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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-GB link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>Today the world is awash with OA advocates, and the number of them grows year by year. But it was not always thus. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>When Chennai-based information scientist Subbiah Arunachalam began calling for OA, for instance, there were hardly any other OA advocates in India, and not a great many more in the rest of the world either.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Yet like all developing countries, India faced (and continues to face) a serious access problem with regard to the scholarly literature — a function of the fact that the costs of subscribing to scholarly journals are very high, and these costs consistently rise at a faster rate than overall inflation. As a result, Indian scientists do not have access to all the journals they need to do their job properly.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Arunachalam had long been puzzling over how India’s access problem could be solved, and he had (unsuccessfully) tried a number of ways to resolve it himself. Then in 1996 his attention was drawn to Stevan Harnad’s 1994 Subversive Proposal — which called on all researchers to self-archive their papers on the Internet so that they were free for anyone to read.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Immediately seeing the potential of self-archiving, or what later became known as Green OA, Arunachalam decided to organise a two-day workshop at the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) Chennai, to which he invited Harnad. This was in 2000.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Since then Arunachalam has devoted a great deal of time and energy advocating for OA in India, an activity that must at times have been a somewhat lonely experience. As the manager of Library and Information Services at the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) Muthu Madhan put it recently, “OA advocacy in India can be characterised as mostly a one-man effort by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The interview with Subbiah Arunachalam can be read here: <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/open-access-in-india-q-with-subbiah.html">http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/open-access-in-india-q-with-subbiah.html</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>