[GOAL] National Workshop on Strengthening Open Access (OA) Initiatives in India | 23rd June | NBRC, Manesar, Gurgaon, India

[anup kumar das]

*DeLCON National Workshop on Strengthening Open Access (OA) Initiatives in
India *
Date: Friday, 23rd June 2017
Venue: NBRC Auditorium, National Brain Research Centre, Manesar, Gurgaon,
Haryana, India
[image: Inline image 1]
*Open Access (OA) *refers to online research outputs that are free of all
restrictions on access (e.g. access tolls) and free of many restrictions on
use (e.g. certain copyright and license restrictions). Open access can be
applied to all forms of published research output, including peer-reviewed
and non peer-reviewed academic journal articles, conference papers, theses,
book chapters and monographs. Open Access publications refer to the kind of
literature that are freely accessible to everyone and are not bound by
price and permission barriers, unlike the scientific literature published
via the subscription mode. Although the concept of Open Access publication
is not entirely new and has been around for several years, people have
begun to realize its importance only recently. The sudden change in
perceptions is largely due to the increased and easy internet usage as well
as support from government, educational and research institutions, and
other funding agencies. Hundreds of leading academic and research sites in
over 30 countries marked the week in unique ways, and expressed their
support for the advancement of knowledge through free, immediate, online
access to the results of scholarly research. Ever since, Open Access Week
has been observed internationally to help raise awareness of the potential
benefits of Open Access (OA) for research, and to celebrate milestones in
making OA a norm in the conduct of science and scholarship.

*The one-day workshop* will focus on the need to create an enabling
environment for OA in India, to promote and upscale existing OA
initiatives, and to encourage the development of new OA programmes. This
can be done by ‘closing the circle' or linking multiple stakeholder groups,
namely academicians, faculties, scientists, researchers, librarians,
archivists, technologists, and policymakers, taking into account their
concerns and views and providing a platform for them to advocate for a
common cause. The workshop will provide a unique opportunity to
academicians, librarians & stakeholders communities to pool their insights,
identify and discuss key OA-related issues in the country, and create a
roadmap for strengthening OA in India.

*Procedure for Registration*: The workshop is open to Working Professionals
such as Academicians, Faculties, Scientists Library Professionals,
Information Scientists. There is no registration fee. Registration is
limited to only 50 participants on “first-cum-first served basis”.
Registration can be sent by post to given address or by email attachment at
delconconsortium at gmail.com in the given prescribed format which is
available at DeLCON Website at https://delcon.gov.in For participation,
registration is mandatory on confirmation of the participation. An email
confirmation will be sent to Registered participants. Only registered
participants will be allowed to take part in the Workshop. All the
Registered participants will be provided a participation certificate,
Workshop Kit, Lunch and tea. No TA/DA will be paid to the Participants for
attending this workshop. No accommodation will be arranged for participants
by the organizers. However, we will help in arranging Guest House / Hotel
accommodation in nearby places. The last date for registration to the
Workshop is June 10th 2017.

*Postal Address & Contacts*: Dr. D.D. LAL, DeLCON Coordinator & Organizing
Secretary, DBT's Electronic Library Consortium (DeLCON), National Brain
Research Centre, NBRC, NH-08, Nainwal Mode, Manesar, Gurgaon, Haryana.
Pincode : 122050, India, Tel : 0124-2845229; 2845329; Fax : 0124-2338909,
Email : delconconsortium at gmail.com

*1. The Importance of OA in India: *
Open Access has emerged during the last decade or so as a movement and a
business model whose goal is to provide free access and re-use of
scientific knowledge in the form of research articles, monographs, data and
related materials. Faster and wider sharing of knowledge fuels the
advancement of science and, accordingly, the return of health, economic,
and social benefits back to the public. By removing the barriers of price
and permissions, OA publishing promotes the global flow of knowledge;
improves access to ‘developed-country research'; creates much-needed
visibility for ‘developing-country research'; and allows researchers and
practitioners to access current knowledge. The idea of open access to
scholarly literature is not new to India. India has a large S&T research
community and Indian researchers conduct research in a wide variety of
areas. India also trains a very large number of scientists and engineers.
One might believe that all is well with science and technology in India.
But the truth is very different. In terms of the number of papers published
in refereed journals, the number of citations per paper, and the number of
international awards and recognitions won, India's record is not all that
encouraging. India has a vast pool of academic talent and a track record of
excellence in disciplines related to science and technology, but this is at
odds with the limited endowments that academic libraries receive to support
scientific research. Most Indian libraries cannot afford to subscribe to
key journals required by researchers and scientists. This is a serious
impediment to the acquisition of knowledge, and researchers' own scholarly
output is adversely impacted as a result. Another outcome of prohibitive
subscription costs is the low visibility of Indian research. Academics in
the region exert themselves to publish their work in well-known journals
which very few of their peers can access afterwards. This leads to the poor
citation of works by Indian researchers, the poor circulation of their
research findings, and ultimately very limited awareness about scientific
developments in the country. Thus, Indian scientists face two problems,
namely, access and visibility. Both these handicaps can be overcome to a
considerable extent if open access is adopted widely both within and
outside the country.

*2. OA Initiatives in India: *
The lack of awareness might still be an issue for Indian researchers, but
there have been various nitiatives by Indian institutes, journals and
publishers to make research content open. Since 2003, India has been
contributing to The Directory of Open Access Journals (which contains free,
full-text highquality scientific journals).The Indian Medlars Centre (IMC),
has taken the pioneering step of putting Indian biomedical journals
accessible on to a single platform. IMC's first bibliographic database
IndMed, established in 1998, provides abstract level information from more
than 70 journals. The Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National
Science Academy are premier institutes that run vibrant publishing
programmes and offer open access to their journals and papers. Bioline
International is a notfor-profit collaborative effort of the University of
Toronto Libraries, Canada, the Reference Center on Environmental
Information, Brazil, and Bioline, UK. Bioline provides access to 14 Indian
journals on their primary site as well as archives these journals at the
Bioline EPrints Archive. ePrints at IISC is a repository that collects,
preserves and disseminates in digital format the works of the research
community of the prestigious Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Open
J-Gate – a free database of OA journals – currently offers access to more
than 4000 OA English language journals from across the world. The work of
Medknow Publications, an innovative publisher of OA journals, and that of
the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela are also leading Indian
contributions to the OA movement. It is important that these initiatives
should not operate in isolation, but should form part of a concerted effort
and campaign at a national level to promote OA in India.
In 2012–13, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) launched a
major OA initiative. ICAR has formulated an OA policy stipulating that its
member institutes across the country must allow open access to their
research and technical publications, books, catalogues, workshop
proceedings, case studies, lecture notes and other digital objects. While
these institutes will maintain their own OA repositories, ICAR is setting
up a central harvester to allow ‘one-stop access' to all the scientific and
agricultural knowledge generated within the Council.
Master repositories such as ICAR's, composed of a network of repositories,
greatly enhance accessibility, help realize the potential of OA, and
strengthen the very purpose of the OA movement in India. But while
developing policies and networks at the institutional level is necessary,
it is critical to entrench the idea of OA at the level of national policy.
A national mandate and policy framework for OA would ensure that OA
initiatives cease to operate in isolated clusters, and become part of a
coherent, progressive national movement to promote the flow of knowledge.

*3. DBT/DST Open Access Policy*
The Department of Biotechnology (“DBT”) and the Department of Science and
Technology (“DST”) are constituent departments within the Ministry of
Science and Technology, Government of India. An important function of the
DBT and DST is to support basic, translational and applied scientific
research through the creation of suitable infrastructure, by providing
funding to individual scientists, institutions and start-ups, and through
any other means deemed necessary. Since all funds disbursed by the DBT and
DST are public funds, it is important that the information and knowledge
generated through the use of these funds are made publicly available as
soon as possible, subject to Indian law and IP policies of respective
funding agencies and institutions where the research is performed. The DBT
and DST recognize the right of researchers to publish their work in
journals of their choice, because researchers are the best judges of where
to publish their work. The DBT and DST expect that the recipients of
funding will publish their research in high quality, peer-reviewed
journals. The DBT and DST affirms the principle that the intrinsic merit of
the work, and not the title of the journal in which an author's work is
published, should be considered in making future funding decisions. The DBT
and DST do not recommend the use of journal impact factors either as a
surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess
an individual scientist's contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or
funding decisions. The DBT and DST believe that maximizing the distribution
of these publications by providing free online access by depositing them in
an institutional repository is the most effective way of ensuring that the
research it funds can be accessed, read and built upon. The digital context
of the production and dissemination of knowledge makes it especially easy
to make all knowledge publicly available. Further, free, open and digital
access of scientific research will ensure percolation of cutting edge
research at a rapid pace into higher education curricula, thereby raising
the standard of technical and scientific education in the country. This in
turn, will foster a richer research culture.

*4. OA in India vis-à-vis Global Trends: *
Open Access is of particular importance to the Global South because it
provides an unprecedented opportunity for equitable access to essential
research information from around the world. So while removing the price
barrier is important, the key to Open Access is that it allows researchers
and the institutions they work for to regain control of their intellectual
labour and capital by disseminating the research they produce in ways that
they see fit, and not simply according to the business logic of for-profit
publishing houses. This will hopefully result in a more balanced production
and dissemination of knowledge from around the world. With free software
such as the Open Journal System, and with peer-review being performed
without cost as a long-standing tradition, the cost of producing journals
is far lower than commercial publishers would have us believe. The
Directory of Open Access Journals now list over 8,500 titles from around
the world; most do not charge an author fee. These Open Access outlets
provide important opportunities for knowledge dissemination while reducing
costs substantially for the libraries. Most universities in North America
and Europe have set up repositories individually or as consortia, and an
increasing number of higher education institutions in the Global South have
also set them up to feature their faculty's research output. In addition,
many universities have also set up publishing platforms such as the Open
Journal Systems and other kinds of open source platforms to allow faculty
to engage in Open Access publishing and other kinds of innovative digital
scholarship. However, many repositories remain poorly filled because
researchers are often not aware of Open Access, or they have misconceptions
about it and copyright, or about quality issues associated with it, not
realizing that Open Access is compatible with traditional peer review and
copyright. Hence more awareness-building efforts are needed to educate
researchers about the benefits of Open Access, and the limitations and
unsustainability of the traditional system. In addition, a policy should be
put in place to encourage researchers to deposit their research articles
and materials into the repositories. Many institutions now enact either a
voluntary or a mandatory policy requiring their faculty to deposit a copy
of their work into the repository. It is also crucial for administrators to
be better informed about the detrimental nature of adhering to the narrow
use of the journal impact factor as a means of research evaluation. In
2013, the Obama administration declared that all publicly funded research
would be made freely available within 12 months of publication. Research
councils in the UK have recently begun to make public-funded research open
to all. The European Commission is expected to do the same from January
2014. The applicability of these approaches to the Indian context, and
their potential benefits, must be seriously considered by stakeholders in
the country. In India, Open Access is now a key topic of discussions and
engagement at many higher education institutions (including universities
and deemed universities) as well as high-level research organisations, such
as the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Department of
Atomic Energy, the Indian Space Research Organisation, the Defence Research
and Development Organisation, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research
and the Indian Council of Medical Research. The tireless advocacy work of
Subbiah Arunachalam [Chennai-based information consultant] has been
instrumental in sensitising these key institutions in the Open Access
debates. However, a strong national or institutional policy on Open Access
is yet to be implemented. At the same time, some key institutions such as
the Indian Academy of Sciences have been playing a leadership role in
providing Open Access to the journals they publish, and the Indian
Institute of Science has one of the longest running institutional
repositories with the most content in the country. There are now over 350
Open Access journals being published by various organizations across India,
but they cover mostly areas in science and medicine. Social sciences and
the humanities are poorly represented. Of the close to 600 higher education
institutions across India, fewer than 100 have an existing institutional
repository, though many are in the planning stage.

*5. Scope of the proposed National Workshop:*
The DeLCON Consortium & NBRC are organizing a one day DeLCON National
Workshop-2017 on Friday, 23rd June 2017 at NBRC Manesar during Open Access
Programme. The tentative title of the Workshop is ‘Strengthening Open
Access Initiatives in India', and it will be held at NBRC, Manesar. The
title connotes the need for concerted efforts to create a more enabling
environment for OA in the country, to promote and upscale existing OA
initiatives, and to encourage the development and launch of new OA
programmes which will lead to establishment of a national OA policy. This
can be also done by the DBT Institutions through linking multiple
stakeholder groups and taking into account their concerns and views –
namely researchers, librarians, archivists, publishers, technologists, and
policymakers – and providing a platform for them to advocate for a common
cause. The Workshop will provide a unique opportunity to stakeholders to
pool their insights, identify and discuss key OA-related issues in the
country as well as their own Institution, and create a roadmap for
strengthening OA in India.

*6. Structure of the Workshop:* Beginning with a keynote address by a
leading expert on open access to scientific research, the national workshop
will be structured into two Technical Session.

*7. Objectives of the Workshop:* The objectives of the DeLCON National
Workshop are to:

   - Build awareness among the stakeholder groups and library & academic
   communities about the importance of OA to scientific research
   - Enable the exchange of knowledge, experiences and best practices of
   various organizations in the OA space
   - Contribute towards the creation of a promotional group that will
   promote OA at National levels of Organizations
   - Evaluate current trends and pitfalls towards the OA landscape in India
   - Progress policy recommendations for the creation of a national mandate
   to promote OA
   - Encourage collaborations, co-ordinations and partnerships among
   interested groups

*8. Expected Outcomes: *As a result of the National Workshop, it is
expected that :

   - OA stakeholder groups such as participating Academician members,
   Scientists, Faculties, Information Scientists, Nodal officers, working
   Library communities will appreciate the significance of OA, and will have
   understood the key trends, issues and challenges pertaining to the
   development of OA in India;
   - The innovative character and successful operation of leading OA
   initiatives in India will have been highlighted;
   - The collective efforts and actions behind the OA movement will be
   understood, and will inspire the next generation of academicians and
   librarians to become advocates of OA
   - Participating stakeholders will engage in a dialogue about possible
   partnerships and collaborative ventures
   - A set of recommendations will be developed for the creation of (a) a
   national OA mandate and policy framework, and (b) a general template for
   institutional OA policies, repositories and archives.

*9. Target Group*: The national workshop will be attended by Working
Professionals / Academicians, Library Communities, faculties, scientists,
DeLCON Members, Library Professionals, Information Scientists.

*DeLCON Consortium*
About DeLCON: The ‘DBT's Electronic Library Consortium (DeLCON)' is major
project of the ‘Department of Biotechnology (DBT)' to bring qualitative
change in their research Institutions. It was launched in January, 2009
with the 10 DBT member Institutions (including DBT H.Q. & ICGEB) with a
large number of high impact online journals. It is a national initiative
for providing access to scholarly electronic resources including full-text
and bibliographic databases in all the life science subject disciplines to
DBT Institutional community. It facilitates access to high quality
e-resources to DBT research Institutions in the country to improve
teaching, learning and research. The access to all major e-resources was
given to 10 DBT Institutions in the beginning of the year 2009. It has now
been extended to new 17 more DBT Institutions in 2nd phase of extension in
this year 2010 and further 07 members added in the 3rd phase of extension
in the Year 2011. The ‘DeLCON Consortium' provides current as well as
archival access to more than 1171 core and peer-reviewed journals in
different disciplines from 21 foreign publishers. The faculties,
scientists, research scholars, students and project assistants of
Institutions covered under DeLCON are the primary beneficiaries.

   - *About NBRC*: National Brain Research Centre is the only institute in
   India dedicated to neuroscience research and education. Scientists and
   students of NBRC come from diverse academic backgrounds, including
   biological, computational, mathematical, physical, engineering and medical
   sciences, and use multidisciplinary approaches to understand the brain.
   Located in the foothills of the Aravali range in Manesar, Haryana, NBRC is
   an autonomous institute funded by the Department of Biotechnology,
   Government of India, and is also a Deemed University established in the
   year 1999.
   - *About ICGEB*: The International Centre for Genetic Engineering and
   Biotechnology provides a scientific and educational environment of the
   highest standard and conducts innovative research in life sciences for the
   benefit of developing countries. It strengthens the research capability of
   its Members through training and funding programmes and advisory services
   and represents a comprehensive approach to promoting biotechnology
   internationally. The ICGEB extension laboratory, covering an area of over
   3,720 square metres, has been created to decongest the workspace in the
   existing building. All of the Groups working on malaria, tuberculosis and
   bioinformatics have shifted to the new wing. The new Group, Synthetic
   Biology and Biofuel, is also placed here. ICGEB New Delhi component is
   located within the ICGEB Campus in South Delhi, which comprises an area of
   10,000 square meters. It is situated alongside the Jawaharlal Nehru
   University and the Sanjay Van in a bush forest area and was established in
   the year 1994.
   - *About NII*: The National Institute of Immunology (NII) is an
   autonomous institution supported by the Department of Biotechnology,
   Government of India. The Institute is committed to advanced research
   addressing the basic mechanisms involved in body's defence, host-pathogen
   interactions and related areas with a view to contribute to the creation of
   an internationally competitive intellectual knowledge base as a sustainable
   source of innovative futuristic modalities of potential use in health care.
   The mandate “to undertake, aid, promote, guide and coordinate research of
   high caliber in basic and applied immunology”. Keenly conscious of it's
   role in helping create a scientific base for innovations relevant to
   development in India, the following research programs coalesced into four
   thrust areas: Immunity and Infection, Gene Regulation, Molecular Design,
   and Reproduction and Development. The Institute imparts long term research
   training leading to a PhD degree of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New
   Delhi and was established in the year 1981.
   - *About NIPGR*: NIPGR (formerly known as NCPGR) was established in 1998
   with mandate to undertake, promote and co-ordinate research, train workers
   and to serve as information resource in identified aspects of plant genome
   to build a frontline plant genomics institution. The research programme
   aims to contribute to the understanding of the structure, expression and
   function of genes along with arrangement of genes on plant genomes and
   manipulation of plant genes/ genomes to breed improved varieties of food
   and industrial crops for high yields and of better quality products. NIPGR
   was established to contribute in the achievement of such hopes as a part of
   national effort for meeting the challenges in the midst of fast pace of
   international genomic research and grasping of opportunities on long-term
   basis.

*Registration*: There is no registration fees for attending the workshop.
However, only 50 seats are available. Registration shall be done on
first-cum-first served basis. Registration will be closed after
confirmation to 50 participants.

*Presentations*: Workshop will have only invited lectures & conducted
presentations by the Eminent Speakers & Experts.

*For any query please contact*: Dr. D.D. LAL, (Organizing Secretary): Email
: delconconsortium at gmail.com; Tel.: +91-124-2845329.

*Further Details
<http://delcon.gov.in/Brochure_DeLCON_National_Workshop_2017.pdf>*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20170531/762f425d/attachment-0001.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 34804 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20170531/762f425d/attachment-0001.png