Can Open Access Offer Science Where No One Is Left Behind?

In this article, Frederick Noronha argues that India is making noticeable progress in the field of open access (hereafter, OA), which he calls "a growing global trend" that "picked up globally since around 2002". OA implies the free online availability of research-oriented scientific and scholarly journal articles, and Noronha proposes here that it could be a technology-based strategy for helping India to "get out of the trap which blocks researchers from here reading what other Indians have published." He quotes Chennai (South India)-based information scientist Subbiah Arunachalam, who claims that "nearly a hundred journals have already taken the Open Access route", including 11 journals published by the Indian Academy of Science, 4 journals published by the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), 3 journals published by the Calicut Medical College, one journal published by the Indian Institute of Science, one journal published by the Indian Council of Medical Research, the Mumbai-based (medical publishing) MedKnow, and NIC-Medlars, among others.

The free, online availability of these and other journals may correct what seems to be a breakdown in communication which prohibits many Indian researchers from reading/accessing their own peers' work. According to Arunachalam, "Research performed in India, funded by Indian taxpayers, is reported in a few thousand journals, both Indian and foreign. Since some of these journals are very expensive...many Indian libraries - including sometimes the author's own institutional library - are not able to subscribe to them." As a result, for example, only 6 of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR)'s 20-odd journals has over 1000 subscribers. Furthermore, though roughly half of all Indian research is published abroad, few Indian researchers reach high-impact journals; as a result, Indian research work does not reach a wide audience - "affecting both its visibility and its impact" (in the words of Raman Research Institute former librarian A. Ratnakar).

To address such issues, in early 2006, the Bangalore-based information company Informatics (India) Ltd, launched Openj-gate, a portal covering 3500+ English-language journals, approximately 2000 of which are peer-reviewed. Indian Journals.com, a Delhi-based company, publishes 8 OA journals. (Unlike in the West, journal publishing in India comes from taxpayer-funded government or professional bodies, and is not dominated by commercial publishers.) Subbiah Arunachalam (quoted above), argues that government arms in India should step up efforts to fund OA endeavours. Arunachalam praises the NIT-R (National Institute of Technology) at Rourkela for having the "best open archive". India's National Informatics Centre (NIC) operates the Indian Medlars Centre, which makes available electronic versions of 38 Indian biomedical journals, mainly published by professional societies. However, "Only three out of 40 CSIR labs are currently doing Open Access," he claims.

Noronha details a number of specific new OA archives and offerings. He explains that some apparently consider the South Indian city of Bangalore to be the Indian leader in OA archiving, citing initiatives by The Raman Research Institute, National Aerospace Laboratory, and The Indian Institute of Astrophysics. Interestingly, author reluctance to share published research papers seems to be an impediment to the growth of databases such as the National Chemical Laboratory and the Indian Institute of Management at Kozhikode in Kerala. Arunachalam estimates that Indian researchers publish about 20,000 papers a year in 2,500 to 3000 journals in 130 countries "including in (small countries like) Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or Croatia". Noronha notes that Indian Medlars Centre at NIC has an EPrints-based archive called OpenMED where biomedical researchers from anywhere in the world can share their papers.

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