Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India - Centre for Internet and ...

(2) A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy
of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is
deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is
supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other
well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution,
interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed
Central is such a repository).
On 22 October 2003, heads of many German research organizations and several others
signed the Berlin Declaration, which used almost (but not exactly) the same
language as the Bethesda Declaration except for the inclusion of cultural heritage in its
ambit. 30
That open access should have engaged the serious attention of so many scientists and
policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic is a testimony to the strong belief in the notion
of public access to publicly funded research.
The two roads to open access, viz. open access self-archiving and open access publishing,
are complementary. Normally, by open access we mean open access to refereed
research papers. But open access does not exclude other forms of scholarly material such
as preprints, theses, conference papers and reports. 31
As pointed out by Peter Suber, 32 open access is compatible with copyright, peer review,
revenue (even profit), print, preservation, prestige, career advancement, indexing,
and other features and supportive services associated with the traditional form of scholarly
literature.
Why open access?
A research academic essentially performs two functions: doing research and sharing it
with others. The way research findings are disseminated today — by publishing it in
over-priced journals — is utterly inadequate to meet the main purpose of research, viz.
maximizing knowledge. If 100 per cent of research articles published in about 25,000
peer-reviewed journals were freely accessible through open access, then the usage, impact,
productivity and progress of research would be maximised and the scientific enterprise
would become more efficient. The likelihood of wasting resources and time on
duplicative investigation will decrease when researchers have comprehensive access to
30 http://oa.mpg.de/lang/en-uk/berlin-prozess/berliner-erklarung/.
31 Sci-Bytes (2010), Science in India, 2004-08, ScienceWatch.com;
http://sciencewatch.com/dr/sci/10/jan10-10_2/
32 Suber P, (First put online June 21, 2004. Last revised November 6, 2010), Open Access Overview,
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.html.
Page | 17