Open access and institutional repositories – a developing country perspective: a case study of India

In the recent years much discussions and initiatives are taken in the area of open access. Open access, a philosophy facilitates availability and distribution of scholarly communication freely, as a means to solve the problem of inaccessibility primarily due to financial constraint particularly in the context of developing countries. Many scholarly literature are freely accessible now without any hindrance. Open access endeavours to reduce barriers to scholarly communication. The open access literature available in various forms like open access archives, institutional repositories, open access journals and off late open courseware. The availability of open source software has accelerated this development. In India, various open access initiatives have been undertaken and are operational. Some more are in developmental stage. This paper discusses various such initiatives in India. Some initiatives have also been taken in the area of metadata harvesting services. Gradually, there has been a realization of the usefulness of the open access by various institutions particularly, the public funded ones. The future of open access in India is dependent upon a proper policy and a framework. In the implementation of open access LIS professionals should play a pro-active role in the growth of collection in the institutional repositories. The paper provides information about the present state of open access Literature by various institutions of the country