A Critical Study on Open Access Resources and Their Availability

Exploring the Landscape of Open Access Resources in India

by Saroj Bala*,

- Published in Journal of Advances in Science and Technology, E-ISSN: 2230-9659

Volume 8, Issue No. 16, Feb 2015, Pages 0 - 0 (0)

Published by: Ignited Minds Journals


ABSTRACT

The birth of Open Access inIndia Indian Academy of Sciences, founded by Sir C V Raman in 1934, is anextraordinary association in several ways. It considers issues related to Indiaat the right time and chooses a balanced mix of people to argue them. In 1999,the Academy held a conference on geographical information and almost every oneof the speakers concentrated on open access to geographical information. Theevents of the conference were published in Current Science in its issue dated25 August 2000. A seasoned science author wrote thorough information. Thismeeting is most likely the original in India in the area of publicly availableinformation.

KEYWORD

Open Access, Resources, Availability, India, Indian Academy of Sciences, Geographical Information, Conference, Current Science, Published, Publicly Available Information

INTRODUCTION

Open Access is free, immediate, permanent online access to the full text of research articles for anyone, web-wide, without the severe restrictions on use normally forced by publisher copyright agreements. There are two roads to open access: (1) the "green road" of open access self-archiving, where writers offer open access to their own published articles, by making their own e-prints liberally available to all by placing them in institutional or central repositories; (2) The "golden road" of open access journal-publishing, where journals provide open access to their articles either by charging the author/institution, a publication or processing fee instead of charging a subscription fee from the user/institution, or by simply making their online edition free for all and reclamation the publication and production costs from other source. Open access was first described in this way in the Budapest Initiative of 2002 that came from a meeting organized by the Open Society Institute (OSI) on December 1-2, 2001 with an objective to lift development in the international endeavor to make research articles in all academic areas available on the web free of cost. A few months after the meeting at Budapest, on 13 April 2003, a group comprised of biomedical researchers, editors, publishers, funders and librarians met at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and came up with a more detailed definition, which came to be known as the Bethesda Statement: An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions: (1) The writer(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to and a license to copy, use, allocate, broadcast and exhibit the work openly and to make and dispense plagiaristic works, in any digital standard for any accountable cause, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use. (2) A full description of the work and all supplemental resources, including a copy of the authorization as stated above, in an appropriate typical e-format is deposited instantly upon preliminary publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency or other well-established association that seeks to facilitate open access, unobstructed distribution, interoperability and long-term archiving. On 22 October 2003, heads of many German research organizations and some others signed the Berlin Declaration, which used almost the same language as the Bethesda Declaration except for the inclusion of educational inheritance in its ambit. That open access should have occupied the grave notice of so many scientists and policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic is evidence to the sturdy faith in the concept of unrestricted access to widely funded research. The two roads to open access, viz. open access self-archiving and open access publishing, are harmonizing. In general, by open access we academic material such as preprints, theses, conference papers and reports. As described by Peter Suber, open access is companionable with copyright, peer review, revenue, print, protection, status, career advancement, indexing and other features and helpful services linked with the conventional form of academic literature.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Nicholas et al. (2011), open access concentrates on three main benefits: it is accessible on the web, there are no economic or lawful barriers to access it and writers use copyright just to uphold the reliability of their work and hold the right of ascription. Park and Jian et al. (2012), the Budapest Open Access Initiative explains two techniques of acquiring open access: self-archiving and open access journals. Self-archiving includes both institutional repositories (IRs) and delicate internet records. Self-archived resources may also be placed in a departmental or discipline-specific online warehouse. Some self- archived resources may confine viewers to a firm group while others are liberally accessible on the internet. Open access journals are academic journals that are unreservedly accessible on the internet. Few are online only publications, while others are copies of print journals. Willinsky et al. (2013), the delayed open access model highlights fully free usage after an impediment phase, regularly six months after the early publication for subscribers. Another discrepancy is ― partial open access which means that only a segment of the subscription-based journal is accessible free of cost on the web. The open access association has formed a novel body of academic journalism that is accessible to viewers free of cost. Johnson et al. (2014), open access journals are accessible on the open internet and academicals collections permit authors to self-archive their work in a steady online atmosphere. While the prospect of this model and the precise traditions. Bailey et al. (2012), the rising cost of academic information, united with latest technologies that allow extensive usage to e-information, has brought to an attempt to permit researchers to use scholarly data online free of cost. A lot of researchers have observed writer‘s behavior toward these latest open access sources. Thomas et al. (2012) studied whether writers prefer to publish in open access sources and what behavior they have about those sources. These researches have brought researchers to the summary that a lot of authors are not aware of their open access publishing not identify those alternatives. Venkadesan et al.(2011), most of the authors have misunderstanding about the properties of open access sources and those misunderstandings avert them from venturing outside the conventional mold. Other researchers recommend that writer learning will lift responsiveness of and remove much of the misunderstandings about open access sources. Swan et al. (2012), to the level that writers do not publish in open access journals or put work in academicals collections because they do not recognize those alternatives survive, learning would raise the quantity of work submitted to open access publishing sources.

OBJECTIVES

  • To know availability of different types of Open Access Resources being used by faculty members and postgraduate students.
  • To assess the frequency of using Open Access Resources by faculty members and postgraduate students.

HYPOTHESIS

  • There is lack of awareness among faculty members and postgraduate students about Open Access Resources.
  • Faculty and postgraduate students having ICT skills utilize OARs more than that of having lack of ICT skills for retrieving Open Access Resources.
  • 40% of the students use open resources directly.

NEED OF OPEN ACCESS RESOURCES

A research academic basically performs two functions: doing research and sharing it with others. The way research findings are dispersed today — by publishing it in overpriced journals — is completely insufficient to attain the major aim of research, viz. increasing knowledge. If 100 per cent of research articles available in about 25,000 peer reviewed journals were available through open access free of cost, then the practice, impact, efficiency and growth of research would be increased and the systematic venture would become more competent. The possibility of wasting resources and time on repetitive research will reduce when researchers have complete usage to the outcome of prior study and relation between disciplines and specialties will also be increased, says Jan Valterop. The difficulty with the conventional model of subscription-based journals is

Saroj Bala

By treating knowledge, information and research as a commodity and charging high subscription prices to use that commodity, we are restraining the number of people who can afford to use it and the open assistance of study. Annoyed with the experts of knowledge, viz. large publishing houses, many academics were looking for new, non-commercial techniques to share knowledge. Earlier, it was impossible to make 100 per cent usage to research papers, but with the invention of the internet, open access can offer free access to all papers instantly and permanently. Open access has the capability to really democratize knowledge. Open access would be mainly advantageous to researchers in the developing countries who are operational under very hard circumstances, particularly in regard to information access. To do research, they require access to necessary broad research findings, but they do not have such usage.

OPEN ACCESS IN INDIA

The development of an open access strategy in India began at a two-day meeting on Advances in Information Access and Science Communication held at M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, (MSSRF) on 16 – 17 September 2000, as a tribute to Dr. Eugene Garfield on his 75th birthday. At this conference Prof. Stevan Harnad, open access archivange list, spoke about scholarly skywriting and the need for every research- performing institution to adopt open access self-archiving of preprints. To many in the audience Harnard's ideas were an eye opener. The Indian Academy of Sciences convened a meeting in April 2001, a few weeks after the Second ICSUUNESCO International Conference on Electronic Publishing in Science, where it was decided to promote Indian S&T journal publishers to adopt electronic publishing. Afterward, two three-day workshops for editors of S&T journals were apprehended at the Indian Institute of Science during 8 to 10 and 13 to 15 March 2002. A fledgling publisher of medical journals who attended this workshop, Dr. D K Sahu of MedKnow, currently publishes 150 journals of which 148 are open access. In May 2004, MSSRF planned two three-day workshops on setting up institutional repositories using e-prints software with the help of Dr. Leslie Carr of the University of Southampton and Dr. Leslie Chan. Dr. D K Sahu and Dr. T B Raja Shekhar also acted as resource persons. These workshops, a summarize to the suggestion made by Stevan Harnad during his visit to India in 2000, gave practical experience to 48

RESEARCH STUDY

This research shows the domino effect of a review that examined student‘s acquaintance with exercise of open access resources in different universities. The research work was prepared through questionnaires and fulfilled by 460 respondents. Respondents were normally well-known with open access sources including open access journals, institutional repositories and self-archived resources on the internet. Respondents‘ attitudes toward open access speckled, but most granted that open access resources are of high superiority and that open access would help them. In serving open access information, most of the respondents had worn open access journals than institutional collected materials or self-archived resources. A number of the problems faced by the student sorority in acquiring these materials have been highlighted and suitable suggestions have also been provided. A lot of consideration is concentrated on the increasing prices of journals in educational libraries as academic serials subscription costs raise. University libraries habitually cannot afford to acquire subscriptions to prominent journals and these can even push libraries to abandon current subscriptions. For this research, we used questionnaire method and interview method. Students and library staff of colleges of different universities were asked questions about open access resources. The feedbacks were noted and analyzed for further studies.

DATA ANALYSIS

Academicals repositories are also helpful as a substitute influence the currently publishing model is indecisive; it is obvious that fresh materials are now accessible to authors who wish to publish their study. The outcome of this research point to the necessitate for raised alertness that open access are precious and qualitative source of information. 34% of respondents reported knowing nothing about open access materials and half of the respondents mentioned themselves as recognizing just a modest. However, a lot of review respondents‘ expertise with open access journals, institutional repositories and self-archived resources on the internet specify that students may be well fitted to take on the instructional role. Respondents‘ normally positive nature toward open usage signify that much of the students are in favor of open access resources and might therefore 78% of respondents examined also signified that open access would direct to easier convenience of papers. Many research respondents viewed the support or lack of support from their foundation as a causal aspect in their specialized use of open access materials, particularly concerning teachers encouraging authenticating such resources. Studies about institutional support of open access publishing might lead to more attention on the question of what issues manipulate student‘s professional use of open access materials.

REFERENCES

  • Swan, Development of University Libraries in India after Independence, 2012. New Delhi: Concept.
  • Thomas, Library Resource Sharing and Networks .New Delhi: Virgo Publication, 2012.
  • Bailey, S.G Resource Sharing and Networking of University library in India. University News August 31, 2012, pp 79-85.
  • National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS), USA.
  • Nicholas, Can Spark India’s Overdue Knowledge Revolution?, cover story in Education World, Volume VII Number 2011.

 Park & Jian - Secondary Education and the New Agenda for Economic Growth, World Bank, New Delhi, 2012.