Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India - Centre for Internet and ...
Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India - Centre for Internet and ...
Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India - Centre for Internet and ...
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than a hundred thous<strong>and</strong> page downloads <strong>in</strong> a month.<br />
Most MedKnow journals are archived at multiple places <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g OAI-compliant e-<br />
pr<strong>in</strong>t reposi<strong>to</strong>ries <strong>and</strong> sites such as Biol<strong>in</strong>e International 73 . All the journals are searchable<br />
from a s<strong>in</strong>gle <strong>in</strong>terface on the MedKnow site. The journals are also l<strong>in</strong>ked from DOAJ 74<br />
<strong>and</strong> PubMed through L<strong>in</strong>kOut.<br />
MedKnow has collaborations with the major bibliographic agencies, subscription<br />
agents, <strong>in</strong>ternet search eng<strong>in</strong>es <strong>and</strong> secondary aggregat<strong>in</strong>g agencies. These collaborations<br />
help <strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>g the visibility <strong>and</strong> accessibility of the published papers across the world.<br />
The MedKnow website provides statistical <strong>in</strong><strong>for</strong>mation everyday <strong>and</strong> it is truly<br />
impressive. Here is what one found on 6 April 2011: 150 Total journals, 130 Total<br />
associations / societies, 60,682 Total articles, 52,995 Full text articles, 0,155 Manuscripts<br />
submitted <strong>in</strong> 2011, 1,542,153 Articles downloaded <strong>in</strong> Mar '11, <strong>and</strong> 50,306 Articles<br />
downloaded on Apr 5, 2011.<br />
Writ<strong>in</strong>g about a presentation by Dr Sahu, Heather Morrison said: “It is absolutely exquisite<br />
— a must-read <strong>for</strong> every open access advocate!<br />
D.K. Sahu illustrates how open access made it possible <strong>for</strong> the Journal of<br />
Postgraduate Medic<strong>in</strong>e <strong>to</strong> move from fairly limited, <strong>India</strong>-based accessibility (less than<br />
400 pr<strong>in</strong>t subscriptions) <strong>to</strong> awesome usage statistics - often over 3,500 visits per day -<br />
from around the world. Citations <strong>and</strong> article submissions have <strong>in</strong>creased, <strong>and</strong> the JPGM's<br />
impact fac<strong>to</strong>r is projected <strong>to</strong> <strong>in</strong>crease by a very great deal. International submissions have<br />
<strong>in</strong>creased, <strong>to</strong>o - perhaps authors from North America <strong>and</strong> Europe are go<strong>in</strong>g <strong>to</strong> <strong>India</strong> <strong>for</strong><br />
their open access solution???”<br />
Subbiah Arunachalam<br />
[Compiled from the MedKnow website 75 <strong>and</strong> other sources]<br />
<strong>and</strong> is <strong>to</strong>day the world's largest open access publisher that does not charge a fee either<br />
from the author or from the readers. [Although 750 open access journals are published<br />
under the label SciELO, it cannot claim this dist<strong>in</strong>ction. Strictly speak<strong>in</strong>g SciELO, as its<br />
website says, is a meta publisher or a virtual library or a network of collections of journals<br />
with the journals themselves be<strong>in</strong>g published by many publishers located <strong>in</strong> 16 countries<br />
spread over Lat<strong>in</strong> America, Caribbeans <strong>and</strong> Western Europe. ]<br />
73 www.biol<strong>in</strong>e.org.br.<br />
74 www.doaj.org.<br />
75 www.medknow.com.<br />
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