[GOAL] Interview with Francis Jayakanth of India’s National Centre for Science Information

[Richard Poynder]

Like members of all movements, OA advocates come in all shapes and 
sizes, and they are driven by a variety of different motives. Some have 
embraced OA, for instance, because they see it as a good business 
opportunity, some because they want their research to be more 
accessible, and so have greater impact, some because they expect it will 
save their institution large sums of money, and some simply because they 
believe that OA holds out the promise of providing considerable common good.

What is distinctive about the Open Accessmovement, however, is that it 
is a leaderless revolution. There is no formal organisation or 
foundation to represent it, and there is no official leader. For all 
that, OA is generally associated with a small group of high-profile 
Western-based individuals and organisations that are extremely vocal in 
their support of OA, and who have shown themselves to be very successful 
at attracting attention.

Since all movements have to promote themselves effectively this is 
clearly a good thing. However, it does mean that the contribution of the 
many “foot soldiers” of the movement can too easily be overlooked. These 
are people who do not shout about their activities, but simply go about 
the business of facilitating OA quietly and modestly.

And it is the foot soldiers based in the developing world that tend to 
be least visible — people like Francis Jayakanth, a library-trained 
scientific assistant based at the National Centre for Science 
Information (NCSI)<http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/>, the information 
centre of the Indian Institute of Science 
(IISc)<http://www.iisc.ernet.in/>in Bangalore.

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