[Forwarding from Subbiah Arunachalam. --Peter.] Workshops on Open Access in India
Two workshops on open access and institutional archives were organized by Subbiah Arunachalam at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, during 2-4 and 6-8 May 2004, with a view to developing a cadre of open access experts in Indian higher educational and research institutions. The primary purpose of the workshops was to provide Indian scientists and librarians with (a) a thorough understanding of the global scientific and scholarly communication issues that Open Access addresses, (b) the technical knowledge of how to set up and maintain an Open Access institutional archive, and (c) an awareness of the local institutional policy and organisational requirements for a successful, sustainable Open Access institutional archive. In all, 48 participants, representing general and agricultural universities and government laboratories under the various councils and departments, were trained in the two workshops. Some of them were scientists and others librarians, drawn from different parts of India and from different disciplines. There were four faculty members: Leslie Chan of the University of Toronto, Leslie Carr of the University of Southampton, D K Sahu of MedKow Publications, Mumbai, and T B Rajashekar of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Incidentally, Leslie Chan was a resource person and Sahu a participant at the workshops on Open Access Electronic Journals that Subbiah Arunachalm organised two years ago at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In the intervening two years Sahu had brought 20 Indian medical journals into the open access domain. The workshops were held in a multipurpose classroom where each participant was provided with an Internet-connected PC preloaded with Linux (RedHat 7.3). Apart from discussing the philosophy of open access and the current international developments, the faculty members helped the participants learn to set up interoperable institutional open access archives using the Eprints software developed at the University of Southampton and the Open Archives Initiative's Interoperability protocol. Participants were asked to load papers from their own institutions and prepare the metadata. Among the issues discussed at the workshop are: Who is responsible for setting up IR? How can we promote participation at the institutional level? What should be the institutional and national policies? Should they be concerned about copyright? Which journals allow authors to archive their papers? What are the long-term sustainability issues? Why open archives? All scientists, including social scientists, need to publish their findings. Indeed, research is incomplete as long as it remains unpublished. As John Ziman called it, science is public knowledge. The last few years have witnessed the unprecedented rise in the subscription costs of journals and even well-endowed institutions in rich countries find it difficult to retain journal subscriptions. It is for this reason that the open access (OA) movement is gaining ground around the world. While access to (and impact of) the peer-reviewed literature is a global issue, the impact of Indian research is of particular concern to Indian scientists and policy makers who feel that it receives less representation than it deserves in international journals. Besides, others in the rest of the world do not really notice much of the work that is carried out in India. If Indian scientists publish their papers in expensive journals, then even other Indian scientists do not notice them, as not many Indian institutions may subscribe to those journals. OA will improve access to Indian research and hence help to maximize its use, recognition (and citation) by researchers across the world. Indeed, OA will be of much greater advantage to developing countries than to the western countries. Institutional archiving is now widely seen as an immediate and low barrier route for providing open access to an institution's research output. The time is also ripe as there are now international standards for achieving interoperability between archives, and free software for setting up archives are readily available. We preferred Eprints.org as it is designed to gather and display metadata that are better suited for formal scholarly publications. Today there is great interest in open access around the world. The Budapest Open Access Initiatives, the Berlin Declaration, the Welcome Trust's statement on open access and the Declaration of Principles by the World Summit on the Information Society are prominent examples of the growing recognition of the importance of open access. In the USA, Congressman Martin Sabo has introduced a bill suggesting that findings of all publicly funded research must be made freely available to all. In the UK, a committee appointed by the House of Commons to inquire current and potentially useful practices in science publishing is hearing evidence from a number of experts and institutions. Several discussion lists are actively promoting exchange of views on open access. The Open Society Institute is providing funds to promote open access initiatives. In India, the India National Science Academy (INSA) devoted a whole day for a seminar on open access at its annual meeting held at the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, in late December 2003. INSA held a further symposium on open access and institutional repositories on May 13, 2004, as a direct result of the Chennai workshops. Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, supported the two workshops on open access journals held in March 2002. Prof. M S Swaminathan, the eminent agriculture researcher and development evangelist, and Prof. P Balaram, one of India's leading life scientists and Editor of Current Science, gave guest lectures. Both of them emphasized the need for promoting public good research. Outcome Most participants are keen to set up archives at their institutions within the next few months. A discussion group has been set up and all participants and resource persons are members of this group. Says Leslie Carr, "The Indian context imbues scientists with a keen appreciation of the need to disseminate their work more widely. This is much more evident than in the UK, US and Europe. Consequently one would expect widespread adoption of open access archiving technology - as this is the strategy that allows researchers and institutions to take responsibility for improving the access to their own work." The workshops represent an initial kick-start for open access archiving in India, and that the momentum that these "early adopters" generate will result in more and more institutions buying into OA archiving in India. This could well make India (and by extension the rest of the developing world) a driving force in the OA movement. Participants were requested to keep the organizers informed of the progress they make. Arunachalam is planning to visit the different institutions to monitor the progress. Before the end of the year at least a dozen institutions are expected to have their own institutional archives up and running. Taking advantage of their presence in India, the British Council, Chennai, organized talks by Leslie Chan and Leslie Carr to a select gathering of librarians and publishers. Leslie Chan also gave talks at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, as well as at the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi. These talks were well attended and generated considerable enthusiasm for promoting open access in India. As a follow-up to these workshops, Arunachalam is planning to organize a three-nation policy makers workshop for India, China and Brazil to which will be invited representatives from the InterAcademy Council, the InterAcademy Panel and the Third World Academy of Sciences. It is clear that technical infrastructure is no longer an issue both in India and elsewhere. It is a matter of leadership and institutional commitment. In that regard it is very encouraging that Indian science policy makers such as Dr R A Mashelkar, Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and Prof. M S Valiathan, President of the Indian National Science Academy, are keen to encourage setting up of open access institutional repositories. Acknowledgement The workshops were supported by the Open Society Institute, the International Development Research Centre, the British Council and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (Government of India). Subbiah Arunachalam MS Swaminathan Institute, Chennai Trustee, Electronic Publishing Trust for Development