Open Access in India: Hopes and Frustrations

India has a large S&T research community and Indian researchers perform research in a wide variety of areas including space research, nuclear energy, biotechnology, materials science (including nanoscience and nanotechnology), and all areas of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and earth sciences. India trains a very large number of scientists and engineers and a large percent of the best graduates migrate to the West. One would think that everything is fine with science and technology in India. Far from it. In terms of the number of papers published in refereed journals, in terms of the number of citations to these papers, in terms of citations per paper, and in terms of international awards and recognitions won, India's record is not all that encouraging. One key reason for the not-so-encouraging performance is to do with the way information is accessed and disseminated by Indian scientists. With an annual per capita GDP well below the thousand dollar mark, most Indian libraries cannot afford to subscribe to key journals needed by their users. Most scientists in India are forced to work in a situation of information poverty. Also, as Indian scientists publish their own research in thousands of journals, small and big, from around the world, their work is often not noticed by others elsewhere working in the same and related areas. Thus Indian work is hardly cited. Both these handicaps can be overcome to a considerable extent if open access is adopted widely both within and outside the country. That is easier said than done. As a individual I have been actively advocating open access for the past seven years. A few more have joined in recent years. But what we have to show is rather limited. Despite concerted advocacy and many individual letters addressed to policy makers, the heads of government's departments of science and research councils do not seem to have applied their minds to opening up access to research papers. Among those who understand the issues, a sizable number would rather like to publish in high impact journals, as far as possible, and then would not take the trouble to set up institutional archives. Most Indian researchers have not bothered to look up the several addenda (to the copyright agreement forms) that are now available. Many scientists I spoke to are worried that a publisher may not publish their papers if they attach an addendum! Publishing firms work in subtle ways to persuade senior librarians to keep away from OA initiatives. However, the National Knowledge Commission has acknowledged the importance of open access and has included it in its recommendations to the Government. A senior official of Google is in touch with NKC with a proposal to digitize all doctoral theses and bringing out OA versions of selected print journals and digitizing back runs of OA journals. The Indian National Science Academy invited an OA advocate to address its Council and it is likely that INSA will send before long a list of recommendations to the Government. Developments around the world, including in Latin America, South Africa and China, I hope will goad Indian establishment to action