Enhancing the Impact of Indian Scholarly Communication through Institutional

Repositories

Poornima Narayana*, Biradar B S**, I R N Goudar* 

Information Center for Aerospace Science & TechnologyNational Aerospace Laboratories

Bangalore –560017 India** Department of Library and Information Science

Kuvempu University, ShankarghattaShimoga – 577 451 , India

  Presented at Intl Conf . on “Empowering Knowledge for All:

Librarian’s Role” ILA Platinum Jubilee celebrations 12th-15th November 2008, Tata Inst.of Social Sciences, Mumbai 

ABSTRACT  The high quality research accompanied by innumerable scholarly

communications to various national and internationals journals and conferences has put India in the forefront in the developing world and leader of South Asian countries. Unfortunately, only the elite institutions have reasonably good information provision facilities that support scholarly communications. On one hand the paucity of funds for the subscription based scholarly journals and on the other the shrinking budget discourage both the access to vast scholarly publications and publication process itself. The open access literature plays a vital role, both in terms of research communication and access, provided, of course, the benefits in terms of economic and social recognitions are assured by this system. The open access movement was triggered by the journal crisis due to exorbitant price increase of the publications. Institutional repositories represent an important OA-channel and are relatively new developments in scholarly communication process compared to open journals and subject-specific repositories. The paper presents the Indian scenario in adopting the open access and the status of the open access journals and Institutional Repositories. The authors depict the main bottlenecks for setting up of IRs in various Indian institutions and come up with appropriate suggestions.

Scientific Research in India• The third largest scientific and technical manpower

in the world• Vision oriented efforts since Independence (1947 +) • Exclusive Government Departments for Science &

Technology, Atomic Energy, Space, Electronics, Oceanography, Biotechnology…

• Over 300 Research Laboratories belonging to CSIR, ICMR, ICAR, ICSSR, DRDO, ISRO…

• Education/Science performed by IISc, IITs, NITs, IIMs…and most of the Medical/ Engineering/Business Schools, Universities and research labs are of international standards

Publication Channels

Journals

Technical Reports

Conference Proceedings

House Magazines

Institutional Repositories

E-print Archives

Institutional Websites

…….

Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication

The broadest possible access to published research and other scholarly writings

Increased control by scholars and the academy over the system of scholarly publishing

Fair and reasonable prices for scholarly information

Competitive markets for scholarly communication A diversified publishing industry Open access to scholarship

Source: ACRL, 2003

Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication ……

Innovations in publishing that reduce distribution costs, speed delivery, and extend access to scholarly research

Quality assurance in publishing through peer review Fair use of copyrighted information for educational

and research purposes Extension of public domain information Preservation of scholarly information for long-term

future use The right to privacy in the use of scholarly

information

Source: ACRL, 2003

What is Open Access

User’s aspect

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.Source: Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2002

What is Open Access

Author’s aspect

The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be given to authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

Source: Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2002

Drivers of OAP and OAA

• Rising prices of journals• ARL and SPARC initiatives• Librarians want OA so they can afford• Scientists want OA so they could be read and recognized• People want OA because they pay for the research

Open Access Scenario• Open Access Movement - World: Berlin declaration, Bethesda Statement on

Open Access Initiative (BOAI), Budapest Initiative, OECD Declaration on OA, Scottish Declaration

on OA

- India:

+ Bangalore Commitment.(Nov 2006): 'Self-archive unto others as you would have others

self-archive unto you'. + Open Knowledge Society:

- Promote Open Access in India - Create awareness, training programmes - Forum to provide support services

OA Movement

Funders ResearchersArticles,

Books, etc.

Reports, Theses, etc.

Subscription Journals

OA Journals

OA Repositories

Abstracting Services

Search Engines

Publishers

Open access increases impactNature, vol. 411, No. 6837 (2001) p. 521

Open Access Channels

- Refereed free electronic journals,

- Research-area-specific archive

(e-print) servers,

- Institutional repositories of individual universities/institutions and

- Self-posting/archiving on authors'

home pages.

Indian Open Access Journals

 

Sl. No.

PublisherNumber of

Titles

1. Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS) 11

2. Indian National Science Academy (INSA) 4

3. Indian Medlars Center of NIC (MedInd) 39

4. Medknow Publications 45

5. Indian journals.com 12

6. Kamala-Raj Enterprises 9

Indian OA Journals

• International Open Access Day on 14 October 2008

• National Institute of Science Communication And Information

• two journals of NISCAIR [ CSIR India ] -• Indian Journal of Chemistry - Section A and• Indian Journal of Biochemistry & Biophysics in

Open Access mode .• NISCAIR Online Periodicals Repository [NOPR]

[ http://nopr.niscair.res.in ].

Institutional Repositories

Definition:• An Institutional repository is an Organization based set of services

which the organization offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation, where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution” (Clifford Lynch 2003)

• “Digital archives of intellectual products created by the faculty, staff and students of an institution or group of institutions accessible to end users both within and without the institution.”

Institutional Repositories

• Institutionally based

• Scholarly material in digital formats

• Cumulative and perpetual

• Open and interoperable– But not necessarily free!

IR Users

• Senior administration• Graduate students• Retiring professors• University research documents• Institutes and Centres• Your own organization

Institutional Repositories

Institutional Repositories World Scenario: Country Wise

Sl. No.

Country OpenDOAR ROAR

1. United States 292 26.11 226 22.96

2. Germany 124 11.09 83 8.43

3. United Kingdom 118 10.55 107 10.87

4. Australia 53 4.74 33 3.35

5. The Netherlands 44 3.93 23 2.23

6. Canada 40 3.57 42 4.26

7. France 37 3.30 39 3.96

8. Sweden 30 2.68 35 3.55

9. Brazil 26 2.32 55 5.58

10. Italy 38 3.39 29 2.94

11. India 29 2.59 28 2.84

12. Belgium 22 1.96 15 1.52

13. Japan 68 6.08 45 4.57

14. Spain 24 2.14 32 3.25

15. Others 229 20.48 192 19.51

16. TOTAL 1118 100.00 984 100.00

No. % No. %

IR Statistics

Software:• Dspace - 30%• GNU / Eprints - 25%

Language:• English - 85%• German – 15%• French – 10%• Spanish – 6%

Document Type:• Thesis – 50%• Grey List – 45%• Conference Proceedings – 35%• Books – 30%

Subject Type:• Multidiscipline – 55%• Medicine – 7%• History – 7%• Library & Information Sc – 5 %

Directories of Open Access Repositories

OpenDoar (http://www.opendoar.org/)  ROAR (http://archives.eprints.org/)

The University of Illinois OAI-PMH Data Provider Registry (http://gita.grainger.uiuc.edu/registry/Info.asp)

Openarchives.eu (http://www.openarchives.eu/home/home_do.aspx)

OpCit: The Open Citation Project   (http://opcit.eprints.org/opcitabout.shtml)

RoMEO (Rights MEtadata for Open archiving (http://romeo.eprints.org /publishers.html)

Institutional Repositories:Indian Scenario

• Nearly 50 Institutions• Public Domain (Internet): 35• Campus Network/LAN : 15• Leading IRs• IISc, ISI, NAL, NCL, NIO, RRI, DU, IITs

Institutional Repositories:Indian Scenario

• IR Software• Dspace – 25• Eprints - 11• Greenstone – 7• Inhouse - 7

Metadata Harvesters

• Search Digital Libraries (SDL) /DRTC harvesting L&IS subject-specific open access archives and repositories.

• ‘Knowledge Harvester@INSA’, experimental initiative harvests metadata from 3 archives.

• “SJPI Cross Journal Search Service” initiative from NCSI at IISc 13 Indian open access journals

• SEED IITD indexes 4 archives • NAL OAI compliant IRs of CSIR Labs. through a unified

search interface (PKP Harvester)• Open J-Gate (www.openj-gate.org), a free service open

access journals indexing service Informatics India Private Limited

s.

IR - Advantages

• New and innovative channel of scholarly communication

• Provide wider access and visibility to the research output

• Preserves of institution’s heritage • Reduce the publication delay

IR – Advantages (Contd…)

• Faster communication• Increase the citation to the publications • Strengthens research especially in the

Indian context • Effective communication channel• A boon for Gray Literature visibility

Favorable Environment in India

• National Knowledge Commission: Institutional Level discussions to set up IRs.

• Conferences/Trainings/Seminars: DRTC, NCSI, NAL

• Librarians have taken lead

Constraints of IR

• Absence of a well defined institutional policy • Lack of IR expertise in India • Insufficient funds for IT Infrastructure and

manpower• Apathy of authors towards time consuming and

lengthy deposition procedure. • Ignorance of users in the absence of appropriate

literacy program

Constraints of IR (Contd…)

• Publisher’s rigid attitude towards copyright policy• Customization of open source software is a bottle

neck• Nature of content: Classified/restricted and

Unclassified/Open• Diversity of content and the language used in the

full texts• Relying on unproven methods for long term

digital preservation.

Suggested Measures

• Policy decision by governmental agencies viz., CSIR, ISRO, DRDO, ICAR, ICMR, DST, etc

• Intensive awareness for both the librarians and the users (contributors and readers)

• Part of syllabus in Indian L & IS curriculum• Need to conduct workshops/training programs for creating

expertise • Adoption of uniform standards• Incentives for contributions of research output to IR• Mandatory deposition of research output

·    

Suggested Measures (Contd…)

• Setting up of metadata harvesting services by organizations/subject.

• Need to set up a Registry of Indian Repositories ROAR, OPENDOAR

• United approach to publishers for permission to add papers to IRs

• Necessary infrastructure including servers, PCs, scanners, internet bandwidth and software ,required funds and manpower

• Adoption of open source software Dspace, Eprints • Self deposition of documents by the creators • Integration of IRs with OPAC• Open access declaration and legislation by Goverment

·    

Conclusion• It is satisfying to note that good numbers of

institutions in the country are aware about

IR developments. • IR models should also be developed to

address the issues and concerns. • There is a lot of scope in India to develop IRs

at institutional level under various apex

bodies like CSIR, ICMR, ICAR, DRDO,

ISRO, DST, UGC, etc,.

Conclusion

FREE scholarly communicationis our common goal!

IRs for sustainable development?

A light at the end of the tunnel…..

Thank you

?