This presentation details the Open Access terrain in India and explains the work done under the auspices of Open Access India.

1. Efforts for ‘Opening up of Access
to Research Outputs’ in India
Sridhar Gutam
Convener, Open Access India
15 Sept 2014, FAO Rome

2. Science and Technology System
Source: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/international/offices/officeinindia/links/

3. Union Budget for S & T
(allocations in millions of rupees)
2013–14 2014–15
Department of Atomic Energy 98330 104460
Department of Health Research 10080 10177
Department of Science and Technology 31843 35440
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research 35710 37072
Department of Biotechnology 15020 15172
Department of Space 67920 72380
Department of Agricultural Research and Education 57290 61440
Ministry of Earth Sciences 16900 16990
Ministry of New and Renewable Energy 15340 9560
Source: http://www.nature.com/news/first-modi-budget-spells-austerity-for-indian-science-1.15542

4. Scholarly Articles
Sl.
No.
Country Documents
Citable
documents
Citations Self-Citations
Citations
per
Document
H index
1 United States 7,846,972 7,281,575 152,984,430 72,993,120 22.02 1,518
2 China 3,129,719 3,095,159 14,752,062 8,022,637 6.81 436
3
United
Kingdom 2,141,375 1,932,907 37,450,384 8,829,739 19.82 934
4 Germany 1,983,270 1,876,342 30,644,118 7,966,777 17.39 815
5 Japan 1,929,402 1,874,277 23,633,462 6,832,173 13.01 694
6 France 1,421,190 1,348,769 21,193,343 4,815,333 16.85 742
7 Canada 1,110,886 1,040,413 18,826,873 3,580,695 20.05 725
8 Italy 1,083,546 1,015,410 15,317,599 3,570,431 16.45 654
9 India 868,719 825,025 5,666,045 1,957,907 8.83 341
10 Spain 857,158 800,214 10,584,940 2,629,669 15.08 531
Source: http://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php

5. Scholarly Articles – Year Wise
Year Documents Citable Documents
% International
Collaboration
% World
2000 23,776 23,237 14.97 1.91
2001 24,761 24,052 12.97 1.85
2002 26,841 25,928 13.26 1.93
2003 31,323 29,819 18.02 2.16
2004 34,623 32,925 18.95 2.17
2005 36,611 34,669 18.99 2.18
2006 45,979 43,596 19.02 2.40
2007 50,889 48,126 19.49 2.53
2008 58,162 54,941 18.66 2.74
2009 65,995 62,523 18.14 2.97
2010 78,226 73,924 17.07 3.32
2011 95,142 89,576 16.12 3.79
2012 102,881 96,841 16.18 3.99
2013 106,029 98,968 16.49 4.13
Source: http://www.scimagojr.com/countrysearch.php?country=IN

6. Availability and Accessibility
(of IARI publications)
• Examined for 2008–2010, of the 221 indexed journals, only 19 (9%) were
open access journals indexed in DOAJ18. Additionally, 14% of the published
articles could be found on Eprints@IARI. Thus, up to 23% of the published
literature is available and accessible to the public.
• The percentage of articles available in CeRA was 69%. This shows that a
little more than 30% of the articles published were not available to the
researchers in CeRA, a closed consortium model that makes articles
available through subscription to NARS constituents. Through CeRA, 78%
of the full texts were available online and the rest were available through a
document delivery system. This means that nearly 20% of the articles from
IARI were only available in print form and were not in electronic format.
• These figures represent results from the years 2008–2010 only; we may presume a different
picture for articles published when IARI first began. However, under the projects e-Granth and
E-PKSAR of NAIP, which are encouraging back issue digitization, researchers may get some
relief, as many of the old journal articles are being made available in open and electronic form.

7. The Right to Information Act, 2005
“An Act to provide for setting out the practical regime of right
to information for citizens to secure access to information
under the control of public authorities, in order to promote
transparency and accountability in the working of every public
authority, the constitution of a Central Information
Commission and State Information Commissions and for
matters connected therewith or incidental thereto”.
Citation Act No. 22 of 2005
Territorial extent Whole of India except Jammu and Kashmir
Enacted by Parliament of India
Date enacted 15-June-2005
Date assented to 22-June-2005
Date commenced 13-October-2005
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Information_Act

8. Open Access
• Means unrestricted online access to peer-reviewed
scholarly research (also theses, book
chapters, and scholarly monographs).
• Comes in two degrees:
– gratis open access, which is free online access
– libre open access, which is free online access plus
some additional usage rights (granted through use of
Creative Commons licenses).
Only libre open access is fully compliant with definitions of
open access such as the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to
Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access

9. Budapest Open Access Initiative,
2001
• Public statement of principles relating to open access to the research literature.
• Conference convened in Budapest by the Open Society Institute on December 1–2, 2001
• to promote open access – at the time also known as Free Online Scholarship.
• Recognized as one of the major historical, and defining, events of the open access
movement.
• On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the initiative (2012), recommended "the new
goal that within the next ten years, OA will become the default method for distributing new
peer-reviewed research in every field and country”.
Definition of open access : By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free
availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy,
distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for
indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful
purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those
inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on
reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain,
should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right
to be properly acknowledged and cited.

10. Timeline – OA in India
May
2006
• National Institute of Technology, Rourkela - OA Mandate
Nov
2006
• Bangalore Declaration - National OA Policy for Developing Countries
Jan 2007 • National Knowledge Commission Open Access
Feb
2009
• CSIR - Group for Open Access to Science Publications
June
2009
• UGC mandate - submission of ETDs
Mar
2012
• National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy
Aug
2013
• National Repository of Open Educational Resources
Sept
2013
• ICAR Open Access Policy
Oct
2013
• UNESCO Strengthening Open Access in India
July
2014
• DBT DST Open Access Policy (draft)
Adapted from, Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India — A Status Report by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam and Madhan Muthu (2011)

11. Significant OA Policies and
Mandates
• ICRISAT Open Access Policy Mandate
• CSIR Open Access Mandate
• ICAR Open Access Policy
• DST-DBT Open Access Policy (draft)
• Proposals for…
– National Mandate on Open Access in India
– Inclusive Open Access

12. ICAR Open Access Policy

13. ICRISAT Open Access
Repository

14. Berlin Declaration Signatories -
India
• Indian National Science Academy (5th Sept.
2004.
• Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Association
of India(2nd Sept. 2011)
• Agricultural Research Service Scientists’
Forum (18th May 2012)

15. India - DOAJ and ROAR
• Articles
– Brazil (328693)
– United Kingdom (183276)
– United States (102136)
– India (88587)
• Journals
– 594 (89 CC-BY; 252 No APCs)
• Repositories
– 95 (104)

16. ICAR - NARS Open Access

17. ICAR - NARS Open Access

18. MOOCs Massive Open Online
Courses
• Under the SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active-learning
for Young Aspiring Minds)
Programme, professors of centrally funded
universities like Indian Institutes of
Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of
Management (IIMs) and central universities
will offer online courses

19. Caution!!
• “Fake open-access journals flourish in India:
Science”
– The Hindu
• “The policy (of DBT-DST), therefore, has the
potential to have a significant negative effect on
India’s economy”
– The Association of Learned and Professional Society
Publishers

20. The Protection and Utilization of
Public Funded Intellectual Property
Bill, 2008
• Highlights
– To provide incentives for creating and commercializing
intellectual property from public funded research.
– Requires the scientist who creates an intellectual property to
immediately inform the research institution.
• Arguments against (The Centre for Internet & Society)
– May lead to commercialize all government-funded research
literature and may hamper the movement for open access to
scholarly literature.
– Exclusive licensing enables restriction on the dissemination
of academic research in the marketplace, and increase in cost
of products based on public-funded research.

21. Alternate Metrics
• San Francisco Declaration on Research
Assessment
– “Do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact
Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of
individual research articles, to assess an individual
scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or
funding decisions”
• Altmetric.com
• ImpactStory

22. DST – DBT on Metrics
• “The DBT/DST affirms the principle that the
intrinsic merit of the work, and not the title of
the journal in which an author’s work is
published....”
• “DBT/DST does not recommend the use of
journal impact factors, as a surrogate measure
of the quality of individual research articles, to
assess an individual scientist’s contributions,
or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions”.
Source: dbtindia.nic.in/docs/DST-DBT_Draft.pdf

23. NAAS Scoring of Scientific Journals
• “…a need was felt in the Academy for critically
assessing the published work of the nominees
for the Fellowship/Associateship and for
developing a transparent and quantifiable
mechanism that avoids arbitrariness in
assessment”.
• “Accordingly, the Academy initiated a process
of rating/scoring of scientific research
journals…”
Source: http://naasindia.org/

24. Next Steps??
• Active contribution to AIMS, CIARD, GODAN,
OKFN, data.gov.in & DataMeet.
• Forging alliances with other CoP.
• Establishment of Scholarly repository
• National mandate on Open Access in India
• Inclusive Open Access
• Alternate metrics

25. Open Access India
• Contributes to the activities/initiatives of
– AIMS, CIARD, GODAN, OKFN & DataMeet
• Conveners
– Sridhar Gutam& Barnali Roy Choudhury
• Facebook Group
– 6922 members (https://www.facebook.com/groups/oaindia/)
• WordPress Blog
– 5,383 hits Since Dec 27, 2012
(http://oaindia2013.wordpress.com/)
• Facebook Page
– 646 likes (https://www.facebook.com/oaindia)
• Twitter
– 389 followers (https://twitter.com/OpenAccessIndia)

26. Thank you for your kind attention
gutam2000@gmail.com