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Open Access Week Round-Up
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/open-otago-october-27-2015-open-access-week-round-up
<b>Here is a round-up of events held at the University of Otago over Open Access Week. Subhashish Panigrahi made a presentation for the staff members of libraries across New Zealand. The event was organised by the University of Otago.</b>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">From 3-4pm Subhashish Panigrahi [<a href="https://twitter.com/subhapa">@subhapa</a>], based in Bangalore, described the concept of <a href="https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/openotago/2015/10/06/how-to-do-guerilla-glam/" target="_blank">How to do Guerrilla GLAM</a>. Given the emergence of Wikipedian in Residence projects overseas and at particular institutions in NZ (see a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b8X2SQO1UA&index=1&list=PLitfMzpMy7R93xPXqURuog_ahAwTq8hQO" target="_blank">recent panel at NDF 2015</a>), we were intrigued by what he had to say.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It was an interesting session which generated much discussion. For those of us in NZ where we are fortunate to have institutions where there is a relatively high rate of access to collections – I’m thinking even at the library catalogue level – the thought that guerrilla activity may be necessary to surface collection items without the intervention of institution staffers may be surprising and possibly confronting! Subhashish did stress this guerrilla activity in no way violates copyright or licencing agreements, but seeks to make cultural items in GLAMs openly available to the public, where possible by partnering with institutions. The fact that many institutions do not have the resources to digitize cultural items, he posits, leaves the door open for guerrilla activity by skilled volunteers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">One participant in the session succinctly described Guerrilla GLAM as being self-authorizing activity vs institutional authorizing activity. I understand this to mean that rather than institutions engaging their own staff or volunteers, or crowd sourcing new volunteers to digitise their content, the Guerilla GLAMers come to them. There may well be communities in NZ or small GLAMs that have no digital record of their collections. Communities and institutions in this situation may well find it helpful to engage some interested Guerrilla GLAMers to help them out.</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li>The webinar links and chat are available here <a href="http://connect.otago.ac.nz/p4j21g554ny/" target="_blank">connect.otago.ac.nz/p4j21g554ny/</a></li>
<li>The slides are also available separately here <a href="http://slides.com/psubhashish/how-to-do-guerrilla-glam/fullscreen#/" target="_blank">http://slides.com/psubhashish/how-to-do-guerrilla-glam/fullscreen#/</a></li></ul>
<ul style="text-align: justify;"></ul>
<hr />
<p><a class="external-link" href="https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/openotago/2015/10/27/open-access-week-round-up/">Click to read the blog post published by the University of Otago</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/open-otago-october-27-2015-open-access-week-round-up'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/open-otago-october-27-2015-open-access-week-round-up</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaCIS-A2KOpen AccessAccess to Knowledge2015-12-15T08:21:01ZNews ItemOpen Access Week begins in Bangalore
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/lecture-at-nal
<b>On Monday 24 October, the National Aerospace Laboratories in Bangalore held an event to mark the beginning of Open Access Week 2011</b>
<p>During the event, <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padmanabhan_Balaram">Professor Balaram</a> spoke on<strong> 'Issues of Access in Science Publishing'</strong>, and <a class="external-link" href="http://nal-ir.nal.res.in/view/creators/Venkatakrishnan=3AL=3A=3A.html">Dr. L Venkatakrishnan</a> gave a talk '<strong>Open Access: Promised Utopia or Eventual Reality?'</strong></p>
<div>Before the speakers, Shyam Chetty framed the discussion by suggesting that India currently lags behind other nations in the adoption of Open Access. He said that the Indian <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Scientific_and_Industrial_Research">Council of Scientific and Industrial Research </a>should lead an initiative to promote India's <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/OAworkshop2006/pdfs/NationalOAPolicyDCs.pdf">National Open Access Policy</a> and perhaps bring it into law. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Prof. Balaram spoke next, and brought some refreshing realism and complexity to the Open Access discussion. He noted that both as a reader and as an author he supports Open Access, but there are costs involved in making research available, and these will have to be covered in some way. He shared first-hand experience of expensive subscriptions for Indian institutions, and how even the IISc has cancelled many journal purchases.
In a <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/openness/professor-balaram-talks-open-access" class="external-link">later interview, Professor Balaram</a> discusses some solutions to these problems.
<div> </div>
<div>Prof. Balaram highlighted that Closed Access journals do add value to scholarship ― in terms of peer review, editing, and aggregation (the collection of related articles in useful ways). While Open Access journals may offer these services too, Prof. Balaram suggested that some of the strongest supporters of Closed Access journals are working academics who value the increased reputation and status they can offer. This lead him to expressing an opposition to institutional Open Access mandates. Instead, he encouraged an approach where academics are motivated to open their work for self-interest, rather than by obligation. </div>
<div>
<div> </div>
<div>Prof. Balaram also said that India must take an independent approach to Open Access and not expect western nations to lead the way. Increasingly India and China are seen as real competitors in the international field, and in the future may not receive concessions in journal subscriptions or other help currently offered to developing nations.
<div>
<div> </div>
<div>Dr Venkatakrishnan was more skeptical towards Open Access. He emphasized that the price to make an article freely available in a Closed Access journal could be over USD $3000. From this he suggested that the <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_journal">Gold Route</a> to Open Access lacked potential because the costs involved are prohibitive. This does leave out <a class="external-link" href="http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/OA_journal_business_models">alternative ways of financing</a> Open Access journals that do not involve the author paying for submission. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Dr. Venkatakrishnan<span class="Apple-style-span"> echoed Prof. Balaram in saying that a strong motivation to publish in top-tier Closed Access journals is the increased reputation or funding it can bring. </span>While it is true that academics can usually still upload their work to Open Access databases, <span class="Apple-style-span">Dr. </span>Venkatakrishnan<span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span">concluded that he did not know if Open Access was an 'open door' or a 'blind corner'. </span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span">This could be taken as a strange end to an Open Access celebration, but the implication seemed to be this: in order for more Indian academics to support Open Access, they must be convinced of the real benefits it can bring to their own reputation and career success.</span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<ul><li>For the event flier<a class="external-link" href="http://www.icast.org.in/events/oad2011.html"> click here</a></li><li>For details of Open Access Week, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.openaccessweek.org/">click here</a></li></ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/lecture-at-nal'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/lecture-at-nal</a>
</p>
No publisherTom DaneOpennessOpen Access2012-08-03T23:04:06ZBlog EntryOpen Access to Science and Scholarship - Why and What Should We Do?
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/science-and-scholarship
<b>The National Institute of Advanced Studies held the eighth NIAS-DST training programme on “Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Science, Technology and Society” from 26 July to 7 August, 2010. The theme of the project was ‘Knowledge Management’. Dr. MG Narasimhan and Dr. Sharada Srinivasan were the coordinators for the event. Professor Subbiah Arunachalam made a presentation on Open Access to Science and Scholarship. </b>
<p><em>Professor Arunachalam started off with some questions to begin with</em>:</p>
<p>Have you published papers in refereed journals? In open access journals? Have you received reprint requests? Have you been a referee for research papers? Have you placed your papers in open access repositories? Do you know the journal budget of your library? Do you use Wikimedia, Blogs, RSS feeds, and other web 2.0 facilities? Do you know the NPTEL courses can be stored in your cell phone, shared with others and can be viewed on a PC/laptop? Have you accessed Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg and Khan Academy? </p>
<p><em>He also referred to a quote from Revolution in the Revolution:</em></p>
<blockquote>
<p>"We are never completely contemporaneous with our present." Our vision is encumbered with memory and images learned in the past. “We see the past superimposed on the present, even when the present is a revolution."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Regis Debray in Revolution in the Revolution </p>
<p>It takes considerable motivation and effort to get away from the burden of the past and really move on to the present. Scholarly communication is no different from other human endeavours. The main purpose—science is the production of knowledge. Some may say understanding the universe, but the two are virtually the same. There are two kinds of knowledge: knowledge one wants to give away free and knowledge one wants to encash. In the past two days we have heard several speakers speak about intellectual property, patents, royalty, court cases on infringement of rights, etc. All that is, of the second kind. Today I am not concerned with that kind of knowledge. I am concerned with knowledge that everyone wants to share, give away free to maximize one’s advantage. The means by which scientists give away the knowledge they generate is through scholarly communication. </p>
<p>There are very good reasons for developing countries to pursue science. As there is a growing tendency to privatize science, issues of great social importance (such as health research related to malaria, diarrhoeal diseases, etc.) remain neglected. And if developing countries do not improve their stakes in knowledge production, they will eternally remain vulnerable to exploitation by the rich countries.</p>
<p>Without free and unhindered flow of information, it will be difficult to perform science let alone maximize the efficiency (and the benefits) of scientific research and build capacity for doing science.</p>
<p>The power of access to information was amply in evidence during the tsunami tragedy, when wherever people were exposed to a culture of information they were able to cope with the tsunami better.</p>
<p>Researchers in most developing countries are working under very difficult conditions, especially in regard to information access. To do research, they need access to essential global research findings, but they do not have such access. For example, a survey revealed a few years ago in the 75 countries with a GNP per capita per year of less than $1,000, 56 per cent medical institutions had no subscriptions to journals; in countries with a GNP between $ 1–3 thousand, 34 per cent had no subscriptions and a further 34 per cent had an average 2 subscriptions per year. What kind of research is possible in these institutions?</p>
<p>Eight countries, led by the USA, produce almost 85 per cent of the world’s most cited publications, while 163 other countries account for less than 2.5 per cent. In the ten years, 1998-2007, there were less than 800 papers from India that were cited at least 100 times. There is tremendous asymmetry both in access to information and in the production of quality research between the rich and the poor countries. As long as this asymmetry in research output and access to relevant information persists, scientists in developing countries will remain isolated and their research will continue to have little impact.</p>
<p>Here he borrowed an extract from Cornell University Library:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Scholarly communication — the process used by scholars and scientists to share the results of their research — is fast approaching crossroads. Individual disciplines and the scholarly community as a whole will soon need to make far-ranging decisions about how scholarly information is formally and informally exchanged, because current methods of scholarly communication are increasingly restrictive and are economically unsustainable.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The history of scholarly communication since 1665 revolves largely around dissemination of knowledge through print-on-paper journals and libraries subscribing to a large number of them and making them available to scholars and scientists. Despite the advent of the faster and far more convenient means of communication - in the form of Internet and the World Wide Web - print continues to hold sway in many parts of the world.</p>
<p>From 1665 to today, the scholarly journal has changed considerably both in the way the content is presented and in the way technology is used. Gone are the leisurely descriptive prose used by people like Michael Faraday. Today the text is terse and most experimental details are omitted and just a superscript (reference) is given. We no longer use the movable types invented by Gutenberg but use personal computers and laptops to compose the text. We no longer use the four-line composing system for mathematical texts; we have TeX in different flavours. We now use sophisticated visualization techniques and multimedia tools. Here are two examples from two different centuries.</p>
<blockquote>"I purpose, in return for the honour you do us by coming to see what our proceedings here are, to bring before you, in the course of these lectures the chemical history of a candle. I have taken this subject on a former occasion, and, were it left to my own will, I should prefer to repeat it almost every year, so abundant is the interest that attaches itself to the subject, so wonderful are the varieties of outlet which it offers into the various departments of philosophy. There is not a law under which any part of this universe is governed which does not come into play and is touched upon in these phenomena. There is no better, there is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle. I trust, therefore, I shall not disappoint you in choosing this for my subject rather than any newer topic, which could not be better, were it even so good."<br /></blockquote>
<p>Michael Faraday in “The Chemical History of a Candle” (1861)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>ARPES measurements in the vortex liquid1 part of the pseudo gap region of underdoped BISSCO cuprates show that the spectrum retains an energy gap of d symmetry, but that around the nodal points that gap appears to have collapsed, leaving a finite arc of apparently true Fermi surface, which simply terminates. In the anti-nodal region the gap remains nearly as large as in the superconductor.2,3 In the experiments there is no indication that this arc represents a part of a true Fermi surface pocket, but this has not prevented the publication of various theoretical interpretations in such terms.4,5 Whatever other properties this region of the pseudogap … … …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Simple Explanation of Fermi Arcs in Cuprate Pseudogaps: by Philip W Anderson, 2008</p>
<p>For a history of scholarly communication, I will refer you to the works of Alan Jack Meadows and Christine Borgman.</p>
<p>The inability to cope with the constantly rising subscription prices of journals provided the motivation for librarians in the West to look for alternatives. And men like Paul Ginsparg and Tim Berners-Lee who saw the potential of technology to facilitate easy and rapid dissemination of nascent knowledge helped others - especially in the physics and computing communities - to make the transition from the past to the present and become contemporaneous with the present. Both of them facilitated open access.</p>
<p>The online revolution went far beyond speeding up knowledge dissemination and democratizing knowledge. It helped the very process of knowledge production in myriad ways. It facilitated visualization, synthesizing, data mining, international collaboration, grid computing, and ushered in the era of eScience.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, most developing countries have not made the transition from the past to becoming contemporaneous with the present. Neither have they seen the same levels of transformative impact of science and technology as the advanced countries nor have they taken full advantage of the new technologies and adopted open access to science and scholarship.</p>
<p>Even China and South Korea, both of which have made rapid progress in science and technology in the past decade or two, have not taken full advantage of the open access movement.</p>
<p>In this talk I will present the situation in India. There are three sides to knowledge: education, research and innovation. We will begin with some indicators and set the context.</p>
<p>Together with China, India is widely seen to be a rising global power. China has gone way ahead of India in many respects.</p>
<p>It is the same in science as well, with China performing far better. Some other Asian countries are also stepping up investment in science and soon Asia may rival USA and European Union in science. In terms of R&D investments (in current ppp US dollars), India is in the top ten countries in the world. Some of our labs are better equipped than labs in the West.</p>
<p>Rough estimate of R&D investment, as % GDP</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>Country<br /></th>
<th>Percentage</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Japan</td>
<td>3.67%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sweden</td>
<td>3.60%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Finland</td>
<td>3.48%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>USA</td>
<td>2.70%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>EU average<br /></td>
<td>2.16%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>China</td>
<td>1.40%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>India</td>
<td>1.00%</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>In India, about 70 per cent of R&D investment comes from the government, but industry’s share is increasing. Despite the economic slowdown India's government allocated 284 billion rupees (US $5.8 billion) for R&D last year, 17 per cent more than the previous year. [The US spends $370 bn on science, $270 bn coming from the industry.] In January 2010, the Prime Minister promised to keep hiking the budget for science for some more years. The allocation for the higher education sector is also on the rise and new IITs and IISERs have been set up. Clearly, India is keen to make a mark in world science. Concurrently, a National Knowledge Network is coming up that would link all of India’s higher educational and research institutions and provide high bandwidth connectivity. </p>
<p>India’s scientists have not betrayed the confidence reposed in them. In the past few years, their productivity measured by the number of papers indexed in Science Citation Index – Expanded rose from 18,138 papers in 2000 to 22,846 in 2003 to 30,992 in 2006 to 42,446 in 2009. But these papers have appeared in well over 2,500 journals published from more than 100 countries of the world and in widely differing fields from agriculture and astronomy to space science and new biology. As many of these journals are not subscribed to by most Indian libraries, papers published by researchers in one Indian laboratory may not be known to researchers working in the same field in other laboratories. That is not a good thing. In science, we need to know what others are doing. As Newton said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."</p>
<p>Let us see the number of papers published by India and China in different fields.</p>
<table class="grid listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><br /></th>
<th>India</th>
<th>China</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>MathSciNet, 2006<br /></td>
<td>1,949</td>
<td>11,762</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Engineering Village, 2006<br /></td>
<td>25,954</td>
<td>199,881</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>SciFinder, 2007<br /></td>
<td>41,697</td>
<td>235,309</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Web of Science, 2007<br /></td>
<td>35,450</td>
<td>98,241</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Data from Scopus show that India moved up from 13th rank in 1996 to 10th in 2006 among nations publishing the largest number of papers. In the same period China moved up from ninth to second. Data from SciBytes – ScienceWatch show that in no field does India receives citations on par with world average.</p>
<p>But after a few years of stagnation, science in India is looking up. Both investments and research output are increasing. New institutions – IITs, IISERs, IIITs and central universities – are coming up. Internet penetration is growing and the costs are coming down. Work done by development organizations has shown that access to scientific knowledge and data benefit not only researchers but also common people.</p>
<p>Scientists and scholars who give away their contribution to knowledge are hampered by copyright law which protects the interests of the intermediaries rather than those of the creators of knowledge. The OA movement is trying to restore the Knowledge commons to the creators. Knowledge commons differ from natural resources commons in one respect. They are not in the zero-sum domain; indeed knowledge grows when shared. Both require strong collective action, self-governing mechanisms and a high degree of social capital to thrive. But the OA movement is spreading unevenly. </p>
<p>Information is the key to science development. It forms the ‘shoulders of giants’ as Newton said. Science in India suffers from two problems: They relate to access and visibility. Both these problems can be solved by widespread adoption of open access. We need to persuade the world to adopt open access. Many advocates are already doing and things are improving.</p>
<p>India needs to adopt OA in a big way. We should take advantage of the potential of the Net and the Web and make the field level playing. But most of us still live in the print-on-paper era.</p>
<p>The access problem is solved to some extent by consortia subscriptions to journals at huge costs. There are at least ten consortia, big and small. A recent study, however, has shown that these journals are not used well.</p>
<p>There are two Indias at vastly different levels of development. With a huge population and a history going back to several millennia, India is keen to develop rapidly and become an advanced country and a global power. This India is reflected in growth rates upwards of 8 per cent over several years, Indian companies acquiring overseas companies, growing foreign investments, increasing investment in science, etc. India is also home to the largest number of the poor in the world and is beset with a multitude of problems most of which could be solved only with research in the sciences and social sciences. The benefits of the high growth rate have not percolated to the poor and there is tension between the two Indias. </p>
<p>India needs to perform research that will make it competitive in global science and to perform science that can address local problems. In the first case India has no escape from the evaluation criteria and practices used in the advanced countries such as citation counts and impact factor. In the second case, India needs to adopt evaluation criteria more suitable for the purpose. In both kinds of research, India will benefit greatly by adopting open access. Unfortunately, progress in the adoption of open access is slow. The story of OA in India is one of missed opportunities and half-hearted attempts.</p>
<p>India has an efficient space programme, a controversial nuclear energy programme and a network of national laboratories under different research councils. Science is managed by multiple agencies. There are two advisory bodies – Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government and the Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister – and several departments under the Ministry of Science and Technology. There is a separate Ministry of Earth Science.</p>
<p>But most of these agencies have not done much to adopt open access. Despite a request by the DG of CSIR, most CSIR laboratories have not set up OA IRs. The CSIR Director General is promoting <a class="external-link" href="http://www.osdd.net/">open source drug discovery</a> and has secured substantial funding for the project. CSIR is also planning a national level repository for all researchers to deposit their papers irrespective of their affiliation. CSIR-NISCAIR has made all its 19 journals open access.</p>
<p>Agriculture is the key to India’s survival and India has many agricultural research laboratories and universities. Very few of them have an OA repository. ICRISAT, a CGIAR outfit, has set up its own IR and mandated OA. CMFRI has set up an IR and it is filling up fast.</p>
<p>India ranks first in the incidence of blindness, tuberculosis and diabetes. But health research is not paid as much attention as it deserves. No medical research lab or college has an IR.</p>
<p>Many Indian medical journals are OA though, largely thanks to the efforts of MedKnow Publications and the National Informatics Centre of the Government of India. NIC has set up a central OA repository for papers in biomedical research. Indian Journal of Medical Research went OA a few years ago and since then its impact factor is increasing every year. The same is true of many journals made OA by MedKnow. </p>
<p>The Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, signed the Berlin Declaration six years ago, and it took a while to make its journals OA. The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, made all its 11 journals OA a few years ago.</p>
<p>The Academies can do a lot more. They do talk about OA in their meetings, but nothing much happens. Early last year INSA convened a meeting on open access and copyright. Dr Sahu, Mr Sunil Abraham and I were invited to speak and INSA is still considering the recommendations.</p>
<p>Their top priority is for requesting the government to pay publication fees to journals that charge such fees and not mandating open access for publicly funded research. </p>
<p>A suggestion to the Academies to set up an Indian equivalent of the Dutch Cream of Science project – an online archive of all papers by all Fellows of the Academies – is taken up by IASc after more than three years.</p>
<p>The Academies could be proactive and advise both the government and the scientists to adopt a mandate for OA, but they are reluctant. Prof. P Balaram, a member of the Knowledge Commission and the Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, is an advocate of open access. In an editorial in Current Science, he said, “The idea of open, institutional archives is one that must be vigorously promoted in India.”</p>
<p>Is anyone listening?</p>
<table class="vertical listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>Universities</th>
<th>Scopus</th>
<th>Scholar</th>
<th>% Sco vs Sch<br /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Univ College London<br /></td>
<td>134,950</td>
<td>8,660</td>
<td>6.4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Univ of Cambridge<br /></td>
<td>114,339</td>
<td>8,320</td>
<td>7.3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Univ of Oxford<br /></td>
<td>99,723</td>
<td>7,800</td>
<td>7.8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Imperial College<br /></td>
<td>91,537</td>
<td>4,720</td>
<td>5.2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Univ of Manchester<br /></td>
<td>83,024</td>
<td>3,840</td>
<td>4.6</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>King's College London<br /></td>
<td>60,407</td>
<td>1,100</td>
<td>1.8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Univ of Edinburgh<br /></td>
<td>57,473</td>
<td>9,920</td>
<td>17.3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Univ of Southampton<br /></td>
<td>44,013</td>
<td>14,000</td>
<td>31.8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Univ of Warwick<br /></td>
<td>23,018</td>
<td>6,010</td>
<td>26.1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Univ of York<br /></td>
<td>21,554</td>
<td>2,920</td>
<td>13.6</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Loughborough Univ<br /></td>
<td>18,902</td>
<td>4,030</td>
<td>21.3</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>This table is an example of the current situation regarding open distribution of scientific results by world universities. In the case of United Kingdom, the production of quality papers is far higher than the number of them available in repositories and thus being indexed by Google Scholar.</p>
<p>UK universities are not achieving higher ranks in Webometrics as compared to other research-based rankings and this is the most likely explanation for this behaviour. Southampton ranks above Columbia and Yale largely because Southampton has a mandate requiring that all of its research output be made open access on the web through an institutional repository.</p>
<p>The Department of Biotechnology supports over 60 Bioinformatics Centres and the coordinators of these centres meet annually. Eight years ago the plan for setting up IRs in these centres was discussed and till now the plan has not materialized although IRs have been discussed in many of the coordinators meetings.</p>
<p>Early last year the Wellcome Trust and DBT set up a joint Programme of Fellowships to Indian researchers at three levels to prevent brain drain and ensure career advancement for those who stay and work in India. The Minister for S&T proudly announced that papers published by these Fellows will be available freely on the Internet. </p>
<p>If the Wellcome Trust funded research can be made OA why not all Government funded research be mandated to be OA? Examples from the West, such as the OA mandates adopted by research councils in the UK, NIH, Harvard University Faculties of Arts and Science and Law, the Stanford University School of Education and MIT have not influenced Indian funding agencies and researchers. Largely because the majority of Fellows of Academies and Indian scientists in general are unaware of OA and its advantages, limits of copyright, relative rights of authors and publishers, etc. Indian authors rarely use the author’s addendum when signing copyright agreements with journal publishers. </p>
<p>The situation in the social sciences is even worse. With the kinds of economic and socio-political transformations taking place and caste, religious, regional, sectarian and linguistic divisions often threatening the multicultural fabric of the nation, one would think India should invest as much on social science research as on science and technology. But social science research is neglected. Only a few institutions and some think tanks in the non-governmental sector really count and even they have not adopted OA. </p>
<p>The National Knowledge Commission has made clear recommendations on the need for mandating open access for publicly funded research. But it is not clear when the recommendations would be implemented.</p>
<p>In the area of open educational resources, some of India’s best institutions – IITs and IISc - have formed a consortium and have made available some excellent material for undergraduate courses in engineering. IGNOU has recently opened up its course ware. Most NCERT textbooks are available for free on the Internet. The Ministry of HRD is planning to make virtually all educational content freely available to all educational institutions connected to a grid.</p>
<p>The open access revolution can go far beyond helping scientists and social scientists in universities and research institutions. It can help the other India, the India of the poor and the marginalized, as well.</p>
<p>In many developing countries, development organizations working with the poor have shown how improving access to information – relating to weather, market prices, location of large shoals of fish in the sea, government entitlements, availability of credit, training facilities, etc. – through a variety of technologies can make a difference. <br /><br />If intermediaries such as rural doctors and local health workers can access medical information relevant to the current needs of their communities they will be far more effective. The power of sharing medical information was amply demonstrated when SARS broke out in 2003. The unprecedented openness and willingness to share critical scientific information led to the quick identification of the coronovirus responsible for the attack and its genome mapped within weeks. </p>
<p>The same way farmers around the world can benefit from the world’s agricultural research findings if they are freely accessible. That was the reason why the CGIAR laboratories were set up. That is the reason why we should resist privatization of knowledge, especially knowledge generated with public funds. About two months ago, I and 15 other OA advocates appealed to the top brass of the CGIAR to mandate OA for all research publications of CGIAR centres. Three weeks ago CGIAR held a workshop at Rome for the knowledge managers and they are planning one more in November for the senior management. We hope CGIAR will adopt a NIH-like mandate soon.</p>
<p>Open access is making slow progress in India. The main reason is lack of awareness of its advantages among policy makers and scientists. This is a problem common to most developing and possibly some advanced countries. Focused advocacy, especially among research students and young faculty, and training programmes (in setting up OA IRs) can bring in better results. As the Wellcome-DBT project has shown, foreign collaborators can help. Projects like DRIVER can partner with developing country institutions and as Leslie Chan suggests, one may think of a global repository for developing country researchers.</p>
<h3>What is there already?</h3>
<ul><li>World-class Open Course Ware.</li><li>About 200 OA journals. </li><li>Academies led the way. D K Sahu has shown that going OA is win-win all the way. </li><li>A small group is promoting OJS.</li><li>There are about 50 repositories. IISc was the first to set up. Its EPrints archive has crossed the 22,000 mark and IISc is now depositing all legacy papers.</li><li>National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, is the first Indian institution to have an OA mandate in place.</li><li>There are three subject repositories: Biomedical research,</li><li>Library and information science, Catalysis.</li><li>Many physicists use arXiv and India hosts a mirror site.</li><li>Five Indian repositories are in the top 300 of the CINDOC list: IISc 36; ISI-DRTC 96; NIC 111; IIA 228; NIO 231.</li><li>The Catalysis repository is not listed. </li><li>There are some efforts to digitize theses. </li><li>Informatics India Ltd provides an alerting service called Open J-Gate.</li><li>An Indian, LIS software NewGenLib incorporates OA software into a library management software. It is open source. <br /></li></ul>
<p>But we are a country of 1.15 billion people. We should do much more. The major concerns are fear of publisher action, copyright and researcher apathy. But awareness of OA – green or gold – and author addenda is rather low among both researchers and policy makers. What we need is advocacy and more advocacies. We should adopt both bottom-up and top-down approaches. </p>
<p>On the policy front Science Academies, INSA and IASc, are engaged in a discussion on OA. I was invited to address the Council of INSA and again to put together a half-day seminar for the Fellows of INSA and other researchers. I am also talking to IASc frequently.</p>
<p>Science managers have been alerted to the advantages of OA and the need for mandating OA to publicly funded research. But not many seem to care. There is much talk and little action. The Bioinformatics community provides a classic example. As India is hierarchical and to some extent feudal, one wonders if top-down approaches will work better than bottom-up approaches. But OA champions follow both. </p>
<p>Many workshops and conferences on OA are held. Most of them are suboptimal and cannot achieve OA implementation. There are two online lists for OA, but most members are librarians and many of them believe they cannot implement OA on their own.</p>
<h3>International collaboration and ways forward <br /></h3>
<p>A new society, Centre for Internet and Society, has come up to promote all things open, including open source software and open access. </p>
<p>The Principal Scientific Adviser is a former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. He often meets his counterparts from other countries. Decisions on OA made in the UK and Europe may have an influence on him.</p>
<p>India is a key member of the InterAcademy Panel and Inter Academy Council. Leaders of Indian science can learn from their counterparts, especially from Latin America. It may help if international champions of OA could be brought to India for discussion with science administrators and public lectures.</p>
<p>eIFL does not work in India. We must persuade them to include India in their programmes. One never knows when things will happen in India. They happen when they happen. So we should be pushing all the time!</p>
<p>We need to create more knowledge and make the best use of it, says Janez Potocnic, the European Commissioner for Science and Research.</p>
<p>OA can help in both creating more knowledge and in making the best use of it. We all know that. But there is a big gap between knowledge and action. It is up to you now. Set up repositories in your institutions. Persuade your director/ Secretary to mandate open access. Set up an Alliance of Taxpayers for Open Access. Citizen groups can achieve what individuals cannot. Write to the Minister, MPs and other policy makers.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/science-and-scholarship'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/science-and-scholarship</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessOpen Access2011-08-23T03:13:24ZBlog EntryOpen Access to Science and Research
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/Open%20Access%20to%20Science%20and%20Research.ogg
<b>Ogg format</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/Open%20Access%20to%20Science%20and%20Research.ogg'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/Open%20Access%20to%20Science%20and%20Research.ogg</a>
</p>
No publisheradminOpen Access2008-09-22T07:39:19ZFileOpen Access to Scholarly Literature in India: A Status Report: Call for Comments
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-to-scholarly-literature
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society welcomes comments on the first draft of "Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India: A Status Report". This report, on open access to scholarly literature, with a special focus on scientific literature, has been written by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam and Madhan Muthu. The report surveys the field of scholarly and scientific publication in India and provides a detailed history of the open access movement in India.</b>
<p>It notes that Indian science has "low but increasing research productivity helped by increasing investments on R&D, and low but moderately improving visibility", and that the best way to boost visibility and impact of Indian science are by pursuing a nation-wide open access policy.</p>
<p>Thus, it recommends that all publicly funded research in India should be made open access and provides suggestions on how this could best be achieved. It points out the need to go beyond open access mandates, to practical aspects like training of repository maintainers and of researchers for self-archiving. In addition, it points out the need for more effective advocacy and for a judicious mixture of both top-down and bottom-up approaches for bringing about the realization of the benefits of open access.</p>
<p>Please do write in to Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam (<a class="external-link" href="mailto: subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.com">subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.com</a>), Madhan Muthu (<a class="external-link" href="mailto:mu.madhan@gmail.com">mu.madhan@gmail.com</a>) and Pranesh Prakash (<a class="external-link" href="mailto:pranesh@cis-india.org">pranesh@cis-india.org</a>) with your suggestions, criticisms, or general comments that you may have by Friday, August 12, 2011.</p>
<div>Please click below to access the document.</div>
<div><br />
<ul>
<li><a class="internal-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-access-scholarly-literature.pdf" title="Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India - Status Report">Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India </a>[PDF, 1872 kb]</li>
<li><a class="internal-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-access-to-scholarly-literature.docx" title="Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India — A Status Report">Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India</a> [Word, 1964 kb]</li>
</ul>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<p><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>This draft report was prepared in April 2011 and the authors will update it soon.</i></span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-to-scholarly-literature'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-to-scholarly-literature</a>
</p>
No publisherProf. Subbiah Arunachalam and Madhan MuthuOpennessOpen Access2012-12-14T10:26:24ZBlog EntryOpen Access to Scholarly Literature in India — A Status Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-access-to-scholarly-literature.docx
<b>This report was prepared by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam and Madan Muthu on 9 April 2011.</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-access-to-scholarly-literature.docx'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-access-to-scholarly-literature.docx</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen AccessPublications2011-08-23T02:47:07ZFileOpen Access to Scholarly Literature in India - Status Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-access-scholarly-literature.pdf
<b>The draft report was prepared in April 2011 by Prof. Arunachalam and Madhan Muthu.</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-access-scholarly-literature.pdf'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-access-scholarly-literature.pdf</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen AccessPublications2011-08-23T02:46:11ZFileOpen Access to International Agricultural Research
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-international-agricultural-research
<b>Open access advocates have urged the top management of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research to give open access to its research publications. A report by Subbiah Arunachalam on 3 June, 2010 was also circulated to all the signatories of the letter.</b>
<p>CIS Distinguished Fellow, Subbiah Arunachalam and 15 other open access advocates wrote to the top management of CGIAR, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, requesting them to mandate open access to all research publications from all CGIAR centres. The letter was addressed to Dr. Carlos Pérez del Castillo and Dr. Katherine Sierra and it was copied to the Director Generals of all the 15 CGIAR centres.</p>
<p>A permanent member of the prestigious Harvard University Trade Group, Carlos Pérez del Castillo has received the highest decorations from the Governments of Brazil, Chile, France and Venezuela. Carlos Pérez del Castillo also served as the Chairman of the WTO General Council and as Vice-Minister and Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay (1995-1998) and as Permanent Secretary of the Latin American Economic System (1987-1991). He is a member of the Board of the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IPC), and a small cattle farmer.</p>
<p>Katherine Sierra, CGIAR Fund Council chair, is the World Bank vice president for sustainable development responsible for people and programs in environmentally and socially sustainable development and infrastructure. Sierra chairs several international consultative groups. These include the World Bank-WWF Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use, Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, Cities Alliance, Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme, and Water and Sanitation Program. Other international groups that she chairs are InfoDev, which supports information and communication technologies for development, and the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility, which promotes private participation in infrastructure.</p>
<h3>The Letter</h3>
<p>Dear Dr. Carlos Perez del Castillo/ Dr. Kathy Sierra:</p>
<p align="left">Subject: Please make all CGIAR research publications open access</p>
<p>About a year ago, on 20 May 2009 to be precise, Dr. William D Dar, Director General of ICRISAT sent a memorandum on Launching of Open Access Model: Digital Access to ICRISAT Scientific Publications to all researchers and students in all locations of ICRISAT [http://openaccess.icrisat.org/MemoOnDAIS.pdf]. In the memorandum Dr. Dar had said "Every ICRISAT scientist/author in all locations, laboratories and offices will send a PDF copy of the author's final version of a paper immediately upon receipt of communication from the publisher about its acceptance. This is not the final published version that certain journals provide post-print, but normally the version that is submitted following all reviews and just prior to the page proof."</p>
<p>ICRISAT is the only international agricultural research centre with an OA mandate, and is second among the research and education institutes operating from India, the first being the <a class="external-link" href="http://dspace.nitrkl.ac.in/dspace/">National Institute of Technology-Rourkela</a>. ICRISAT publishes a research journal (http://www.icrisat.org/journal/) which is also an open access journal.</p>
<p>Since then <a class="external-link" href="http://dspace.icrisat.ac.in/dspace/">Institutional Repository</a> is growing fast and the portal now has virtually all the research papers published in recent times, and all the books and learning material produced by ICRISAT researchers.</p>
<p>We believe that it would be great if other CGIAR laboratories could also mandate open access to their research publications. Indeed, it would be a good idea to have a system wide Open Access mandate for CGIAR and to have interoperable OA repositories in each CGIAR laboratory. Such a development would provide a high level of visibility for the work of CGIAR and greatly advance agricultural research. Besides, journals published by CGIAR labs could also be made OA. There are more than 1,500 OA repositories (listed in ROAR and OpenDOAR) and about 5,000 journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Currently over2050 journals are searchable at article level. Over 390,000 articles are included in the DOAJ service.</p>
<p>The world will soon be celebrating the International Open Access Week [18-24 October 2010] and you may wish to announce the CGIAR OA mandate before then.</p>
<p>As you may be aware, all seven Research Councils of the UK and the National Institutes of Health, USA, have such a mandate in place for research they fund and support. The full list of ~220 mandates worldwide is available at the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/">Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policies</a>.</p>
<p>We look forward to seeing an early implementation of open access in all CGIAR labs.</p>
<p>Regards<br />Sincerely,</p>
<p>Subbiah Arunachalam [Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society,Bangalore, India]<br />Remi Barre [Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (CNAM), Paris, France]<br />Leslie Chan [University of Toronto at Scarborough, Canada]<br />Anriette Esterhuysen [Association for Progressive Communications, Johannesburg, South Africa]<br />Jean-Claude Gudon [University of Montreal, Canada]<br />Stevan Harnad [Universite du Quebec a Montreal and University of Southampton]<br />Neil Jacobs [JISC, UK]<br />Heather Joseph [Executive Director, SPARC, USA]<br />Barbara Kirsop [Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, UK]<br />Heather Morrison [University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada]<br />Richard Poynder [Technology journalist, UK]<br />T V Ramakrishnan, FRS [Banaras Hindu University and Indian Institute of Science; Former President of the Indian Academy of Sciences]<br />Peter Suber [Berkman Fellow, Harvard University; Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College; Senior Researcher, SPARC; Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge]<br />Alma swan [Director, Key Perspectives, UK]<br />John Wilbanks [Vice President for Science, Creative Commons]<br />John Willinsky [Stanford University and University of British Columbia]</p>
<h3>Status Report on a Suggestion made to CGIAR</h3>
<p>Sixteen open access advocates wrote to the CGIAR leadership – Dr. Carlos Perez del Castillo and Dr. Kathy Sierra – on 19 May 2010, requesting CGIAR to adopt an open access mandate for all research publications from CGIAR centres. [As the names of the signatories were arranged in alphabetical order, my name appeared on the top of the list. I am one of the group and not the leader.] Mr. Richard Poynder posted a write-up on the letter in his famous blog ‘Open and Shut’.</p>
<p>The letter led to a flurry of activity among the ICT-KM professionals of CGIAR. I have heard from ICRISAT (Dr. William Dar, Director General), ILRI (Dr. Peter Ballantyne, Head, Knowledge Management and Information Services) and CIAT (Dr. Edith Hesse, Head Corporate Communications and Capacity Strengthening).</p>
<p>Dr. Dar welcomed the suggestion. Incidentally, he is a champion of open access and is on the Board of Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS). He was also the first in the CGIAR system to mandate open access to all research publications from the centre he heads.</p>
<p>From the mails of Dr. Ballantyne and Dr. Hesse, I could perceive some misgivings about the letter to CGIAR among knowledge managers of some CGIAR centres. In contrast, Dr. Francesca Re Manning of CAS-IP, CGIAR, expressed complete agreement with the proposal made by the OA advocates.</p>
<p>The response of Dr. Enrica Porcari, Chief Information Officer of CGIAR, was ambivalent, almost a tightrope walk. She didn’t say that OA was not acceptable to CGIAR and yet she was not willing to accept OA mandating as an option. She said: “Rather than a policy on ‘open access’ limited to journal articles, I would instead prefer to see us develop a strong and clear CGIAR view and set of practices that balance the need for high quality science with highly accessible outputs, and reinforces the substantial progress we have already made across all the Centers…I would advocate for a concerted effort to ‘opening access to our research’. Is not providing open access to research publications the obvious first step in opening access to our research?”</p>
<p>Probably, Dr. Porcari also thought that the advocates were promoting open access journals. Both Richard Poynder and I clarified that what we suggested for CGIR was open access and not open access journals and explained the difference between the two. Richard clarified that our emphasis was actually on open access archiving.</p>
<p>Dr. Peter Bloch and Dr. Kay Chapman of CAS-IP thought that some of the ideas we put forward were astute and relevant but had some concerns about making papers for which the copyright vests with journal publishers open access as well as papers co-authored with non-CGIAR researchers. In response we pointed out how other organizations which have mandated open access have dealt with these issues.</p>
<p>Prof. Anil Gupta of the Indian Institute of Management , Ahmedabad, and founder of the Honey Bee network that disseminate the innovations of thousands of farmers, craftsmen, artisans and the lay public, endorsed the suggestion stating that Harvard made it obligatory for all the papers published by its faculty to be openly accessible. He said that "once this is made into a policy by CGIAR, the publishers will have to fall in line."</p>
<p>Prof. Michael Gurstein, editor of Journal of Community Informatics, welcomed the idea of making CGIAR research open access, and suggested that we should go one step further and see to it that the research is also made easily applied by the farmers and other ultimate users. Others who endorsed the suggestion include Professors Bill Hubbard, Stephen Pinfield and Chrisopher Pressler of the Nottingham University, David Bollier, Co-founder of Public Knowledge, Prof. Helen Hambly Odame of the University of Guelph.</p>
<p>In the meanwhile, I found that "the Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) initiative is working to make agricultural research information publicly available and accessible to all. This means working with organisations that hold information or that creates new knowledge – to help them disseminate it more efficiently and make it easier to access. CGIAR, FAO and DFID are CIARD partners.</p>
<p>I refer to the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ciard.net/ciard-manifesto">CIARD Manifesto</a> here. It is all for open access. Both DFID and FAO also have adopted open access. Please refer to the R4D portal of DFID. Why R4D? In the past it was difficult to find out what research topics, projects, and programmes DFID was funding or had funded. Researchers all over the world (and even DFID staff) had to rely on a network of personal contacts or inspired detective work to discover who was already working in a particular area, what was already known, and what lessons had been learned. R4D responds to a demand expressed by many DFID stakeholders for better and open access to all this information. It is and will always be only one piece of the jigsaw, but it is a high-quality piece, as in order to have received DFID funding the research posted on R4D will have met strict criteria and quality standards in both formulation and execution.</p>
<p>FAO has complied with all the 13 CIARD requirements for developing institutional readiness and increasing the availability, accessibility and applicability of research outputs. Indeed FAO is the only institution to have done so.</p>
<p>Dr. Ballantyne of ILRI himself has championed open access. Responding to New publication: Learning to Share Knowledge for Global Agricultural Progress, he wrote on 21 March 2010, "Great to see this experience all written up. I was going to complain at the lack of open access to this CGIAR research output… but then I found the author version ‘available’ in full on the CIAT website. Excellent example of I can’t remember which CIARD pathway! Would be even better if your author version was ‘accessible’ in a proper CGIAR/CIAT repository that is harvestable, etc., and not just uploaded on the web!" This is precisely what the 16 signatories to the letter to CGIAR want for all of CGIR research publications!</p>
<p>There should be no difficulty for CGIAR – the Consortium Board, the Science Council and the Programme Committee to accept the suggestion that they adopt an open access mandate for all their research publications.</p>
<p>It is likely that a few knowledge managers were unhappy that people outside the system made the suggestion. It may be their immediate response. It should not be difficult for them to realize, on sober reflection, that all we mean is to bring access to CGIAR research on par with access to research done at some of the best institutions in the world such as MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and Southampton, and to make CGIAR policy the best in the world – even better than the OA policies of NIH, the Research Councils of the UK and the Wellcome Trust. We assure those who have any misgivings that our intentions are honourable, our suggestion was made in the best interest of CGIAR, and they can cast away their misgivings.</p>
<p>Regards,<br />Arun</p>
<p>The Central Advisory Service for Intellectual Property (CAS-IP of CGIAR) organised a successful workshop in Rome in early July. CAS-IP hopes to conduct a workshop on open access for all CGIAR librarians and knowledge managers before the end of the year.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-international-agricultural-research'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-international-agricultural-research</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessOpen Access2011-08-25T08:13:43ZBlog EntryOpen access to government data on the cards
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/open-access-to-govt-data
<b>The way has been cleared for public access to the data collected by Union government ministries and departments, with official approval being accorded to the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP). T Ramachandran's article was published in the Hindu on March 25, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted in it.</b>
<p>Following its recent approval by the Union Cabinet, the policy has been notified and is in the process of being gazetted, said R. Siva Kumar, CEO of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, and head of the Natural Resources Data Management System, Department of Science and Technology.<br /><br />The use of open data as a tool for promoting governmental transparency and efficiency has been gaining ground in some parts of the world. An Open Government Partnership was launched last year by the United States and seven other governments. Forty-three other governments have joined the partnership, which has endorsed an Open Government Declaration, expressing a commitment to better “efforts to systematically collect and publish data on government spending and performance for essential public services and activities.” It acknowledges the ‘right' of citizens to seek information on governmental activities.</p>
<p>India has not joined the partnership, but is collaborating with the U.S. in developing an open source version of software for a data portal.<br /><br />The NDSAP states that at least five ‘high value' data sets should be uploaded to a newly created portal, data.gov.in, in three months of the notification of the policy. Uploading of the remaining data sets should be completed within a year.<br /><br />The Department of Science and Technology will co-ordinate the effort and create the portal through the National Informatics Centre. The Department of Information Technology will work out the implementation guidelines, including those related to technology and data standards.<br /><br />Welcoming the approval for the NDSAP, Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bangalore-based NGO, said the removal of “a few good aspects” in an earlier draft of the policy — such as linkage with Sections 8 and 9 of the Right to Information Act that specify the kinds of information exempt from disclosure by the authorities — had weakened it “even further.” “None of the criticisms the CIS had sent in as part of the feedback requested on the draft have been addressed,” he said.<br /><br />The NDSAP seeks “to provide an enabling provision and platform for providing proactive and open access to the data generated through public funds available with various departments/organisations of the government of India.”<br /><br />However, the Ministries and Departments can draw up, within six months of the notification of the policy, a negative list of data-sets that will not be shared, subject to periodic review by an ‘oversight committee.'<br /><br />The policy envisages three types of access to data: open, registered and restricted. Access to data in the open category will be “easy, timely, user-friendly and web-based without any process of registration/authorisation.” But data in the registered access category will be accessible “only through a prescribed process of registration/authorisation by respective departments/organisations” and available to “recognised institutions/organisations/public users, through defined procedures.” Data categorised as restricted will be made available only “through and under authorisation.”<br /><br />The policy also provides for pricing, with the Ministries and Departments being asked to formulate their norms for data in the registered and restricted access categories within three months of the notification of the policy.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/article3223645.ece">Read the original published in the Hindu </a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/open-access-to-govt-data'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/open-access-to-govt-data</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen DataOpen ContentOpen AccessOpenness2012-03-26T07:31:48ZNews ItemOpen Access Dialogues - Report and Policy Recommendations
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/open-access-dialogues-report
<b>The Open Access Dialogues were a series of global electronic debates facilitated by Eve Gray and Kelsey Wiens, in partnership with The African Commons Project (South Africa) and the Centre for Internet and Society (India), during November 2012 to March 2013. It was supported by the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and was hosted at WSIS Knowledge Communities Discussion Forum.</b>
<p> </p>
<h3>Report: <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/OpenAccessDialoguesReport.pdf" target="_blank">Download</a> (PDF)</h3>
<h3>Policy Recommendations (as below): <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/Is_OpenAccess_only_for_rich_countries.pdf" target="_blank">Download</a> (PDF)</h3>
<p> </p>
<h2>Is Open Access Only for Rich Countries?</h2>
<p><em>Authors: Eve Gray, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Kelsey Wiens and Alistair Scott</em></p>
<p>It is not unusual for analysis of research systems in the developing world to provide startlingly low figures for the participation of developing countries in world research. For example, the Times of India last October cited a report that claimed that India produced only 3.5% of the world’s research – a shocking statistic, the newspaper commented. The commonly accepted figure for Africa’s contribution is even worse, at 0.3%. In reality, these figures do not reflect at all the size and shape of the national research systems in these count ries nor their productivity. Rather, they are a measure of how many journal articles are published in journals in the global North and particularly in journals in the Thomson Reuters ISI indices.</p>
<p>The developing world has been badly served by the scholarly publishing system inherited from the 20th century. The commercialization and consolidation of scholarly publishing over the last 60 years has progressively put the publication of the bulk of the world’s research in the hands of a small number of giant co rporations, in an environment characterized by very high and continuously escalating subscription charges, putting access to the world’s research out of the reach of most developing countries. If Harvard complains, as it did recently, that it cannot afford the subscriptions to the major journals, then what could be said for universities in Africa or India?</p>
<p>To add to this, the impact of the dominant systems for measuring the quality and impact of global research have a perverse effect in the developing world, consigning its research to the periphery and categorizing it as of ‘local’ interest rather than being ‘global’, or ‘international’ in its importance.</p>
<h3>Global Open Access Policy</h3>
<p>Global Open access policy moved forward decisively from late 2011 to early 2013, with UNESCO’s launch of its Open Access to Scientific Information Programme <strong>[1]</strong> and the World Bank’s launch of its Open Knowledge Platform <strong>[2]</strong>. At national and regional levels, the Finch Group Report in the United Kingdom <strong>[3]</strong>, the White House Memorandum on Access to Federally Funded Research <strong>[4]</strong> in the US A and the announcement of the open access provisions of the Horizon 2020 Framework for Research and Innovation <strong>[5]</strong> in the European Union all marked a global move to entrench open access to publicly funded research. These policies commit political weight and financial support to policy implementation, based on an understanding of the contribution that OA can make to innovation and thus to social and economic development across the world. In the face of these developments, the developing countries, which currently tend to have fragmented OA and research communication policies, face the risk of falling even further behind in finding their place in global and locally relevant research production.</p>
<p>What these events have added to the policy debate about open access over the last year is not only the recognition of the need for government - level logistical and financial support for open research communication, but also a widening of the mandate for open access. Early formulations of open access policy focused on opening up ‘the peer reviewed journal literature’, as the founding document on Open Access, the Budapest Open Access initiative, defined it in 2002 <strong>[6]</strong>. The principle was that these publications should be freely available to readers, to read, to download and data-mine.. It is this approach that largely informs the UNESCO’s Policy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Open Access (2012) <strong>[7]</strong>. The World Bank policy, on the other hand, takes a broader view of open access, applying a Creative Commons CC-BY licence to the work that it commissions, thus allowing for reuse and repurposing of content in order to reach the widest possible audience and have the maximum development impact <strong>[8]</strong>.</p>
<h3>Open Access Dialogues</h3>
<p>A number of policy issues emerged from the Open Access Dialogues (OAD), facilitated by Eve Gray, The African Commons Project and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, in late 2012 and early 2013 with participants from South Africa, India and Latin America. The overriding policy outcome was an expressed desire to expand the concept of open access to include other kinds of openness, such as open education and open development and to expand beyond journal articles in leveraging the benefits of openness in developing countries, as well as involving outside - university knowledge producers and distributors in the OA agenda. O ver - reliance on the ISI Impact Factor was also a key aspect of the present OA system that came in for criticism , leading to demands for the formulation of research reward systems that are better aligned with national and institutional research strategies and development of alternative metrics for evaluating research success.</p>
<p>The discuss ion took place on the UNESCO/WSIS Knowledge Communities discussion forum, where a total of 19 discussants, excluding the core team, took part. Additionally, the OAD Facebook page was ‘liked’ by 116 people (as of 1 March 2013), with the most common age grou p being 25 - 34 and the gender bias being towards female users at 60%. Two (one hour - long) Twitter discussions were also organised, which attracted 83 unique users in total, who shared 530 tweets using the #developOA hashtag.</p>
<h3>Strategic Issues and Policy Recommendations</h3>
<h4>Beyond the Impact Factor</h4>
<p>The ISI Impact Factor (IF) remains the dominant measure for research evaluation and determining academic rewards and promotions in the Anglophone world and beyond. The discussants identified the extreme preference for publication in ('closed') journals with high Impact Factors (IF) as a central obstacle to effective research communication aligned with national and regional goals. Of particular concern was the role this system has had in aligning developing country research activities with academic interests in the universities of the global North, and thus di verting developed country research away from local challenges and opportunities. This model also renders invisible much of the research that is actually produced that addresses local/national/regional concerns. Another concern was bibliographic malpractices including bias against citing works from developing country scholars and work published in non - 'prestigious' journals. Strong argument s were made for the use of article-level metrics as opposed to journal - level impact measurement . Studies were suggested to argue that article-level impact increases with OA journals.</p>
<p><strong>Policy recommendations:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Replacing reliance on bibliometric s and journal-level citation indexes with article-level metrics and emerging alternative metrics that take into consideration the circulation and usage of knowledge beyond higher education institutes.</li>
<li>Developing education policies and guidelines to evaluate res earch and researchers in their specific contexts of relevance and impact, and aligning academic rewards with national, regional and local development strategies.</li></ul>
<h4>Uneven Geographies and the Need for Sustainable Models</h4>
<p>Attention was drawn to the unfortunate lack of awareness about the nature and potential of OA across developing countries, even in scholarly communities. Simultaneously, the discussants highlighted several success stories of OA journals in developing countries, though mostly from science disciplines. Thus the developing world experiences an uneven geography of OA awareness and adoption, where the OA agenda is being pursued successfully by specific scholarly communities but not translating into widespread support across the higher academia landscape nor into coherent national policy development.</p>
<p>The role played by the global commercial businesses of scholarly works in impeding the Open Access agenda in developing countries was mentioned by most of the commentators. Simultaneously, the complicity of developing country academics in reinforcing the culture of 'prestigious' journals published by global publishers was also criticized. The increasing embracing of Author Processing Charges (APC), the discussants feared, will further entrench this uneven geography of OA adoption and research visibility. This issue is crucial since it is generating a sense of cynicism about OA as yet another incarnation of commercial exploitation of scholarship that advantages the rich countries. The use of fee waivers was criticised for being only an exceptional measure that serves to reinforce exclusion of researchers outside of or new to the dominant scholarly publishing system. There is a need, it was argued, to develop a sustainable business model that is functional in making knowledge circulate in ways that are useful to society, and not solely driven by profit-making needs of publishers.</p>
<p><strong>Policy recommendations:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Promoting a bottom-up strategy for OA adoption in the developing world by focusing on capacity and community building exercises. This could involve scholarly colleagues and advocates gathered around thematic and/or disciplinary forums, facilitated by institutional and governmental recognition and support.</li>
<li>Linking the issue of OA to academic works to the structural problems in developing country academics, adopting a wide-ranging and systematic approach to research capacitation. There is a need to promote OA through curriculum development, knowledge dissemination, training and advocacy, engaging actors ranging from senior administrators to young scholars.</li>
<li>Addressing and involving non-university circuits of learning, of both institutional (primary and secondary education) and non-institutional (informal learning groups around MOOC courses) varieties, and also non-governmental organisations working o n education in particular, and development in general.</li></ul>
<h4>A Broader Vision for Open Access</h4>
<p>A number of discussants argued for a broader mandate for OA than the traditional journal focus. There were two aspects to this recommendation: firstly, OA should align with other forms of ‘open’ agendas , such as open science, open education and open development, and secondly, OA policies should support distribution and re - usage of a wider range of research outputs. Thus the scope of OA needs to be broadened to focus on the needs of potential consumers of research findings rather than only on the scholar-to-scholar discourse that journals constitute. This wider agenda could include research data, multimedia, 'grey literature ’ such as research and briefing papers, and policy papers. In the context of developing countries, it was argued that 'translations' of research for communities outside academia were important, especially ' recognizing the importance of publishing in a format that most appropriately meets the information and knowledge needs of those who can use the research to improve society's development', as a leading public health academic argued in the OA dialogue.</p>
<p>This broader vision of OA challenges the conventional hierarchy of basic research over applied research, proposing that OA can provide a communicative continuum between scholar - to - scholar discourse, teaching and learning needs, and the mobilization of research for development.</p>
<p><strong>Policy recommendations:</strong></p>
<ul><li>Build on the present governmental acceptance of the OA agenda by strategically using it as an entry point to promote the broader 'open' agenda, including open sharing of research data, bibliographic data, policy papers etc.</li>
<li>Recognize, support and reward OA initiatives and systems that facilitate sharing of a wide range of academic outputs, from journals, books and other scholarly publications to development - focused research outputs targeted at communities outside of higher academia.</li>
<li>Financial and logistical support for the creation and maintenance of websites, repositories, archives and other (offline/outreach) initiatives aimed at hosting and sharing a wide-range of academic outputs, including data and multimedia, and mandating licences that allow for re-use of scholarly materials ( such as CC-BY), for development and educational needs.</li>
<li>A comprehensive (national and international) institutional policy approach, ensuring a central role for research communication in universities and research institutes and for integrated administrative, technology and skills infrastructure to support these roles.</li></ul>
<h3>Notes</h3>
<p><strong>[1]</strong> See: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-access-to-scientific-information/</p>
<p><strong>[2]</strong> See: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/</p>
<p><strong>[3]</strong> The Finch Report: http://www.res earchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-executive-summary-FINAL-VERSION.pdf</p>
<p><strong>[4]</strong> The White House Open Access Memorandum: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/increasing-public-access-results-scientific-research</p>
<p><strong>[5]</strong> http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-12-790_en.htm</p>
<p><strong>[6]</strong> http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/openaccess/read</p>
<p><strong>[7]</strong> http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/publications-and-communication-materials/publications/full-list/policy-guidelines-for-the-development-and-promotion-of-open-access/</p>
<p><strong>[8]</strong> http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:23164491~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/open-access-dialogues-report'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/open-access-dialogues-report</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroOpennessOpen Access DialoguesOpen Access2015-12-22T06:52:58ZBlog EntryOpen Access Day celebrated in India
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-day-celebrated-in-india
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore and the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance co-organised joint celebrations of Open Access Day in Jamia Millia Islamia campus on the 14th of October 2008. Around 50 people attended the event from different departments in Jamia there were also some participants from the Indian Linux Users Group. CIS also published an Open Access flyer on this day featuring quotations from Sam Pitroda, MS Swaminathan, Peter Suber, Alma Swan, Frederick Noronha, Barbara Kirsop and Samir Brahmachari.</b>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/dsc_0395.jpg/image_mini" alt="Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam" class="image-left" title="Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam" />Speaking at Tagore Hall at Jamia Millia
Islamia, Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, pointed out that “there are
over 25,000 scientific journals published in the world today but even
the richest university in India cannot afford to subscribe to more
than 1,200 journals. It is as though, Indian scientists and students
are competing in a race with their legs bound.” Prof. Arunachalam
called upon the student community to lobby for Open Access mandates
for research outputs funded by tax-payers.Open Access is the principle that
publicly funded research should be freely accessible online,
immediately after publication. October 14, 2008 was the world’s
first Open Access Day. The founding partners for this Day are SPARC
(Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), Students for
FreeCulture, and the Public Library of Science, USA. According to the
Directory of Open Access Journals – India publishes 105 Open Access
journals.</p>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/dsc_0388.jpg/image_mini" alt="Dr. Zakir Thomas" class="image-left" title="Dr. Zakir Thomas" />Speaking at the celebrations at Jamia, Dr. Zakir Thomas of
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) traced the
limited historical role that IPR has played in the development for
drugs for Tuberculosis. Dr. Thomas is the project director of Open
Source Drug Discovery (OSDD), a project of CSIR. The government of
India has already committed Rs. 150 crores to the OSDD project which
is targeting neglected diseases from developing countries. Dr. Thomas
also introduced the OSDD project and spoke about alternative systems
of incentives that are more appropriate in the academic community
such as attribution, citation and collaboration – all closely
linked career growth in an academic or university context.</p>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/dsc_0384.jpg/image_mini" alt="Dr. Andrew Lynn" class="image-left" title="Dr. Andrew Lynn" />Dr. Lynn, a professor at the Department
of Bio-informatics at JNU and Dr. Bhardwaj Scientist CSIR introduced
the OSDD web platform and pointed out to various improvements over
existing methods of research. While in peer-reviewed papers readers
are only provided with reference number when experiments are
discussed – on the OSDD platform readers can access the complete
experiment details, including data even for failed experiments. This
is critical in reducing wastage of valuable resources and efforts in
attempting to re-invent the wheel.</p>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/dsc_0393.jpg/image_mini" alt="Dr. Anshu Bharadwaj" class="image-left" title="Dr. Anshu Bharadwaj" />Dr. Bhardwaj pointed out that she
was already collaborating with students from the Jamia Millia Islamia
campus on her projects hosted on OSDD. She said that the open access
and open source models gives rise to many new collaborations both at
the local and international level. Dr. Bhardwaj also announced that
two CSIR open access journals were being launched by Dr. Samir
Brahmachari - Director General on the occasion of World Open Access
day.</p>
<p>Prof. Arif Ali, Head Dept. of
Bio-Technology, Jamia Milia Islamia who presided over the meeting
spoke of the challenges faced by faculty and students in the Indian
context. Some international journals demand Rs. 40,000 from the
authors in spite of assigning copyright. He predicted that the open
access movement will lead to more Indian authors being published and
cited. He also hoped that open access would become a norm instead of
a novelty.</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/open-access-day/open%20access%20day%20flyer.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Open Access Day Flyer">Download Open Access Flyer</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-day-celebrated-in-india'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-day-celebrated-in-india</a>
</p>
No publishersunilOpen Access2011-08-18T05:06:01ZBlog EntryOdia Language Classics could Now be Read from Phones, Tablets and of course from Computers!
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/orissadiary-october-25-2015-odia-language-classics-could-now-be-read-from-phones-tablets-and-computers
<b>Odia Wikisource, a sister project of Odia Wikipedia and a free online Odia-language library is celebrating its first anniversary in Bhubaneswar tomorrow. Available online at or.wikisource.org, the project finally went live in last year on October 20 after being incubated over two years. In a nutshell, it not just provides free and open access to readers to access text that are out of copyright or available under free license, but also allows them to contribute in either digitizing copyright-free text or correcting mistakes made by others. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The article <a class="external-link" href="http://www.orissadiary.com/CurrentNews.asp?id=62374">published by Orissadairy</a> on October 25, 2015 quotes Subhashish Panigrahi.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">All the contributors to the project are volunteers and are fondly called “uikiali” in Odia. These volunteers follow certain guidelines to check through the content digitized by others to make sure there is no copyrighted text posing copyright violation, correct typos and other grammatical mistakes and incorrect attribution.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Authors and copyright holders are also encouraged to provide permission in re-licensing their work under free licenses like CC-BY/CC-by-SA licenses so that some of their content becomes available online and fill the large gap of the Odia books online to some extent. “Last year, the Wikimedia community in Odisha did a remarkable job in bringing as many as 141 books from multiple authors relicensed under the above mentioned licenses” said the Centre for Internet and Society's Programme Officer Subhashish Panigrahi. “Where we, as an institution, could play a role in reaching out to many authors and convincing them for a small contribution to the society” added Panigrahi.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Pankajmala Sarangi, the most active contributor to the project elaborated saying, there is a great dearth of Odia books online. I try to buy some time from personal and office time to continue my contribution. Afterall, I started from an all time Odia classic “Cha'mana Athaguntha” by Fakir Mohan Senapati”. Many important books that are out of copyright are making their appearance on the Odia Wikisource. “Wikisource is different than Wikipedia as the former is published writing reublished online where on Wikipedia it is more of aggregating information published elsewhere in an encyclopaedic manner”, says Dr. Subas Chandra Rout, a long time Wikimedian.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Odia Wikisource's administrator Mrutyunjaya Kar welcomes everyone taking interest in Odia library movement in particular and Odia language in general to join this event that is being held at the Institute on Management of Agricultural Extension (IMAGE), Siripura, Bhubaneswar at 5 pm tomorrow.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/orissadiary-october-25-2015-odia-language-classics-could-now-be-read-from-phones-tablets-and-computers'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/orissadiary-october-25-2015-odia-language-classics-could-now-be-read-from-phones-tablets-and-computers</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaCIS-A2KOdia WikisourceAccess to KnowledgeOpen Access2015-12-15T08:12:54ZNews ItemMinistry of Science makes open access to research mandatory
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/down-to-earth-july-16-2014-aparajita-singh-ministry-of-science-makes-open-access-to-research-mandatory
<b>Researchers who fail to meet the requirements would not considered for promotions, fellowships, future grants or appointments.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Aprajita Singh was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/two-departments-ministry-science-make-open-access-research-mandatory#.U81zNRm3TqA">published in Down to Earth</a> magazine on July 16, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan gave his inputs.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Centre has made it mandatory for the researchers who receive funds from the Centre to submit a copy of their final research papers to open access journals or online open access repositories.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Stating this, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST), both under the Ministry of Science, recently released a draft of their Open Access policy. The departments have also invited comments and suggestions on the same. The document is open for comments till July 25th.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In the draft, DBT and DST have stated that since this research is funded by the public, it is necessary that the knowledge be made accessible to the public as soon as possible, so that it can be read and built upon. This will promote research culture in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In the past, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) have also released similar open access policies that encourage authors to make their work easily available to the public.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Traditional journals such as Nature impose a heavy subscription fee for access to their articles, thus limiting the viewers that these papers can reach. In some cases, authors may also be required to sign over their copyright of the paper to the publisher. Scientists consider it to be a matter of prestige to publish their research in these journals as it is believed that the quality of papers published here is superior to that of papers in open access journals.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But the trend slowly changing. According to T Vishnu Vardhan of Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society, “For open access journals like PLoS ONE, a scientist or an author has to pay less than one-third of the cost of publishing that he would pay to traditional models. The publishers have for long been holding forth on the editorial quality that their commercial operations assure, which no more holds ground as the open access journals have historically demonstrated same level of efficiency.” He adds that this is primarily because most of the peer reviewing of scientific scholarly publication is done for free.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The policy proposes that a copy of the paper be submitted to the repository within a week of being accepted by a journal. If the journal imposes an embargo, the paper will remain in the repository, but be made open access only once the embargo ends. Journals can thus charge a subscription fee for the duration of the embargo period. However, the policy asks the authors to suggest that the embargo period be no longer than year.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The departments maintain that while they do expect the authors to publish their work in quality, peer-reviewed journals, the research work done by them should be judged on the basis of the merit of the work and not the journal it is published in.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It also states that authors must submit the deposit ID of the work in question along with the final work, and also while applying for any future funding, or their proposals will not be considered. For authors of research conducted in institutions that come under the control of DBT/DST which do not carry the deposit ID, the penalty proposed is severe. These authors will not be eligible for promotions, fellowships, future grants or appointments.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The policy also provides a copyright addendum which states that the author retains all rights to reproduce and distribute the article, as long as it is not done for monetary purposes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is hoped that this policy will encourage other departments to make open access research mandatory too. Senior scientist at ICAR Research Centre for Eastern Region and a member of Open Access India, Sridhar Gutam says that there is a lack of clarity amongst researchers in India over open access policies. He hopes that now that CSIR, ICAR, DBT and DST have rolled out open access policies, this will encourage discussion on the issue and once this policy is finalized, other departments and institutes of higher education and research will follow suit and introduce their own policies.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/down-to-earth-july-16-2014-aparajita-singh-ministry-of-science-makes-open-access-to-research-mandatory'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/down-to-earth-july-16-2014-aparajita-singh-ministry-of-science-makes-open-access-to-research-mandatory</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen AccessAccess to Knowledge2014-07-28T09:12:49ZNews ItemLetter on South Africa's IPRs from Publicly Financed R&D Regulations
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/letter-on-south-africas-iprs-from-publicly-financed-r-d-regulations
<b>Being interested in legislations in developing nations styled after the United States' Bayh-Dole Act, CIS responded to the call issued by the South African Department of Science and Technology for comments to the Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Regulations.</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/letter-on-south-africas-iprs-from-publicly-financed-r-d-regulations'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/letter-on-south-africas-iprs-from-publicly-financed-r-d-regulations</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsBayh-DoleIntellectual Property RightsOpen AccessOpen Innovation2011-08-04T04:42:15ZBlog EntryLecture on Open Access and Open Content Licensing at ICAR (short course)
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/lecture-on-open-access-and-open-content-licensing-at-icar-short-course
<b>The ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR) a constituent establishment of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) organised a short course on 'ICTs for Improving Efficiency and Effectiveness in Agricultural Research, Education and Extension of NARES' during November 13-22, 2018 in Bangalore. Anubha Sinha delivered a lecture to the participants.</b>
<p>Read for <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/files/invitation-for-delivering-lecture-in-icar/view">more information about the programme</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/lecture-on-open-access-and-open-content-licensing-at-icar-short-course'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/lecture-on-open-access-and-open-content-licensing-at-icar-short-course</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminOpennessOpen AccessAccess to Knowledge2018-12-05T16:19:56ZNews Item