[GOAL] Shodhganaga is Truly Open Access???

[Éric Archambault]

Sridhar

This is one of the largest misunderstanding of OA. When the open access movement started more than one century ago in libraries, it meant patrons were free to access some of the library material directly. Librarians never meant to say that patrons could actually walk away with books – they were actually quite concerned with theft. The ownership stayed firmly in the realm of the library. Today, we are experiencing the same everywhere – open access means people can get access directly, and we also understand this to mean without paying. It doesn’t mean rights have disappeared. Publishers, not-for-profits, and universities are placing plenty of barriers to the free movement of knowledge by keeping rights of their own.

It is easy to understand this for most of them as they require some resources that cost money to build-up and maintain stocks and infrastructures. For example, if everything JSTOR offers was made available for free, how could JSTOR continue to operate? No one would want to pay for the service if it was replicated in dozens of places absolutely for free. Organizations, whether private or public have a “will” to live and this means they protect what they own to insure the continued revenues/income for people on the staff. In the Manichean world we live in, we often feel companies and public entities are opposite in behaviour, one really bad, the other one virtuous, and we explain this by profit taking. The will to survive is present in both and creates both generous and not so glorious behaviour, on all types of organizations. Likewise, we cannot fully understand the open access to publications and the open data movements if we don’t consider the motivations of individuals in the organization. Open data is progressing much more slowly than open access to publication in large part because of the complexity of making data openly data largely accessible, but also because opening data means a loss of competitive advantages by individual researchers and many of them are just not interested seeing their competitors used their data against them. Easier to tell others to get rid of what make them live a plush life than doing it oneself.

Open access is usually largely meant to mean gratis open access rather than libre open access. In a civilized society, we should all work to make libre open access a reality but we all have to be lucid and reflective if we are to succeed in putting in place what it takes. Being naïve and idealistic is not the way to go. To achieve more libre open access, we the public have to use a gentle mix of carrots and nasty sticks, wear velvet gloves and raise firm fists, show generosity but also great cunning, that is, we the public and our public policies have to act as individuals and organizations do to subsist and evolve.

Éric


Eric Archambault, Ph.D.
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Science-Metrix & 1science
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From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of gutam2000 at hotmail.com
Sent: June 4, 2016 12:31 PM
To: goal at eprints.org
Subject: [GOAL] Shodhganaga is Truly Open Access???


Dear All

I know it's a basic question and might have been discussed and answered earlier.

But I want to raise it again. As I am still confused and could not get the right and convincing answer.

It's about Shoshana http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/, the largest ETD repository of India.

The description of the site says it's "Open Access". By Open Access what it means? It's truly Open Access?? Libre Open Access?? The Peter Suber's definition says "free of most of Copyright restrictions"

But the Shodhganaga website at the bottom it's written as "All Rights Reserved". What we should understand??

Does any website if it says it's Open Access, should it use any of the CC license?? And should not use All Rights Reserved???

The UGC had adopted a policy only for ETDs. It's enough? Or should we impress them to adopt Open Access Policy in which it asks all the recognized Universities to adopt Open Access Policy and establish University Open Access Repositories??

Thank you

Sridhar

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