Research Papers/Articles - Institute of Management Studies Dehradun

Internet a Boon for Researchers: A Study on
Open Access Resources
ABSTRACT
The number of internet users in India has crossed 10 Crores. Growth of telecommunication facility and
internet bandwidth has accelerated the use of open access repositories. Internet is changing every part of
our usual life from bank counter to railway ticket counter. It is also a boon for research scholar for
collecting the secondary data required for research on a single click of a mouse. Increasing cost and
information explosion are the two major forces, which have vital impact on the functions of modern
libraries. In this scenario, open access journals are a boon to the practicing librarians particularly in a
developing country like India. The objective of the present article is to provide an overview of open access
resources available on the internet. The Paper demonstrates open access, different types of open access
resources furnished on the internet, how open access resources are processed, various open access
portals, open access initiatives, growth and contribution of open access Journals in India. The paper also
includes information in major open access journals, repositories, open access course ware and open
access software portals, which are helpful for researchers to easily collect study material related to their
work, from Internet.
Keywords: Internet, open access, e-resources, e-journal, e-book, Software’s.
Introduction
Information explosion gave rise to the problem of
acquiring flooded reading material all over the world as
libraries needed to have a big space, increased staff and
consequently increased financial burden. This problem
was at some level dealt with by the applications of IT in
libraries, which gave birth to the creation of e-resources.
The study of Wilkins (1995) shows that “Technology has
improved the library environment but the policies are
needed to solve several major governance issues, such as
copyrights, intellectual property rights, equity of access,
archives, information standards, privacy and funding”. It is
because, the problem of financial burden of e-resources’
subscription was still a hard nut to crack. As Suber, Peter
(2002) mentioned, “Journal subscription prices have risen
nearly four times faster than inflation since 1986.
Fortuitously, just as journal prices were becoming
* Research Scholar, Dept. of Electronic Media and Mass Communication, Pondicherry University
14
Kaushik Mishra*
unbearable, the internet emerged to offer an alternative.
The internet has provided the concept of e-journal, which
is well utilized by the large commercial publishers in the
name of bundled subscriptions. Although these
subscriptions have become popular as these are published
and distributed electronically in bundles, yet the licensing
terms of usage and access are really restrictive. Such as
depicted in the words of Ramachandran (2004) ‘even
though the bundling includes a very large number of
indifferent and low-impact journals, institutions around the
world, including many in India, have entered into such
agreements to gain access to a large number of journals.
But the price rise in these bundling schemes seems to have
outpaced inflation. Resultantly, academic and scientific
community coined the concept of open access (OA) to the
all kinds of literature in general and scientific & research
literature in particular by removing price, permission and
geographical barriers over the internet. Apart from the
"Pragyaan: Journal of Mass Communication" Volume 10, Issue 1, June 2012