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

which was the home of science in pre-Independent India, does not have a single OA repository,
a clear indication of a city in decline.
A large majority of papers in the repositories of IISc (EPrints@IISc) and the National
Metallurgical Laboratory (EPrints@NML) allow users the option of 'Request copy'.
Scientists' views
Most of the scientists discussing open access are from Bangalore and IISc. Also,
among all Indian journals it is only Current Science that frequently gives some space for
discussion on open access. There have been occasional editorials in Indian Journal of
Medical Research and National Medical Journal of India, and comments in a few other
journals, but nothing compared to Current Science.
While there is widespread support for open access among scientists in the advanced
countries, only a few Indian scientists have expressed their views on open access. Here is
what Prof. Balaram, Director, Indian Institute of Science, and a Member of the National
Knowledge Commission as well as the Prime Minister's Science Advisory Council, wrote
in an editorial in Current Science, “The idea of open, institutional archives is one that
must be vigorously promoted in India. The introduction of legislation that vests copyright
with institutions, in the case of publicly funded research, may also provide the necessary
legal framework to avoid any contentious issues.” He continued, “Mandating open access
for all publicly funded research publications is easy to do by legislation. It is also a requirement
that can be insisted upon by philanthropic private funding bodies like the
Wellcome Trust and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.” 116 In one of his interviews,
he reiterated this point: “I want to argue for 'open archives'. Every institution should be
encouraged to set up a repository. This is a problem-free model I want to promote. There
may be a few glitches at start, but the next generation of scientists will be comfortable
with it. One issue that is yet to be resolved, however, is copyright. I argue that we should
be permitted to put in the repository the full text article as it appears in a journal. For this,
countries such as India should have a law specifying that the copyright for articles published
with publicly-funded research always vests with the authors and their institutions.”
117
However, Stevan Harnad believes that ideally authors should self-archive the final
refereed author's version of their papers and not the published journal version. Welcoming
the IEEE's change of author self-archiving policy, which no longer allows authors to
archive the published version of papers but only the final peer reviewed author's version,
he said, “That's the procedure that will work, and the policy that can and will scale to all
116
Balaram P (2008), Science Journals: Issues of Access, Current Science, 94: 837-838;
http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/apr102008/837.pdf.
117 Interview with P Balaram: Jayaraman KS (2008), Open Archives — The Alternative to Open Access
http://www.scidev.net/en/features/q-a-open-archives-the-alternative-to-open-access.html .
Page | 57