"Open Access Policy for Universities in India: A Proposal"; a presentation for the One Day National Seminar on Changing Role of Librarians in Digital Era; organized by JNU, New Delhi, India on 12th August 2014 on the occasion of 122nd Birth Anniversary of Dr S. R Ranganathan.

1. Dr. Anup Kumar Das
Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNU, India
One Day National Seminar on Changing Role of Librarians in Digital Era
JNU, India
12th August 2014
Open Access Policy for Universities in
India: A Proposal

2. Why Open Access
• Wide dissemination of public funded research results
• International visibility
• Increased possibilities of international collaboration
• Increased possibilities of attracting international funding/
partners
• Increased number of citations for every OA paper
• Increased altmetric score for every OA paper
• Increased value of h-index and i10-index (author-level
indicators)

3. Defining Public Funded Research
Type of Public Funding OA Items
Research Studies supported with
Govt. Fellowship/ Scholarship (e.g.,
JRF, SRF, postdoc)
Theses, Dissertations, Research
Papers, Research Data
Travel Grants Conference Papers
Duty-Leave for Conference
Participation
Conference Papers
Grants for Organizing Academic
Conferences
Conference Proceedings,
Conference Papers
Grants for Data Collection Working Papers, Research
Papers, Research Data
Public Funded Research Projects All of the above

4. Channels of Open Access
• Gold Open Access
– Open Access Journals
•Gratis/ No Fee, e.g., Current Science, Annals of Library
and Information Studies (ALIS)
•Fee-Based (Article Processing Charges – APC applicable) ,
e.g., PLOS One, eLife
•Gratis for Certain Countries (with Institutional-level or
funder-level arrangements)
– Open Access Articles in Hybrid Journals
•Fee-Based (Article Processing Charges – APC applicable)
•Gratis for Certain Countries (with Institutional-level or
funder-level arrangements)

5. Channels of Open Access
• Green Open Access
– Institutional Repositories, e.g., ePrints@IISc
– National-level Repositories, e.g., OpenMED@NIC
– ETD Repositories, e.g., Shodhganga@Inflibnet
– Subject Repositories at International Repositories, e.g.,
arXiv.org, E-LIS (Eprints.rclis.org)
– Publisher’s OA Repository, e.g., NOPR of NISCAIR

6. Green Open Access Channels in India
Source: Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), e.g. at the
National Level
• OpenMED@NIC by Bibliographic Informatics Division, National
Informatics Centre (NIC), India
• Indian Academy of Sciences: Publications of Fellows by Indian Academy
of Sciences, India
• Indian ETD Repository @ INFLIBNET (Shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in)
• ShodhGangotri: Repository of Indian Research in Progress by INFLIBNET
Centre
• IR@INFLIBNET by INFLIBNET Centre
• NISCAIR Online Periodicals Repository (NOPR.niscair.res.in) by CSIR-
NISCAIR
• National Science Digital Library (NSDL.niscair.res.in) by CSIR-NISCAIR
• Knowledge Repository Open Network (KNoor) by Department of Library
& Information Science, University of Kashmir, India {for the J&K State}

7. Indian Open Data Repositories
Source: DATABIB (A searchable directory of research data repositories), e.g.,
• Indian Genetic Disease Database @ Indian Institute of Chemical Biology
• Oral Cancer Gene Database @ Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research
and Education in Cancer (ACTREC), Tata Memorial Centre
• ACEpepDB: Peptide Database @ Central Food Technological Research
Institute, India
• HIstome: The Histone Infobase @ Advanced Centre for Treatment,
Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC), Tata Memorial Centre
• Human Proteinpedia @ Institute of Bioinformatics, Bangalore
• Clinical Trials Registry - India (CTRI) @ ICMR National Institute of Medical
Statistics (NIMS)
• TBNet India: A National Portal for Tuberculosis Initiative @ Institute of
Bioinformatics, Bangalore
• India Sanitation Portal @ The Arghyam Foundation

8. Example from the Global South
University of Pretoria (UP), South Africa: Open Access Policy [Source: http://roarmap.eprints.org/137/]
• To assist the University of Pretoria in providing open access to scholarly articles resulting from
research done at the University, supported by public funding, staff and students are required to:
– submit peer-reviewed postprints + the metadata of their articles to UPSpace, the University’s
institutional repository, AND - give the University permission to make the content freely
available and to take necessary steps to preserve files in perpetuity. Postprints are to be
submitted immediately upon acceptance for publication.
– The University of Pretoria requires its researchers to comply with the policies of research
funders such as the Wellcome Trust with regard to open access archiving. Postprints of these
articles are not excluded from the UP mandate and should first be submitted as described in (1).
Information on funders’ policies is available at http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/.
– Access to the full text of articles will be subject to publisher permissions. Access will not be
provided if permission is in doubt or not available. In such cases, an abstract will be made
available for external internet searches to achieve maximum research visibility. Access to the
full text will be suppressed for a period if such an embargo is prescribed by the publisher or
funder.
– The Open Scholarship Office will take responsibility for Adhering to archiving policies of
publishers and research funders, and managing the system’s embargo facility to delay public
visibility to meet their requirements. The University of Pretoria strongly recommends that
transfer of copyright be avoided. Researchers are encouraged to negotiate copyright terms with
publishers when the publisher does not allow archiving, reuse and sharing. This can be done by
adding the official UP author addendum to a publishing contract.
– The University of Pretoria encourages its authors to publish their research articles in open
access journals that are accredited.

9. Some Observations
• Amount of peer-reviewed open access literature produced from India is significant.
• Global accessibility, visibility and collaborative research will be increased if Indian
universities
– Establish OA Institutional Repositories, ETD Repositories
– Establish Open Data Repositories
– Establish Norms for supporting APC in Gold OA Journals (either through project funds
or University Corpus)
– Contents Produced with Creative Common (CC) Licenses
– Develop an Author Addendum to a publishing contract
• Needs to Strengthen
– Sensitization on Copyright Retention with the Authors or Universities (Instead, a
License to Publish – LTP can be given to publishers)
– National Science Academies to Establish Disciplinary OA Repositories/ Open Data
Repositories for their Fellows
– Scientific Societies to Establish Disciplinary OA Repositories/ Open Data Repositories for
their Members/ Fellows
– Disciplinary/ Domain-Specific Knowledge Networking
– Open Access Advocacy, Capacity Building and Awareness Raising
– Linkages amongst Open Innovation, Open Access and Open Science Data.

10. Thank you for your attention.
http://anupkumardas.blogspot.in