), the number of citations to these papers and cites/papers are provided in Table 3. To see the Indian papers in perspective, we have also given the total number of papers published in these 10 journals during the same period, number of citations received by them and the average number of citations per paper (CPP) as well as similar data for 11 other selected countries including five scientifically middle-level countries and six advanced countries. A quick look at the table reveals that there is a perceptible difference between the middle-level countries and the advanced countries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Indian researchers have published 4.53% of the papers that have appeared in Malaria Journal, 2.49% of papers appearing in BMC Genomics, 1.77% of papers appearing BMC Public Health, 1.7% of papers appearing in BMC Bioinformatics, and 1.61% of papers appearing in BMC Evolutionary Biology. India’s participation in the other five journals is rather meagre. Looking at CPP, Indian contributions in nine of the ten journals have a lower CPP than the world papers. Year after year, Thomson Reuters’s ScienceWatch has shown that Indian research papers on an average have been cited less often than world papers in every field<a name="fr7"></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But Indian papers in BMC Public Health have been cited on average 7.45 times compared to the world average of 5.59 CPP. This is rare and the researchers responsible for this deserve to be congratulated. It will be worth examining if India’s performance in public health research is of a higher class overall than research in other areas of medicine. The number of papers from China in BMC journals accounts for a much larger per cent than papers from India. For example, papers from China account for 10.0% in BMC Cancer, 7.75% in BMC Genomics, 5.74% in BMC Bioinformatics and 5.41% in BMC Evolutionary Biology. This is to be expected, as China is second only to USA in the number of papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and publishes more than three times the number of papers as India. Except in Breast Cancer Research, in which journal China publishes about 1% of papers, in all other journals, China’s CPP value is less than the journal average.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although Brazil publishes fewer papers than India, it has an enviable CPP record in at least five journals considered here: Arthritis Research and Therapy (15.88; journal average 8.64), Genome Biology (23.43; journal average 22.50), Critical Care (11.96; journal average 8.23), Breast Cancer Research (10.71; journal average 8.52) and BMC Public Health (6.54; journal average 5.59). Israel, a small country with only a few research institutions and universities, has published fewer papers, but has a CPP higher than the journal average in seven of the ten journals. South Korea has a higher CPP for its papers in Arthritis Research and Therapy than the journal average.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Except for BMC Public Health, in all the other journals USA accounts for not less than 25% of papers and in some well over 40%. Also, in each of the 10 journals, USA has recorded higher CPP than the journal average. Great Britain is a distant second, but its share of papers in BMC Public Health and Malaria Journal is even higher than that of USA. Britain’s interest in public health and malaria research could be explained by over two centuries of her colonial connections. Also, in both these journals, Britain’s CPP is greater than the journal average. In fact, in both BMC Genomics and Malaria Journal, the CPP is highest for Britain.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Germany has published a larger number of papers in BMC Bioinformatics and BMC Cancer than Britain and France and these have been cited more often as well. Germany has published close to 10% of the papers in Genome Biology and these papers have recorded the highest CPP (33.08 compared to 25.78 for USA).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Acta Crystallographica<br /></strong>The International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) publishes Acta Crystallographica in six sections. Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online is the IUCr’s first electronic-only journal<a name="fr8"></a> It is a rapid communication journal for the publication of concise reports on inorganic, metal-organic and organic structures. Unlike other fee-based OA journals published in the western world, this journal charges a modest USD 150 per article and it also offers a fee waiver for authors from developing countries.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">During the seven years 2003–2009, this journal published 22,887 papers which were cited 35,078 times (Table 4). China accounted for more than 47% of these papers, followed by India (9.1%). However, papers from India averaged a higher CPP (2.13) than Germany, Britain and USA. Crystallography is a known area of strength in India. The earliest Indian paper in this field by Banerjee<a name="fr9"></a> of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science appeared in 1930. Today, chemical crystallography is arguably stronger than all other aspects of crystallography in India, although in the early years physicists dominated the field. Work in biological crystallography started when G. N. Ramachandran, a physicist, started his work at the University of Madras in the 1950s. It will be interesting to look at the historical evolution of crystallography in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>PLoS journals</strong><br />We will now turn our attention to the PLoS journal<a name="fr10"></a> There are seven journals in all. PLoS ONE (eISSN-1932-6203) is somewhat different from the other six PLoS journals. It is an international, peer-reviewed, OA, online publication that accepts reports on primary research from any scientific discipline. In-house PLoS staff and international Advisory and Editorial Boards ensure fast, fair, and professional peer review. In Table 5, we provide data on the number of papers published each year by authors from the 12 countries during 2006–2010. The USA has published the largest number of papers, viz. 6,501, which is more than four times that of Britain, its nearest rival. India has published 262 papers and has the least CPP, viz. 2.34, whereas all the other countries have a CPP of above 3.0. Britain has the highest, viz. 4.76, closely followed by Germany (4.73). The values for other countries are: USA (4.36), France (4.23), Canada (4.29), Israel (3.98), Japan (3.86), South Korea (3.82), South Africa (3.46), China (3.24) and Brazil (3.01). The journal has published during this period 14,071 papers at a CPP of 3.99. The number of papers published by the other six journals, number of times they are cited and impact factors of these journals are given in Table 6. In these journals, India has published 120 papers and these have been cited 1,022 times for an average of 8.52 CPP. The corresponding figures for other middle-level countries are: China (212 papers and 11.39 CPP), South Korea (62 papers and 17.47 CPP), Brazil (131 papers and 10.21 CPP), South Africa (137 papers and 18.42 CPP) and Israel (184 papers and 15.46 CPP).</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Looking at individual journals (Table 7), one sees that in general the middle-level countries have published very few papers compared to the advanced countries. There are exceptions though. Israel has published 73 papers in PLoS Computational Biology, comparable to France’s 92 and higher than Canada’s 55 and Japan’s 46. In this journal Israel’s CPP (8.5) is comparable to the world average (9.1) and the CPP of Britain and higher than the CPP of Japan. In PLoS Medicine, India’s 38 papers have a CPP of 6.92, far below the journal average of 14.12, and less than that of the other 11 countries considered. In PloS Biology, India has a CPP of 15.77, far below the journal average of 31.69, whereas South Korea (54.78) and China (32.12) have a CPP higher than the journal average. In PLoS Genetics, Brazil, South Africa and Israel have a higher CPP than the journal average. Authors from USA publish the largest number of papers in each of the six PLoS speciality journals, followed by Britain. But USA leads in CPP in only two of them, viz. PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Computational Biology. Britain has the highest CPP for PLoS Genetics followed by USA. Japan has the highest CPP for PLoS Medicine followed by France. Canada has the highest CPP for PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases and PLoS Biology, the first of the PLoS journals.</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Discussion</h3>
<p align="JUSTIFY">There has been a perceptible increase in the number of OA papers published in journals. Björk et al. have shown that the number of OA papers has been growing and for articles published in 2008, it stood at 20.4% of all papers published – 8.5% in journals (publisher sites) and 11.9% in searchable repositories.<a name="fr11-12"></a> A recent forecast by Springer based on Web of Science data has shown that at the current rate of growth journal articles which are OA will likely grow from 8.7% in 2010 to 27% by 2020 assuming a constant annual growth rate of 20% as against 3% growth rate of papers indexed in Web of Science.<a name="fr13"></a> It will be interesting to see if the number of papers published by Indian researchers in OA journals also increase year after year. Sathyanarayana of Informatics India tells us that the per cent of OA papers published by Indian researchers as revealed by Open J-Gate is higher than the world average (private communication), but we need a proper scientometric study to confirm this. Evans and Reimar have shown that for authors from developing countries free-access articles are cited much higher when they make them freely accessible over the Internet and that free Internet access widens the circle of those who read and make use of scientists’ investigation.<a name="fr14"></a>An analysis of many MedKnow journals has shown that OA journals do not lose subscribers to print editions; on the contrary, the number of subscribers is increasing in most cases. Again, OA has helped MedKnow journals attract a larger number of paper submissions, hits and downloads, win more citations and improve impact factors.<a name="fr15"></a>The Indian Academy of Sciences has also seen similar trends for their journals (G. Chandramohan, pers.commun). Data in Table 5 show that the number of papers published by each one of the 12 countries in PLoS ONE has increased over the years dramatically. We found similar trends for all PLoS journals (except PLoS Medicine) and several BMC journals including BMC Public Health, BMC Bioinformatics and BMC Genomics <a name="fr16"></a></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Both BMC and PLoS charge article processing fees as do many other open access journals. BMC journals charge between $ 1450 and $ 1640, PLoS ONE charges $ 1350, and PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology $ 2900 and other PLoS journals $ 2250. This could be a deterrent to most Indian and other developing country researchers. However, these journals waive the processing fees if authors request before submitting their papers. But not all Indian scientists would like to request such waivers. Here is what Balaram<a name="fr17"></a>a leading Indian molecular biophysicist, says: ‘As an Indian scientist, I do not want my government funds to be subsidising Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals or any other non-Indian open access journal. Some journals waive these charges for authors from developing countries. But I do not think we should go begging for waivers.’</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Conclusion</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Indian researchers publish a large number of papers in OA journals, not necessarily because more than 360 Indian journals are OA. Their contribution to high-impact international biomedical OA journals is modest at best. However, India’s contribution to Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports is substantial. There are two reasons for this: India has a strong and vibrant community of inorganic crystallographers and the journal charges only $ 150 for processing a paper. A similar study on India’s participation in international OA journals in other fields, such as physics, chemistry, earth sciences and engineering will be interesting.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Ideally though, Indian researchers and funding agencies should prefer the institutional archiving route recommended by both Harnad <a name="fr18"></a> and Balram One hundred per cent OA through archiving should be the national goal. As pointed out by Joshi<a name="fr19"></a> and as has been demonstrated most recently by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi<a name="fr20"></a> starting and filling an institutional EPrints archive is easy, inexpensive, and immensely beneficial to all. However, six years after the first workshop on setting up OA repositories was held in May 2004, we have not more than 40 active repositories in the country. We believe that such repositories would come up in most, if not all, higher educational and research institutions in the country if the Ministers in charge of both higher education and science and technology send out a note stating that from now on all publicly-funded research should be available through OA channels.</p>
<div></div>
<hr />
<p><i>Muthu Madhan is in the ICRISAT, Patancheru 502 324, India and Subbiah Arunachalam is in the Centre for Internet and Society, No.194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur 2nd Stage, Bangalore 560 071, India</i>. <br />*For correspondence. (e-mail: <a class="mail-link" href="mailto:subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.com">subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.com</a>)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn1"></a>]. Arunachalam, S., Advances in information access and science communication. Curr. Sci., 2001, 80, 493–494.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn2"></a>]. Dallmeier-Tiessen, S., First results of the SOAP project. Open access publishing in 2010; http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.0506v11</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn3"></a>]. Registry of Open Access Repositories; http://roar.eprints.org</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn4"></a>]. Directory of Open Access Journals; http://www.doaj.org</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn5"></a>]. Open J-Gate; http://www. openj-gate.com</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn6"></a>]. BioMed Central: The Open Access Publisher; http://www.biomedcentral.com/</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn7"></a>]. Science in India 2004-2008, Scib ytes 2010, ScienceWatch.com; http://sciencewatch.com/dr/sci/10/jan10-10_2/</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn8"></a>]. Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online;http://journals.iucr.org/e/</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn9"></a>]. Banerjee, K., Structure of anthracene and naphthalene. Nature, 1930, 125, 456.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn10"></a>]. Public Library of Science Journals; http://www.plos.org/journals/</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn11"></a>]. Björk, B.-C., Roos, A. and Lauri, M., Scientific journal publishing – yearly volume and open access availability.<br />Inform. Res., 2009, 14, Paper 391; http://InformationR.net/ir/14-1/paper391.html</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn12"></a>]. Björk, B.-C., Welling, P., Laakso, M., Majlender, P., Hedlund, T.and Guðnason, G., Open access to the scientific journal literature: Situation 2009.PLoS One, 2010, 5 (6), e11273; http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011273</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn13"></a>]. Hendriks, P., Open Access Publishing at Springer, Presented at Berlin 8 Open Access Conference, Beijing, China, 2010; http://www.berlin8.org/userfiles/file/Berlin8_OA_Conference_PH_v1.pdf</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn14"></a>]. Evans, J. A. and Reimer, J., Open access and global participation in science. Science, 2009, 323, 1025.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn15"></a>]. Sahu, D. K., MEDKNOW: Open Access Publishing for Learned Societies and Associations, Presented at Berlin 8 Open Access Conference, Beijing, China, 2010; http://www.berlin8.org/userfiles/file/Berlin8.pdf</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn16"></a>]. Comparison of BioMed Central’s article processing charges with those of other publishers; http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apccomparison</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn17"></a>]. Jayaraman, K. S., Open archives – the alternative to open access, interview with Prof. P. Balaram, SciDev.Net, 9 July 2008; http://www.scidev.net/en/features/q-a-open-archives-the-alternative-to-open-access.html</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn18"></a>]. Harnad, S., How India can provide immediate open access now? Curr. Sci., 2008, 94, 1232.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn19"></a>]. Joshi, N. V., Institutional E-print archives: liberalizing access to scientific research. Curr. Sci., 2005, 89, 421–422.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn20"></a>]. Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute; http://eprints.cmfri.org.in</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/use-made-of-open-access-journals-by-indian-researchers-to-publish-their-findings'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/use-made-of-open-access-journals-by-indian-researchers-to-publish-their-findings</a>
</p>
No publisherMadhan Muthu and Subbiah ArunachalamOpennessOpen ContentOpen Access2013-07-04T04:45:39ZBlog EntryOpen Government Platform: An Open Source Solution to Democratizing Access to Information and Energizing Civic Engagement
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/informatics-nic-in-neeta-verma-alka-mishra-d-p-mishra-july-2012-open-government-platform
<b>If government could release these datasets in open format for people to use & reuse, a whole lot of new innovative apps could be built around these datasets to provide better, customized services to citizens. </b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This article by Neeta Verma, Alka Mishra and D.P. Mishra was <a class="external-link" href="http://informatics.nic.in/uploads/pdfs/bf8ad9e4_lead_story.pdf">published as a lead story in the July 2012 edition of Informatics Magazine</a>, printed by the National Informatics Centre.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Online publishing of Government data in open format shall play an important role in enhancing transparency and accountability of the government. It shall enable new forms of citizen engagement & innovation in citizen service delivery. More customized & personalized services could be offered to citizens. When implemented at large scale it shall bring a paradigm shift in development of e-governance applications. At NIC we have recently developed an Open Government Platform (OGPL) to enable government ministries & departments to launch their open data initiative.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Conceptual Overview</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">OGPL as a product caters to two sets of users - the government and the citizen/civil societies. It facilitates government departments to contribute their datasets, Apps, tools, documents, services etc., which gets validated and published, after passing through a predefined workflow to the citizen interfacing data portal. The single-point citizen interface is designed in such a way that catalogs can be searched with ease and datasets can be accessed/downloaded in various open formats. It also provides a platform for citizens and civil societies to engage with government on various aspects of socio economic development.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">OGPL also facilitates building of subject specific communities through Citizen engagement modules. Communities shall discuss online the kind of datasets, government should release and also what kind of apps should be developed around these datasets. This shall provide first hand information to government as well as developer communities on public demand and prioritize their schedules accordingly.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">OGPL Components</h2>
<p>OGPL essentially consists of three major modules:</p>
<ul>
<li>Dataset Management System</li>
<li>Data Portal</li>
<li>Monitoring and Management</li>
<li>Dashboard</li>
</ul>
<h2>Dataset Management System</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Dataset Management system or DMS shall be used by all contributing ministries, departments as well as organisations using which, authorized officers of the departments can contribute datasets, documents, services, tools and apps which shall then be processed through a predefined workflow of moderation & approval to ensure that datasets being released in public domain are in compliance with existing acts & policies of the government<br />concerning privacy, security etc.<br /><br />Through DMS each Ministry/Department can contribute their datasets in the form containing a set of Standard Metadata elements. After passing through various stages of moderation and approvals, these datasets gets published on the data portal viz. data.gov.in</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Data Portal</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Data Portal is the citizen facing frontend of the OGPL which shall provide single point access to all the datasets, apps as well as services. Portal has a strong component of search, discovery as well as citizen engagement. The development of the data portal is in compliance with the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This Citizen interfacing Data Portal would also have a Communities component built into the system. This component facilitates Forums/Discussions around various datasets, apps available on the portal as well as platform to express and discuss the kind of datasets & apps they would like to have. This shall give first hand input to development community for building new components, apps. It shall also give input to departments as what kind of datasets are more useful and accordingly can raise the priority of their release.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Monitoring and Management Dashboard</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Monitoring and management dashboard of OGPL helps government monitor & manage its Open Data Programme through three dimensions</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "> Metrics, analytics & feedback from citizens: Metrics help understand amount of datasets uploaded, updated by different Departments. Frequency of upload is also available on a single dashboard.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Analytics module gives use perspective in terms of their usage of datasets, Number of downloads, aggregated ratings provided to datasets determine their value and to some extent quality of data released by government.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Feedback from citizens provide government with first hand input from citizens on quality, relevance of datasets, new datasets needed, kind of apps need to be developed, etc. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Open government platform can be used in multiple ways. One can directly publish their datasets after one time registration & authentication. Departments could build their subject specific catalogues through a cloud based services of OGPL. One can also ask for independent installation of OGPL with customized look & feel. OGPL can be used by any central or state government department, organisations as well as district and panchayat administrations. It can also be used by private organisations as well as non government organization and civil societies to bring in more<br />transparency in their functioning.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">OGPL isn't simply about setting up a new web platform, moving to cloud computing or adopting open standards but it's about establishing a platform to enhance transparency, accountability & foster development of Innovative applications to better serve the citizens & other stakeholders. Open government data is gaining a lot of popularity & acceptance with governments across the world. Its led by government themselves, development communities, international organisations. OGPL is a perfect platform for them to launch their open data initiative.</p>
<hr />
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<h2>Note by BK Gairola</h2>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/BKGairola.png" alt=" BK Gairola" class="image-inline" title=" BK Gairola" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In India, National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) has been recently notified by the Government. According to this policy, all government departments shall release their datasets in open format for citizens and other stakeholders to freely use & reuse. To make these datasets easily accessible by citizens, policy has also mandated NIC to provide technology solution for establishing an Open Data Portal (http://data.gov.in) for Departments, Subordinate Offices and Organizations. OGPL implementation in India is being executed by NIC, DeitY in close coordination with DST.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">OGPL is an open source product with generic architecture, which would easily facilitate other organizations and institutions to adopt for their open data initiatives. Communities could also contribute further by developing innovative apps around datasets and also enhancing the product in terms of features & functionalities.<br /><br />The purpose of the platform is to enhance access and use of government data to foster innovation, promote transparency, accountability and public participation. I am sure it shall go a long way in democratizing the government information.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<h2>Indo-US Collaboration</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Open Government Platform (OGPL) was developed jointly by India & US government as a result of announcement made by President Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the Indo-US Open Government Dialogue in 2010. OGPL leverages on the best practices & features of the India’s “India.gov.in” and the “Data.gov” of United States.National Informatics Centre (NIC) from Government of India and General Services Administration (GSA) of United States executed the development of OGPL. Open Government Platform, developed to promote access to government data and information and energize citizen engagement was launched by Hon’ble Minister of Communications & IT and HRD, Govt. of India during a press conference held on 30th March 2012 in New Delhi in presence of Dr. Sam Pitroda, Advisor to Prime Minister of India. Secretary(DEITY), DG(NIC) & Joint Secretary, MEA also participated in the press conference, Senior officers from US Government & US Embassy were also present along with GSA team in India. CIO, US Government along with Deputy CTO also addressed the event over video conference.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/KapilSibalPressBriefing1.png" alt="KapilSibal1" class="image-inline" title="KapilSibal1" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/KapilSibalPressBriefing2.png" alt="KapilSibal2" class="image-inline" title="KapilSibal2" /></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<h2>OGPL - An Open Source Solution</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Open Government Platform is completely developed using Open Source Stack. In fact complete management of the collaborative development of OGPL by two teams stationed in two continents of the world was also handled using open source tools.It complies with the best practices of open source development, which helps in leveraging the strengths of future versions of the open source base products used in development of OGPL.<br /><br />OGPL being an open source initiative not only facilitates cost saving in terms of software and licenses but also facilitates community participation in terms of further development of product with additional components and<br />innovative apps around the published datasets. This shall define a paradigm shift in the manner electronic government applications shall be developed in future. The entire source code is made available to public for review, feedback and participation for further development and enhancement.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<h2>Citizen Engagement</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">OGPL has a strong component of Citizen engagement. Citizens can view, download datasets as well express their opinion on the quality of datasets, they can rate the datasets on a scale of 1 to 5. One can embed a dataset in their blog or web site as well as contact the owner of the datasets for any query or clarification. One can also publish or connect the datasets on their social media pages such as facebook, twitter etc. for wider reach.<br /><br />Ratings given by citizen are transparently shared on the portal in terms of number of views, current star rating which help new visitor understand quality of data sets, its popularity. Portal also enables visitors to submit their ideas, feedbacks and as well suggest datasets they would like government to release in open domain. These ideas are further rated by citizens to help government allocate priority in release of data sets.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/informatics-nic-in-neeta-verma-alka-mishra-d-p-mishra-july-2012-open-government-platform'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/informatics-nic-in-neeta-verma-alka-mishra-d-p-mishra-july-2012-open-government-platform</a>
</p>
No publisherNeeta Verma, Alka Mishra and D.P. MishraOpen DataOpen ContentOpenness2012-11-19T03:15:01ZBlog Entry