Open access movement in India

The seeds for the open access movement in India might have been sown in the year 2000 in a conference on 'Advances in Information Access and Science Communication' which was organised at M S Swaminathan Research Foundation as a tribute to Eugene Garfield's 75th birthday.^[1]

The notable eminent scholars who were involved in building the movement in India are T. B. Rajashekar, N. Balakrishnan and Subbiah Arunachalam.^[2]

The country's first Open Access Repository ePrints@IISc was established by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in November 2002^[1] and it houses currently 41,101 number of publications dated since 1914. In India by the end of 2015 produced 94,156 open access articles from 595 open access journals and is ranked fourth in the world.^[3]

Timeline

• Indian National Science Academy signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in 2004^[4]
• NIT Rourkela mandated Open Access policy in May 2006.^[1]
• National Knowledge Commission recommends Open Educational Resources and Open Access in November 2007^[5]
• UNESCO New Delhi published the first-ever stocktaking book on open access to knowledge in South Asia, titled "Open Access to Knowledge and Information: Scholarly Literature and Digital Library Initiatives - the South Asian Scenario", in April 2008.^[6]
• As of 2008, there were around 100 open access journals in India.^[7]
• In 2011, CSIR Open Access Mandate^[8] was launched by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
• CSIR Journals made Open Access - NISCAIR Online Periodicals Repository
• ICRISAT mandates open access to all its scientific and scholarly publications in May 2009.^[9]
• In 2011, Shodhganga: A Reservoir of Indian Theses ^[10] was launched by the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) Centre. Shodhganga aims at serving the mandates of the UGC Notification (Minimum Standards & Procedure for Award of MPhil/PhD Degree, Regulation, 2009) dated 1 June 2009, to facilitate open access to Indian theses and dissertations for global dissemination to the academic community world-wide.^[11]
• In January 2012, National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) was launched by Government of India.
• In September 2012, Government of India unveiled its Data.gov.in (Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India),^[12] in compliance with the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP).^[13]
• As of 2012, as open access journals became more popular under an author-pays model, it became more popular for scam publishers to solicit papers with payment.^[14] As of 2015, a study found that large amounts of fake open access journal publishers were located in India.^[15] (see predatory open access publishing)
• National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER) launched in August 2013^[16]
• Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) adopted its Open Access policy in September 2013.^[17]
• In December 2014, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the Department of Science and Technology (India) (DST), Government of India had jointly adopted their Open Access Policy^[18]
• In March 2015, UNESCO and CEMCA jointly launched an Open Access Curriculum for Researchers, and an Open Access Curriculum for Library Schools.^[19][20]
• In 2015, a Google Scholar Profile of literature related to Open Access in India was published for tracking Open Science and Open Access movement in India, which is updated regularly.^[21]
• In 2015, the CSIR-URDIP launched a portal, "Listing of Open Access Databases" or LOADB.^[22][23] The objective of LOADB is to create a web-enabled, linked, classified and categorized collection of Open Access Databases which one can access from a single portal. Although initial focus of LOADB is on science and technology subjects, the ultimate aim is to include all subject areas.
• In 2015, the CSIR-URDIP launched a portal 'ScienceCentral.in', which is the Centralized Institutional Repositories Hosting Service for DST-DBT Labs and a Harvester service for DST-DBT Institutional Repositories.

Agents of change

Individuals

• T. B. Rajashekar
• N. Balakrishnan
• Subbiah Arunachalam
• V. Balaji
• Sanjaya Mishra
• Francis Jayakanth is the winner of the first Open Access Annual Award instituted by the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT).^[24]
• Madhan Muthu has won 3rd Open Access Annual Award instituted by the EPT and is involved in setting up many open access repositories noted among them are Open Access Repository of ICRISAT and Open Access Thesis Repository of NIT Rourkela.^[25]

Institutions

• M S Swaminathan Research Foundation facilitated seminars, symposia and conferences on Open Access in India
• Indian Institute of Science
• Indian Academy of Sciences
• Indian National Science Academy
• Indian Council of Agricultural Research
• Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
• Centre for Internet and Society
• ICRISAT
• Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), Commonwealth of Learning
• University Grants Commission through Inflibnet launched Shodhganga
• Ministry of Human Resources Development
• Department of Biotechnology (DBT)
• Department of Science and Technology (India) (DST)
• Legal Information Institute of India
• Kerala Agricultural University

Volunteer groups

• Open Access India - To take forward the open access movement in India, the Open Access India an online community of practice was formed on social networking site Facebook and is building the momentum with advocacy on Open Access, Open Data and Open Education and development of community e-infrastructure & capacity building.^[26][27] It is partner of Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN)^[28] and the International Community for Open Research and Open Education (ICORE). Its Facebook group has now membership of more than 10,000 and has Ambassadors,^[29] Convenors across the country.
• DataMeet

Scholarly Societies

• Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Association of India (MAPAI)

See also

• Access to Knowledge movement
• List of open access projects
• Open access
• Open Access Week
• Open Knowledge
• Science Commons
• Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition

External resources

• See the online resources tagged with oa.india by the Open Access Tracking Project (OATP).

References

1. Arunachalam, Subbiah (9 April 2011). "Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India — A Status Report (with Emphasis on Scientific Literature)" (PDF). Centre for Internet and Society. Retrieved 13 March 2016.
2. Sawant, Sarika (2013-01-01). "Past and Present Scenario of Open Access Movement in India". The Journal of Academic Librarianship. Special Issue on Open Access 39 (1): 108–109. doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2012.11.007.
3. Bhardwaj, R. K. (2015). India's Contribution to Open Access Movement. Journal of Knowledge & Communication Management, 5(2), 107-126.
4. "Signatories". openaccess.mpg.de. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
5. "NKC: Recommendations: Open Educational Resources". knowledgecommissionarchive.nic.in. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
6. Das, Anup Kumar (2008). Open Access to Knowledge and Information: Scholarly Literature and Digital Library Initiatives - the South Asian Scenario. UNESCO, New Delhi. ISBN 9788189218218. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
7. "Open access publishing takes off in India". Silicon India. 2008-01-14. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
8. CSIR OPEN ACCESS MANDATE
9. "|| ICRISAT ||Press Releases 2009". www.icrisat.org. Retrieved 2016-04-01.
10. "Shodhganga : a reservoir of Indian theses @ INFLIBNET". Shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
11. "Shodhganga Helps Curb Plagiarism in Research Activities".
12. "Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India". Data.gov.in. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
13. "New Govt portal Data.Gov.In launch next month to ease information search". Retrieved 2016-03-31.
14. "On the Net, a scam of a most scholarly kind". The Hindu. 2012-09-26. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
15. "Fake journals: ‘Make in India’ gone wrong". The Hindu. 2015-10-25. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
16. "India launches National Repository of Open Educational Resources". Creative Commons blog. Retrieved 2016-03-31.
17. "ICAR adopts Open Access policy | Agricultural Information Management Standards (AIMS)". aims.fao.org. Retrieved 2016-03-31.
18. "India Unveils New Open Access Policy". blogs.nature.com. Retrieved 2016-03-31.
19. "UNESCO's Open Access (OA) Curriculum is now online".
20. Das, Anup Kumar (2015). "UNESCO Launches Open Access Curriculum for Young and Early Career Researchers" (PDF). Current Science, 109(3): 400-401. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
21. "Open Access India - Google Scholar Citations". Scholar.google.co.in. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
22. Loadb:Csir-Urdip. "Listing of Open Access Databases". LOADB. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
23. "Global directory of open access databases launched". The Indian Express. 2015-10-26. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
24. "Inaugural EPT Award for Open Access". The Centre for Internet and Society. Retrieved 2016-04-03.
25. "ICRISAT Happenings". www.icrisat.org. Retrieved 2016-04-03.
26. Sridhar, Gutam,. "Open Access India: Movement for Making Public Funded Research Open - Australian Science". Australian Science. Retrieved 2016-04-21.
27. "Home - Open Access India". Open Access India. Retrieved 2016-04-21.
28. "Open Access India | GODAN". www.godan.info. Retrieved 2016-04-21.
29. "Open Access India introduces Ambassador Scheme". oambassadors.mpdl.mpg.de. Retrieved 2016-04-21.