Centre for Internet and Society

Use of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers

praskrishna — 2013-06-04T04:32:11Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/use-of-open-access-journals-by-indian-researchers

Internet Institute Agenda

praskrishna — 2013-06-03T05:42:17Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/agenda-internet-institute.pdf

May 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-08-13T11:51:46Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the fifth issue of its newsletter for 2013. We bring you an overview of our research, report of events held by us and announcement of upcoming ones, events we participated in, and recent media coverage.

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS
CIS is now 5 years old and we just celebrated this by holding an open exhibition in our offices in Bangalore and Delhi from May 20 to 23, showcasing our work and accomplishments over the period. We had about 170 visitors from the general public coming in to our office. Renowned artists like Tara Kelton, Kiran Subbaiah, Navin Thomas, Abhishek Hazra and Sharath Chandra Ram exhibited their work. The four day event attracted press coverage: Bangalore Mirror (May 18, 2013), DNA (May 19, 2013), Hindu (May 22, 2013), Prajavani (May 23, 2013), Udayavani (May 25, 2013) and Bangalore Mirror (May 31, 2013). Download all posters that were part of the exhibition here.

Google Policy Fellowship
CIS is inviting applications for the Google Policy Fellowship programme. Google is providing a USD 7,500 stipend to the India fellow who will be selected by July 1, 2013. The Fellowship focus areas include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom. Send in your applications for the position by June 15, 2013.

Jobs
CIS invites applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project), and Programme Officer (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org.

Accessibility

CIS is doing two projects in partnership with the Hans Foundation. One is to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India and another for developing a screen reader and text-to- speech synthesizer for Indian languages. CIS is also working with the World Blind Union and other similar organisations to develop a Treaty for the Visually Impaired helped by the WIPO:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities
Anandhi Viswanathan from CIS and Manojna Yeluri from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are working in this project. Draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the chapters on Sikkim and Odisha:

The Sikkim Chapter (by Manojna Yeluri, May 30, 2013).
The Odisha Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, May 31, 2013).

Note: All of these are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated.

Banking Accessibility

Survey on Banking Accessibility (by Vrinda Maheshwari, May 30, 2013). G3ict is a survey on accessibility of financial services in banks for persons with disabilities around the world. The survey is available here.

Event Organised

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (May 9, 2013, TERI, Southern Regional Centre, Domlur, Bangalore).

Access to Knowledge and Openness

The Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop the growth of Indic language communities and projects by community collaborations and partnerships. This is being carried out by the Access to Knowledge team based in Delhi. CIS is also doing a project (Pervasive Technologies) on examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. CIS also promotes openness including open government data, open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software through its Openness programme.

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)
Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Subhashish Panigrahi and one team member Nitika Tandon who is working from Delhi office. Noopur Raval, Programme Officer has left the organisation. April 24, 2013 was her last working day.

Announcements

Access to Knowledge Work Plan (April 2013 - June 2014): CIS has announced its detailed plan detailed plan with projection of outcomes and expected impact of the A2K programme activities. The document has been made in consultation with various stakeholders and keeping in mind the objectives, opportunities and challenges faced by each of the Indian language Wikimedia projects. Feel free to share any feedback.
WMF-A2K Revised Budget (draft) and Utilization (Sept 2012 - Feb 2013): In our effort to increase transparency with the working of CIS-A2K programme, we are sharing with you the A2K Programme Budget along with the Utilization for the period Sept. 2012 to February 2013. The proposed revisions to the budget along with some notes are here.
WMF-A2K Grant Budget and Utilization (Sept 2012 – February 2013): CIS has given an open disclosure of the Access to Knowledge budget to Wikimedia India and the global community.
CIS Signs MOU with TISS, Mumbai: has signed a MoU with TISS as part of which we will collaboratively work towards building Digital Knowledge Partnerships with select higher education institutions.
India Access to Knowledge IRC can be accessed here: May 13, 2013 (All Language Discussion) and May 26, 2013 (Odia Language Discussion).

Blog Entries

Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment (by Subhashish Panigrahi, May 11, 2013).
Access to Knowledge Work Plan: Synopsis of Feedback by Wikipedians (by Nitika Tandon, May 20, 2013).
Wikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants (by Subhashish Panigrahi, May 30, 2013).

Event Organised

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (April 29, 2013, Govinda Pai Research Centre, MGM College Udupi). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja led the workshop and gave a talk on Kannada Wikipedia

Event Participated In

Kannada IRC Meet (organised by the Wikipedia Community, May 7, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in this.

Upcoming Event

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education (co-organised in collaboration with HEIRA-CSCS, Tumkur University, CILHE-TISS and CCS (IISc), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, July 13, 2013).

Press Coverage

CIS Celebrates 5 Years: A Report in Prajavani (Prajavani, May 23, 2013). Prajavani published a report of Dr. U.B. Pavanja’s talk “From Palm Leaf to Tablet – Journey of Kannada”.
CIS Celebrates 5 Years: A Report in Udayavani (Udayavani, May 25, 2013). Udayavani published a report of the evening programme hosted as part of the Centre for Internet and Society's 5 year celebrations in its Bangalore edition.

Access to Knowledge (Previously IP Reforms)
Blog Entry

On the Unfortunate Rise of the Indian SLAPP Suit (by Ujwala Uppaluri, May 27, 2013).

Openness
Research Papers

Use of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers (by Subbiah Gunasekharan and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, May 27, 2013).
Use made of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers to Publish their Findings (by Madhan Muthu and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, May 28, 2013).

Comments

Draft ICAR Open Access Policy (by Nehaa Chaudhari, May 28, 2013). The comments were submitted to the Indian Council for Agricultural Research.

Event Hosted

RHoK Global Event (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, June 1 – 2, 2013). A report of the event would be published soon.

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes. We began two new projects earlier this year. The first one, with Privacy International, London to facilitate research and events around surveillance, and freedom of speech and expression and the second one with Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto on mapping of cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia:

Cyber Stewards Project
Laird Brown, a strategic planner and writer with core competencies on brand analysis, public relations and resource management and Purba Sarkar who in the past worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail are working in this project.

Video Interview

An Interview with Christopher Soghoian (May 28, 2013).

Upcoming Event

The Geopolitics of Information Controls: A Presentation by Masashi Crete-Nishihata (TERI, Bangalore, June 19, 2013).

Privacy

Comparative Analysis of DNA Profiling Legislations from Across the World (by Srinivas Atreya, May 23, 2013).

Events Co-organised

3rd Privacy Round Table meeting (co-organised with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Data Security Council of India, Chennai, May 18, 2013). Maria Xynou participated in this event and gives an overview of the discussions and recommendations.
Consilience – 2013 (co-organised with the Law and Technology Committee of National Law School of India University, Bangalore, May 25, 2013).

Events Participated In

ICT, Law and Innovation: Recent Developments, Challenges and Lessons Learned (organised by Bilgi University, Istanbul, May 2013). Chinmayi Arun was a speaker on the Internet Governance panel at Towards a Global Network of Internet and Society Centres.
India’s Politics of Free Expression (co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Centre, Free Speech Debate, the Oxford India Society and Ideas for India Oxbridge Exchange, May 31, 2013 at Nissan Lecture Theatre, St. Antony’s College, Oxford). Chinmayi Arun was a speaker at the Bapsybanoo Marchioness of Winchester Lectures on 'India's Politics of Free Expression'.

Upcoming Event

Privacy Round Table, Mumbai (Mayfair Banquets, Mumbai, June 15, 2013).

Blog Entry

The Surveillance Industry in India: At Least 76 Companies Aiding Our Watchers! (by Maria Xynou, May 2, 2013).

Media Coverage

Sex on-the-go (by Anand Holla, Mumbai Mirror, May 4, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
CIS anniversary (Hindu Business Line, May 5, 2013).
Central Monitoring System to make government privy to phone calls, text messages and social media conversations (by Indu Nandakumar, May 7, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Messaging apps find another foe in India’s market regulator (Quartz, May 8, 2013). Elonnai Hickok is quoted.
India's Rs 400-crore Central Monitoring System to snoop on all communication (Tech 2, May 9, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Is India's government becoming Big Brother? (by Talia Ralph and Jason Overdorf, May 9, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Worldwide Playground (Telegraph, May 15, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
NGO invites public to peruse its accounts (by Vandana Kamath, May 18, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Online privacy should not come at the cost of security: Sunil Abraham (by Anirban Sen, May 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
A lifetime of five years on the internet (by Subir Ghosh, DNA, May 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
CIS highlights changes ushered in by the Internet (Hindu, May 22, 2013).
Burma to host first Internet freedom forum (by Chan Myae Khine, Asian Correspondent, May 22, 2013).
INET Bangkok to Explore Internet’s Impact on Thailand’s Economy and Society (BusinessWire, May 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is participating in this conference.
Shooting cyber cafes before they die (by Bangalore Mirror, May 31, 2013). CIS’s film on Cyber Cafes is mentioned in this article.

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access
CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project on Internet Access. It covers the history of the internet, technologies involved, principle and values of internet access, broadband market and universal access and will touch upon various polices and regulations which has an impact on internet access and bodies and mechanism which are responsible for formulation policies related to internet access. The blog posts and modules will be published in a new website: www.internet-institute.in.

Ongoing Event

Institute on Internet and Society (supported by Ford Foundation, Golden Palms Resort, Bangalore, June 8 – 14, 2013). The agenda for the event has been finalised.

The following unit was published recently:

Network Connections and Modes of Access (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, May 30, 2013).

Telecom

CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility of telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Newspaper Column

Configuring a 'Non-Toothless' Regulator (TRAI) (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, May 9, 2013 and Organizing India Blogspot, May 10, 2013).

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.
Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at http://cis-india.org

Support Us
Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

Request for Collaboration
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2013-bulletin

Online privacy should not come at the cost of security: Sunil Abraham

praskrishna — 2014-11-02T02:27:12Z

Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet and Society’s executive director, on privacy laws and Internet penetration.

Anirban Sen's article was published in LiveMint on May 19, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a research thinktank that primarily focuses on issues of Internet governance, is pushing to revise the provisions of the Information Technology (IT) Act and make a stronger case for privacy laws and free speech in India, an issue that has caused widespread concern after the government tried to restrict access to more than a 100 websites last year with little justification.

“We want to revise the IT Act...that’s the toughest one and that’s not going to happen very soon because the government is treating it like an ego battle now. They no longer listen to the others,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of CIS.

The IT Act has been at the centre of debate, with some of its provisions such as Section 66A, which criminalizes “causing annoyance or inconvenience” online or electronically, coming under criticism from rights advocates for being too vague and subject to interpretation.

CIS, which will complete five years on Monday and is organizing a four-day event focusing on issues such as cyber security, surveillance in India and privacy, said it also was working towards creating a privacy law for India within the next 3-4 years. India, which is estimated to have Internet penetration of just 10%, is the third-largest Internet market in the world.

“We’re getting closer and closer to that (privacy law),” said Abraham, adding that privacy should not come at the cost of security.

Over the past five years, Bangalore-based CIS has also been part of some government committees such as the Justice AP Shah Committee, which focused on privacy laws in India, and is also currently working on the country’s telecom policy. The non-government organization, which receives grants from international bodies such as the Wikimedia Foundation, has also worked on policies for the government of Iraq and is currently also doing policy work for the government of Burma.

“Five years ago we were making noise from outside the room, we were not inside any policy making space. That has also changed. From an organization that was mostly outside the room, we’re increasingly being trusted by our own government,” said Abraham, who was one of the most vocal critics of the government’s unique identification (UID) project when it was first launched. Abraham had raised concerns over its overtly broad scope and issues over privacy in the project.

For CIS, one of the biggest achievements over the past five years was being part of the policy framework for the government of India’s draft national policy on open standards for e-governance, said Abraham, adding that the organization was working towards increasing Internet penetration in the country, especially in rural areas.

“We’re hoping that every single mobile phone user in the country will become an Internet user. We’re planning for that future,” he said.

The CIS event starting on Monday will include speakers such as legal researcher and advocate Lawrence Liang and Vibodh Parthasarathi, an associate professor at the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance at the Jamia Millia Islamia university. Both Liang and Parthasarathi are members of the board at CIS.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-anirban-sen-may-19-2013-online-privacy-should-not-come-at-the-cost-of-security

CIS Signs MOU with TISS, Mumbai

praskrishna — 2013-07-04T04:15:54Z

The Access to Knowledge (A2K) team from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has signed a MOU with the Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS), Mumbai.

Institutional partnerships (especially in the higher education context) is a cross-cutting activity across A2K's various language plans and also the pilot project. A2K Team is happy to share with you an important outcome on this front.

CIS-A2K has signed a MoU with TISS as part of which we will collaboratively work towards building Digital Knowledge Partnerships with select higher education institutions. The objective is to enhance digital literacy in the Indian languages and facilitate collaborative knowledge production and free dissemination. A2K along with TISS will co-design and jointly implement relevant training programmes to achieve this. Further, within TISS campuses we will endeavour to bring teaching-learning processes onto free and open digital platforms, including Indian language Wikipedias. The A2K team would like to acknowledge the pivotal role played by our Adviser Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana in buildig this collaboration.

We'll keep you posted as and when new developments shape up and would like to actively involve Mumbai Wikipedians in planning, designing and rolling out Wikipedia training programmes.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-tiss-mou

Access To Knowledge Work Plan (April 2013 - June 2014)

T Vishnu Vardhan — 2013-06-10T14:20:06Z

This page is created to share CIS-A2K's Annual Work Plan (2013-2014) for Indian language Wikimedia projects. The main objective of this document is to present a detailed plan with projection of outcomes and expected impact of the A2K programme activities. The document has been made in consultation with various stakeholders and keeping in mind the objectives, opportunities and challenges faced by each of the Indian language Wikimedia projects. Feel free to share any feedback.

Language Area Work Plans

Telegu

Odia

Kannada

GOM (Konkani)

Bengali

Overall Support Across Indian Language Communities

Pilot Project - Performing Arts in India

Learning and Evaluation

Introductory note

Context

The Wikimedia Foundation has approved a grant of ₹26,000,000 to the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore to expand their Access to Knowledge (A2K) program in India; of this, ₹11,000,000 has been released. The purpose of the grant is to enable the A2K team to work with the Wikimedia community of volunteers in India to expand on Wikimedia’s Indic-language free-knowledge projects. In addition, the grant aims to generate improvements in India-relevant free knowledge in Wikimedia’s English projects, and the wider distribution of Wikimedia’s free knowledge within India.

Objective

The main objective of this document is to present a detailed Annual Work Plan for 2013–14, setting out the expected outcomes and impact of the A2K program activities. The overall objectives of the A2K Team are here.

Methodology

In putting together this Work Plan the A2K team has, over the last two months extensively engaged with various stakeholders. These include a) some Wikimedia India Community members across various Indian-language Wikimedia projects; b) some English-language Wikimedia community members from India; c) Wikimedia India chapter executive committee; d) some potential institutional partners; e) a few like-minded advocates of free knowledge; f) A2K Program Adviser Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana; and g) a few of the Wikimedia Foundation staff.

A draft of each of the language plan will be shared with the particular language community through respective language Wikipedia village pumps, mailing lists; feedback will be collected in finalizing the plan.

A2K’s method of work

A2K principally sees itself as working hand-in-hand with the Indian Wikimedia community and the Wikimedia India chapter, and with all formal and informal groupings within the Wikimedia movement in India. A2K will mostly engage in catalytic kind of work; however, depending on the requirements of each language-area, the A2K team may also undertake the hands-on implementation of some activities that would otherwise be done by the community. The planned A2K program activities are mostly in the south and south-east of India, and it makes better programmatic sense to have the A2K team located in Bangalore. This will not only save the A2K program from relatively larger overhead spending for the project (which could be productively used for programmatic work) but will enable the A2K team to be more in touch with the Wikimedia India community and in proactively undertaking collaborative activities with the community on the ground. Thus the entire A2K team will relocate to Bangalore and work out of the existing CIS office. Please kindly note that the A2K team will hire a new space in Bangalore, once the work plan is finalized, and the intention is that this space will be open to free use by the WM India community and chapter alike.

How to read this Annual Work Plan

This plan is not set in stone and will be periodically (right now quarterly) reviewed and revised. The intention of this Work Plan is to continually ensure better design and better engagement. The broader aspects of the plan have been outlined here. Thus this document is more towards evolving a sense of granularity of the A2K team’s work along with micro level outcome and impact metrics.

We have worked towards developing an Annual Work Plan that is language-specific. The A2K team has not adopted ONE single model, because we believe that each language area has a) specific strengths that we need to build on; b) particular needs for support that we could offer; and c) specific challenges that require localized solutions. Thus there are chances that you might see repetitions in the strategies mentioned across language areas.

Please note that the A2K team has some language area plans worked out in greater detail than others. This is mainly because we intend to prioritize working on five language areas during the coming year. This does not mean that we will not support other language areas/communities, but our engagement will be activity/project-specific, based on requests made to the A2K team by the community. The A2K team will continue its efforts in actively exploring to include a few more language areas, and will share such plans after they reach a certain stage.

Risk and mitigation

The message that comes across, after a cursory glance at Indian-language Wikipedias, is that there is a huge potential to increase the number of editors, especially active editors, along with the expansion of article entries. On one hand, unfortunately there is no fool-proof formula or plan that either the Wikimedia India community, Wikimedia India chapter or A2K can immediately bank on. This does not mean, on the other hand, that there are no ideas, experiences, learnings and failures, that can inform a strategy. An important point is that what we (the community, WMI chapter, WMF and A2K) all are attempting to do is to achieve something that sounds very simple (increase the number of editors, increase the articles, and build article quality) but yet complex to achieve. In addition to this, improving the Indian-language Wikipedias becomes even more complex for some the following reasons:

Lack of reference material available online in Indian languages.
Typing in Indian languages is a major challenge.
Relative dearth of quality content available in digital format.
Relative lack of research/academic standards, which is transferred on to Indian language Wikipedias.
Various technical issues like input, browser compatibility, font display, which deter new users.

Thus it should be noted that we should extend our work beyond Wikipedia, if we are to grow Indian-language Wikipedias. We need to think of a holistic intervention that would also involve enabling, facilitating and forming localized language-based virtual communities. That this has never been done before, and Indian language Wikipedias have a huge potential to do so.[1] This is also the significance of Indian-language Wikipedias, which are a potential (often the only) medium/platform for migrating Indian languages into the digital era. Also Wikipedia can be leveraged to further the much-needed active research culture in India and Indian culture. As a collective, we are doing something cutting edge and have too much of a risk of failure, time and again. This kind of work has failure fore-written. The only mitigation by which we can aim to be successful is by being open to learning, working as a collective, being supportive of each other, picking ourselves up whenever we fall down, and celebrating the little successes.

Language area work plans

As indicated above, the A2K team has prioritized the five languages and developed a detailed plan. We had initially set out to work with a different set of languages. The language set has slightly changed during the past two months.

Telugu
Odia
Kannada
(GOM) Konkani
Bengali

Some of the key factors that determined the selection of languages areas have included:

Networking of institutions and groups. The A2K team has put together a list of knowledge institutions, groups and individuals with whom it has some connections and believes that it can bring them into the Wikimedia movement. These collaborations will not only result in significant quality-content contributions, but will lead to the diversification and increase in that particular language Wikimedia community.
Willingness of that particular language community to interact and engage with the A2K team. Though we tried approaching other language communities, we were given to understand that they would like to consider engaging with us at a later point. We have respected the community's decision and are open to work with a couple of language areas later in time.
Work on one incubation project. During our interaction with Wikimedia India Chapter EC about the A2K plans, they have actively encouraged the A2K team to take up at least one project under incubation. Based on their suggestion we have taken up Konkani as we have some institutional contacts that could be leveraged to build the Konkani Wikipedia. The A2K team has also conducted some outreach work in Goa over the past 3–4 months that could be built on.
Familiarity of the A2K team members with the language. Each of us are editors/can edit in most of the above language Wikipedias. This will give us an insider's perspective of what is happening in that particular language community and the Wikimedia projects.

As mentioned earlier, A2K team's prioritization of working actively with these five language projects does not mean that A2K team will not support other language areas/communities. The A2K team will continue to provide overall support to all Wikipedia Communities in India. Our engagement will be activity/project-specific, based on the requests made to the A2K team by community members.

Overall A2K support to all Wikipedia communities in India

Besides the specific programs mentioned under individual language area plans, A2K team will provide overall support to all Indian-language Wikipedia communities. Please see this page for more details.

Pilot Project – Performing Arts in India

India has a wide range of performing arts. A lot of work is done on performing arts by various individuals and institutions, which offers rich knowledge about the aesthetics, artists, institutions, performance spaces/infrastructure, and policies, across various geographies and languages. This pilot is premised on a theme and seeks to create a multilingual repository of knowledge on Indian performing arts that is interdisciplinary, dynamic and ever evolving. Please go here to read more about the plan.

Learning and evaluation

Based on discussions with the Wikimedia India Chapter EC and with some members of the Community, the A2K team has arrived at some evaluation tools to assess the impact of its work. Please see this page for more details.

Giving feedback

We appreciate your valuable feedback. However, for the sake of structured engagement by everyone, we request you to consider the following before you share your feedback.

For feedback on the overall A2K Work Plan you can write here
For feedback on respective Language area plans, please write on the discussion page of the respective language plan.
- For Telugu plan here.
- For Odia plan here.
- For Kannada plan here.
- For Konkani plan here.
- For Bengali plan here.
For feedback on Pilot Project plan go here.
For feedback on Overall Support Across Indian language Communities you can write here.
Alternatively you could also share your feedback over e-mail at vishnucis-india.org. Please use the subject line Feedback on Work Plan.
Should you feel the need to discuss any aspect of the plan before sharing your feedback, please call +919845207308 from 08:00 to 21:00 hours IST (Indian Standard Time).

List of contributors

[1] Many of the challenges that we see vis-à-vis Indian-language Wikipedias are somewhat akin to the challenges print technology faced during the 19th century in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/resources/access-to-knowledge-work-plan

INET Bangkok to Explore Internet’s Impact on Thailand’s Economy and Society

praskrishna — 2013-06-06T06:18:34Z

The Internet Society, in collaboration with the Thailand Internet community, the National Science & Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), and the Ministry of Information & Communication Technology (MICT), will host the INET Bangkok, 7-8 June 2013. The conference will be held at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center, and will focus on the power of the Internet as a force for economic and social progress.

This post was published in BusinessWire on May 30, 2013. Sunil Abraham is participating in this conference.

INET Bangkok will bring together Thai Internet stakeholders to engage in an open discussion on the Internet agenda. This event will specifically showcase the creative power of the Internet, promote the importance of participating in the Internet governance process, and share capacity building efforts to expand Internet access.

The INET Bangkok agenda will feature four tracks covering key drivers of the Internet in Thailand: Technology, Innovation, Society, and the Future. Noted speakers at the event include H.E. Anudith Nakornthap, Minister of Information & Communication Technology (MICT); Dr. Thaweesak “Hugh” Koanantakool, President, National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA); Paul Wilson, Director General of Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC); Dr. Rohan Samarajiva, Founder of LIRNEasia; Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, The Centre for Internet and Society; and Dr. Sak Segkhoonthod, President & CEO, Electronic Government Agency (EGA).

“The Internet has become a remarkable engine for social development and economic growth,” said Rajnesh Singh, Internet Society Regional Bureau Director for Asia-Pacific. “The Internet Society works closely with our Chapters, members, and regional community organizations to ensure the Internet continues to evolve as a platform for innovation, collaboration, creativity, and economic and social development. INET Bangkok will bring together leading Internet experts to discuss critical Internet issues for Thailand and across the region.”

A highlight of the event will be VIP Gala Dinner on 6 June 2013, celebrating the 25^th anniversary of the .TH group, Thailand’s ccTLD. For more details and to register, visit http://www.internetsociety.org/inet-bangkok.

About the Internet Society
The Internet Society is the trusted independent source for Internet information and thought leadership from around the world. With its principled vision and substantial technological foundation, the Internet Society promotes open dialogue on Internet policy, technology, and future development among users, companies, governments, and other organizations. Working with its members and Chapters around the world, the Internet Society enables the continued evolution and growth of the Internet for everyone. For more information, visit www.internetsociety.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/businesswire-may-30-2013-inet-bangkok-to-explore-internet-impact-on-thailand-economy-and-society

Wikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants

subha — 2013-07-17T06:33:20Z

On May 13, 2013, the Access to Knowledge team led by Subhashish Panigrahi conducted a Wikipedia Introductory Session at the National Informatics Centre in New Delhi for the consultants working for Data and India portal. This session was aimed to emphasize how these portals and their useful data could be used on Wikipedia to create good quality articles.

Recently Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge team was invited to demonstrate the usefulness of Wikipedia for the consultants of National Informatics Centre (NIC) working for the Data.gov.in and the National Portal of India at NIC's New Delhi office. Data portal being one of the very important open data portal of the Government of India has worked immensely to populate over 2400 datasets from 32 departments participating in it.¹

Many of the data need to be transcribed in popular medias especially on web. Wikipedia being world's largest online encyclopedia could be one such primary platform to use these useful data. Subhashish from A2K team explained the usefulness of Wikipedia for the people associated with this project. The session went with discussing about policies, Manual of style and Five pillars of Wikipedia followed by a demonstration of editing articles on English Wikipedia. Post editing session there was a discussion session about the notability and how to check accuracy of articles by using valid references.

1 http://bit.ly/11DMH5w

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-introductory-session

How Technology Is and Isn't Helping Fight Corruption in India

praskrishna — 2013-06-05T06:43:43Z

I recently sat down with Sunil Abraham, the founder and executive director of the Center for Internet & Society (CIS) in Bangalore to talk about the center, and his views on the role of technology and openness in politics and society.

The blog post by David Eaves was published in Techpresident on May 28, 2013. Sunil Abraham was interviewed by the author.

Abraham, who founded the CIS in 2008, has been active in the open source and technology space for almost two decades, constantly balancing research and theory, with a strong desire to get his hands dirty and actually make things happen. Prior to starting CIS he held both a Sarai FLOSS fellowship and Ashoka fellowship in which he explored the democratic potential of the Internet. However, before this he worked as a social entrepreneur and free software advocate, founding Mahiti, a company that implemented free software solutions for volunteer organizations. The company continues to thrive today employing over 50 engineers.

Today the Center for Internet and Society serves as a non-profit think tank and advocacy organization that research and explores policy options on freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness. Over the past five years it has seen its influence grow as it becomes increasingly recognized for its expertise and critical view, within both government and the media, in India.

For part of the conversation I asked Abraham his thoughts on I Paid a Bribe, a website launched in August 2010 that allows users to report when and where they were asked to pay a bribe to a public official.

What follows is a fascinating critique of not just I Paid a Bribe but the UID (biometric ID program being rolled out across India):

Sunil Abraham:

The first complication with I Paid A Bribe is it is a quantitative approach to the problem.

Second, it assumes that those reporting the bribes are honest and don't have any other agendas.

Third, it also depends on the novelty effect. People can get bored when there is no feedback. The loop is not closed. To close the loop, some of the things that go on with anonymous reporting cannot happen, and to close the loop it almost needs to become a paralegal infrastructure. It has to talk to law enforcement and people have to be arrested, prosecuted and put away. To really address a problem like that is complex.

So it fails at each of those challenges.

The real challenge in India is high-ticket bribes that happen at the top of the pyramid. And those bribes are done in a very sophisticated fashion. Ordinarily minds cannot understand those transactions. Take the 2G spectrum scam. [the 2G spectrum scam was a significant scandal in India involving a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars in the licenses fees Indian telecom companies were supposed to pay the government for their 2G cellphone spectrum licenses. It is believed that officials were paid off so that lower license fees could be paid]. People still don't know what was the bribe and who paid who the bribe. Nobody knows! There are now 8 or 9 books on the scam and none of these books will tell you who did what. There are lots of charts about where money flowed but what component of that was the bribe and what component of that was legit … why none of these money trails link back to the primary accused … nobody can explain.

[And the big challenge with these high-ticket bribes is that…] The rate of evolution in corruption keeps pace with the rate of innovation in anti-corruption. It will always innovate and modify to protect itself against new approaches.

There are many honest people in government, otherwise this country would be in tatters! If everyone in government was corrupt … but what the system does is almost assume everyone within government is corrupt but that everyone outside of government is innocent. But this is not true at all.

The government represents a sample of the population, so if half the population is corrupt then half the people in government will probably be corrupt, it is not dramatically different. So how does one prevent potential witch hunts or the waste of law enforcement resources following false leads?

With the novelty effect – it feels very difficult to maintain the volume [of complaints] and make grand claims like place "A" is more corrupt than place "B". After some time there will be regional difference and the data will no longer even sound credible to the people involved and its credible will collapse. There is no easy answer this.

So the most effective use of technology in fighting corruption [in India] has been in sting operations.

There you go after high value targets, you don't go after petty corruption at the bottom of the pyramid. You use a competent team, people that know the technology and know the evidentiary value of the technology in a court, you work within the immunity afforded by law to media organizations. Then you build a proper case. Unfortunately the last case that strikes at the heart of corruption in India – the corporate post – you saw how it was crushed by mainstream media because it was not run by a main stream media outfit. And the enemies were too big: the banks that are money laundering. And all banks are money laundering. This is the most fundamental problem to address really because when the bulk of society is outside the tax bracket or the bulk of their transactions are outside the tax bracket then you have normalized criminal behavior in society. It means it is accepted that the average person will engage in tax reduction or tax avoidance. Those type of really high ticket targets – and there are ways to use technology to address issues like this – it needs champions. What "I Paid a Bribe" is trying to do is say that a particular configuration of technology is going to be the solution and that the crowd will address its own problem. This is the assumption there.

That is very different than saying that the solution is never technology, the solution is always people and we need people to drive this, and ethical institutions that are created by these people to drive this. Than what your story of change automatically takes for granted is every time the technology innovates around your current technology fix your going to innovate also. With the other narrative since your technology configuration IS your solution then somehow you hold it sacrosanct and you assume that the corruption is never going to innovate around your fix.

David Eaves: So I think the hope of I Paid a Bribe - right or wrong - was that you could have a radically scaling solution…

Abraham:

If you are going after high-ticket forms of corruption you have to be sophisticated. If you are going after low ticket, bottom of the pyramid forms of corruption you may not have to be.

Take the UID project (biometric ID).

In order to crack bottom of the pyramid corruption, one way to do this is by using biometrics so that the actual recipient who IS supposed to get subsidy or welfare actually gets the subsidy or welfare. But if you just think that through you realize there are so many problems with that.

When the intended beneficiary goes to collect he could be told there is no connectivity, or there is no electricity, or even if the authentication system answered a yes he could be told it was in fact a no. Or even if the authentication system answers a yes he could be given half his entitlement instead of his full entitlement.

And even if the authentication system says yes he may have not been eligible in the first place but could be a local elite who is taking the entitlement.

But on the other hand if we had a system through which there was necessary disclosure of everybody receiving the entitlement and their details were published on a public notice board in the village… then people in the village themselves could tell if those people were the right people to get these subsidies. The local media could come and inspect this, civil society organizations could inspect this. So it is the government becoming more transparent to the citizen rather than the other way around, which with the UID is what happens – the citizen becomes more transparent to the state.

Technology has to be configured in a very careful way at each stage in order to address different types of corruption, and each of those specific technologic choices you make can either increase corruption or decrease corruption or increase the power asymmetry or make it more equitable.

Eaves:So what are the conditions in which I Paid a Bribe might work more effectively?

Abraham:

It might be that I Paid a Bribe only allows for one type of participation. If you look at other forms of commons based peer production projects. I think they offer many types of contributions to the project. So if through the examination of a particular government budget a platform identifies all the public works that are going to be constructed using that budget and then allows state or town or even a locality to monitor the progress on those works then it allows for contributions that are necessarily antagonistic but it also allows for contributions that are antagonistic. So it allows for a conversation with a much more diverse set of people participating.

With I Paid a Bribe, because they want the scale they have taken the simplification very seriously. And it is a light touch transaction – which means once you register a bribe you can more or less forget about it. I think other peer production projects, even Wikipedia, once you start editing a particular page, you may develop an interest in that page. You can set a notification system that will notify you every time that page is edited. It is like the same story on a mailing list, that the rules that existed during the initial days when the mailing list was very small change and get more sophisticated as the mailing list scales. The technological solution has to grow to compliment the age of the community and the community has to be gardened very carefully to retain members. I Paid a Bribe risk ending up being a venting mechanism for the post bribe trauma moment. Which is fine! That is useful in of itself. But if your vision is more than that, if you want to have a movement which is an anti-corruption movement then it cannot be just be a venting mechanism for the anti-bribe trauma.

This is the complication. I'm not dismissing I Paid a Bribe. All I'm saying is, in order to build a community and take it along with you, you cannot keep anything sacred. Not your technological configuration, not how you message, address and bring people into the community, not even your target community – that might change – so it is just like the challenge we have in growing Wikipedia in India. If you were that simple we would the same solution for the different language wikipedias and we would do one homogenous thing across the nation. But the Kannada Wikipedia has only seven active editors, as does the Punjabi Wikipedia, the Hindi Wikipedia has hundreds of editors but they don't like each other and they don't meet in real life. Very unlike the Maleren Wikipedia. So the strategy that needs to be employed is very different for each of these communities. There is almost an automatic tension between simple, scalable and authentic bottom up movement forces.

So as the number of bribes reported on I Paid a Bribe increase – what do you do to ensure that the quality of those reports gets better? And how do you move people from being anonymous reporters to the system to becoming more and more identified? How does a senior cohort of the community get created? I don't know – these things may exist but I don't see it from the outside.

Look at the different in other peer production projects. The brand of the individual and the attribution afforded to each individual is quite explicit and public. I Paid a Bribe is mostly anonymous although I think some of them choose to be public.

Eaves: And you need to feel incredibly confident in your personal security and status to be public in I Paid a Bribe.

Abraham:

Exactly.

This post has been corrected to fix a transcription error. Sunil Abraham said the Kannada Wikipedia has only seven active editors.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/techpresident-david-eaves-may-28-2013-how-technology-is-and-isnt-helping-fight-corruption-in-india

Institute on Internet and Society

praskrishna — 2013-11-20T05:52:02Z

The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore is pleased to announce the Institute for Internet and Society to be held in Bangalore from June 8 to June 14, 2013 at the Golden Palms Resort, Bangalore.

With financial support and visionary guidance from the Ford Foundation, this initiative represents an important opportunity to bring together various stakeholders in a neutral forum and share ideas. The week-long residential institute will cover topics surrounding the internet and society.

Course Content

History of the Internet (This session will cover brief history of the Internet, its early stages and growth. It will also cover origins of internet in India and its impact on the Indian GDP. It will also focus on hot topics/debates surrounding the Internet).
Internet Technologies and Infrastructure (The session infrastructure, purpose and function of an ISP, advantages and disadvantages of different modes of Internet access).
E-Governance (This session will cover the various e-governance initiatives).
Principles and Values of the Internet (This session will cover various principles that underpinned the creation of the Internet, the threats they face and the need for a truly “open internet”).
Ownership and Management (This session will cover ownership and market distribution).
Internet Activism (This session will deal with various initiatives which have successfully used the Internet to build movements and campaigns).

Institute Highlights

Guest Lectures by Experts & CIS Staff
Interactive Panel Discussions
Case Studies
Surveys
Breakout Sessions
Demonstrations
Product Walkthroughs
Networking Opportunities and much more…

At the end of the week long residential course, attendees will have:

Acquisition of knowledge on Internet in the Indian society.
Appreciation of the role of community and other stakeholders in issues surrounding the Internet.
Creation of a starting point for improved communication of research findings, innovations, information and new technologies in Internet to evolve a community comprising academicians and policy makers.
Appreciation of the need to bridge the gap between policy and implementation.

Agenda

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Timings	Topics for Discussion
09:30 11:00	INTRODUCTION Dr. Ravina Aggarwal & Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan
11:00 11:30	Tea / Coffee Break
11:30 13:00	HISTORY AND GROWTH OF INTERNET IN INDIA Madan Mohan Rao (This session will deal with the advent of the internet and its growth in India).
13:00 14:00	Lunch Break
14:00 15:30	DOMESTIC BODIES AND MECHANISMS Pranesh Prakash (This session will give an overview of the roles, which different government bodies play in regulating the Internet).
15:30 16:00	Tea / Coffee Break
16:00 17:30	EMERGING TRENDS IN INTERNET USAGE IN INDIA Nandini C and Vir Kamal Chopra (This session will cover key trends and issues with regard to internet usage in India).
20:00 22:00	Dinner

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Timings	Topics for Discussion
09:30 11:00	WIRED TECHNOLOGIES Dr. Nadeem Akhtar (This session will deal with the various technologies involved in establishing a wired connection to the internet).
11:00 11:30	Tea / Coffee Break
11:30 13:00	WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES Michael Ginguld (This session will deal with the various technologies involved in establishing a wireless connection to the internet).
13:00 14:00	Lunch Break
14:00 15:30	BUILDING KNOWLEDGE BASES AND PLATFORMS VIA MASS COLLABORATION ON THE INTERNET Vishnu Vardhan T (This session will deal with the various online knowledge bases and platforms with special emphasis on Wikipedia).
15:30 16:00	Tea / Coffee Break
16:00 17:30	AFFORDABLE DEVICES AND INTERNET ACCESS IN INDIA Ravikiran Annaswamy (This session will deal with affordable devices and their role in increasing internet access in India).
20:00 22:00	Dinner

Monday, June 10, 2013

Timings	Topics for Discussion
09:30 11:00	HOW INTERNET WORKS? Dr. Nadeem Akhtar (This session will deal with various technologies related to the backbone of the internet).
11:00 11:30	Tea/Coffee Break
11:30 13:00	ASSIGNMENT
13.00 14.00	Lunch Break
14:00 18:00	OFFSITE / FIELD VISIT
20:00 22:00	Dinner

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Timings	Topics for Discussion
09:30 11:00	UNIVERSAL ACCESS Archana Gulati (This session will cover an overview of universal access and universal service).
11:00 11:30	Tea/Coffee Break
11:30 13:00	FREE AND OPEN INTERNET Pranesh Prakash (This session will cover fundamental rights to freedom of speech and expression, reasonable restrictions on freedom of speech in context of internet access in India).
13.00 14.00	Lunch Break
14:00 15:30	OPENNESS Pranesh Prakash and Sunil Abraham (This session will cover issues related to openness and access to the internet).
15:30 16:00	Tea / Coffee Break
16:00 17:30	OPEN CONTENT Professor Subbiah Arunahalam (This session will discuss open access to content and its implications on internet access).
17:30 18:30	QUICK TALK: COPYRIGHT LAW AND ACCESS Pranesh Prakash (This short session will deal with implications of copyright law on internet access).
20.00 22.00	Dinner

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Timings	Topics for Discussion
09:30 11:00	PRIVACY ON THE INTERNET IN INDIA Elonnai Hickok and Sunil Abraham (This session will discuss online privacy, data protection, use of encryption, value of anonymity online, UID, etc).
11:00 11:30	Tea/Coffee Break
11:30 13:00	E-ACCESSIBILITY BASICS Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan (This session will deal with key requirements for making internet accessible for persons with disabilities).
13.00 14.00	Lunch Break
14:00 15:30	INTERNATIONAL BODIES AND MECHANISM Tulika Pandey and Gaurab Raj Upadhyay (This session will deal with various international bodies and multi-stakeholder processes involved in formulation of internet related policies).
15:30 16:00	Tea / Coffee Break
16:00 17:00	E-GOVERNANCE Sunil Abraham (This session will deal with e-Governance strategies and relevant initiatives).
20.00 22.00	Dinner

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Timings	Topics for Discussion
09:30 11:00	GLOBAL HISTORY OF THE INTERNET Dr. Nishant Shah (Inception of internet and the main events which led to the growth of the internet).
11:00 11:30	Tea/Coffee Break
11:30 13:00	STRATEGIES FOR POLICY INTERVENTION Chakshu Roy (This session will look at various ways in which policy intervention can be made and the various factors necessary to successfully engage in policy forums).
13.00 14.00	Lunch Break
14:00 15:30	PROFILE OF INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS Satyen Gupta (This session will discuss profiles of various ISPs and their share in the market).
15:30 16:00	Tea / Coffee Break
16:00 17:30	COMPETITION IN THE MARKET Helani Galpaya (This session will discuss structure and competition in the broadband market, wireless market, etc).
20.00 22.00	Dinner

Friday, June 14, 2013

Timings	Topics for Discussion
09:30 11:00	LEVERAGING INTERNET FOR ACTIVISM Ananth Guruswamy (This session will look at various initiatives which have used the internet to build successful movements and campaigns).
11:00 11:30	Tea/Coffee Break
11:30 13:00	“INTERNET ACCESS” ACTIVISM Parminder Jeet Singh (This session will discuss how people can contribute to initiatives for improving internet access).
13.00 14.00	Lunch Break
14:00 15:30	ENSURING ACCESS TO THE INTERNET A K Bharghava (This session will discuss strategies to enhance access to the internet in India with special focus on National Optical Fibre Network).
15:30 16:00	Tea / Coffee Break
16:00 17:30	Winding Up

Speakers

A.K Bhargava
A. K. Bhargava is a Telecom Engineer with more than 35 yrs of experience in various fields of Telecommunication, Installation, Operation, Maintenance, Software and Management. Prior to joining BBNL as Director (Operations), he was working as Executive Director (Wireless Services) with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) Delhi.
Ananth Guruswamy
Ananth Guruswamy is the director of Amnesty International India. Previouly, he was the Programme Director at Green Peace. Ananth joined Greenpeace India in 2001 at its very beginning and played a key role in moulding Greenpeace India into one of the leading stakeholders in the NGO sector in India.
Archana Gulati
An Indian Civil Service Officer, she has worked as a Universal Service Policy Expert with respect to Access to ICTs for Persons with Disabilities for the International Telecommunications Union. She also successfully pioneered the e-government system in her previous posting as Joint Controller Communication Accounts, Department of Telecommunications (DoT). At present she is posted as the Financial Advisor with the National Disaster Management Authority of India.
Chakshu Roy
Chakshu Roy heads technology initiatives at PRS Legislative Research (PRS), New Delhi. PRS is a unique initiative that provides non-partisan analysis to all Members of Parliament in India. Chakshu is developing a comprehensive technology strategy to engage large sections of the population in the policy process. He has conceptualised and developed India’s only online database of all state laws. Chakshu has conducted capacity-building workshops for over 1000 journalists on tracking the work of legislators.
Elonnai Hickok
Elonnai Hickok works as a Programme Manager at the Centre for Internet and Society. Her main areas of work are Privacy and Data Security.
Gaurab Raj Upadhaya
Gaurab has a long record of volunteerism and commitment to the Asia Pacific Internet Community. Gaurab is one of the 14 global Trusted Community Representatives who cryptographically sign the root of the domain name system in ICANN Root DNSSEC Key ceremonies. In 2001, he was the founder of the Nepal Internet Exchange (NPIX), the first IX in the South-Asian region.
Helani Galpaya
Helani Galpaya is the Chief Executive Officer at LIRNEasia. She holds a Masters in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Mount Holyoke College, USA.
Dr. Madan Mohan Rao
Dr. Madan Mohan Rao is the research director at the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre. He is the editor of a three book series: “The Asia Pacific Internet Handbook”, “The Knowledge Management Chronicles” and “AfroDotEdu”.
Michael Ginguld
Michael Ginguld is the Chief Executive Officer at AirJaldi. He has more than 15 years of experience working with ICT, community and rural development projects in India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Nepal, and Israel.
Dr. Nadeem Akhtar
Dr. Nadeem Akhtar is currently working as Principal Research Engineer at the Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT). He leads the network layer research team at CEWiT and also represents CEWiT at 3GPP Radio Access Networks Working Group meetings. His research interests lie in the field of mobile and broadband wireless access technologies. Dr. Akhtar is a member of IEEE Standards Association and ITU-APT Foundation of India.
Nandini. C
Nandini. C is a Research Associate with IT for Change (www.itforchange.net), and is part of a team that is engaged in research studies in the area of gender and ICTs, democratic governance and ICTs, and the political economy of the information society. She holds a Masters in Urban and Rural Community Development from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan
Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan is a Policy Director at Centre for Internet and Society and works on policy research and advocacy related to IP reform and technology access for persons with disabilities.
Dr. Nishant Shah
Dr. Nishant Shah is the Director-Research at CIS. He is a recipient of the Asia Scholarship Foundation's fellowship for comparative research at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China. Nishant is a regular columnist with the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, GQ India and DML Central. He has authored/co-authored many peer-reviewed articles in several journals.
Parminder Jeet Singh
Parminder Jeet Singh is Executive Director of IT for Change. He was recently appointed as a member of Task Force set up by the Indian government on implementation of proactive disclosures provisions of the Right to Information Act. He was also associated with Department of IT's Sub-group on e-governance for the 12^th Five Year Plan. He recently authored a report on 'Community Knowledge Centers' for the Karnataka Knowledge Commission.
Pranesh Prakash
Pranesh Prakash is a Policy Director at CIS and works on policy research and advocacy around intersections of technology and law focusing on access to knowledge (primarily copyright reforms), promoting 'openness' (including open government data, open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software), freedom of expression, privacy, and internet governance.
Ravikiran Annaswamy
Ravikiran Annaswamy is an entrepreneur learning to create the next big business. He is very excited about the opportunities at the cusp of social media, mobile Internet and Big Data. Currently, He is nurturing a unique concept called Teritree, which brings social shopping into mainstream business.He has vast experience of making successful telecom solutions for global markets, mainly in the area of Online Billing and Charging, OSS, Innovative 3G/4G applications, Media and Security Solutions.
Dr. Ravina Aggarwal
Dr. Ravina Aggarwal works on media issues in India from the Ford Foundation's New Delhi office. Her grant making advances issues of democratic expression and media access among marginalized communities. She holds the position of Programme Officer in Ford Foundation, India
Satyen Gupta
Satyen Gupta is a veteran in the field of telecommunications, drawing from his vast experience in telecom regulation as well as industry. Among other accomplishments, he was a member of the NGN Regulation review group of ITU and also worked as advisor with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India at the level of Additional Secretary and is heading the Converged Network Division dealing with regulatory, technical and economic aspects of Data Networks and Services.
Dr. Subbiah Arunachalam
Dr. Subbiah Arunachalam is a distinguished fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society. Improving information access both for scientists and for the rural poor; scientometrics, ICT-enabled development and open access are among his current research interests.
Sunil Abraham
Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society. He is also a social entrepreneur and Free Software advocate.
Tulika Pandey
Tulika Pandey is an Electronics and Telecommunications Engineer. She has been with the Government of India since 1992 and is currently Director with the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India. She is involved in implementation strategy and action plan formulations for wider reach of ICT facilitated benefits; Integration of appropriate technology interfaces between human and cyber world; Steering of Research and Development projects for development of contextual ICT technology, tool, applications and content.
Vir Kamal Chopra
Vir Kamal Chopra is currently the Sr. General Manager (QA) with BSNL at New Delhi. He started his career in teaching. He has played a vital role in providing telecommunication facilities and shaping BSNL and is also responsible for finalization of high value products which are purchased at the central level of BSNL. He is credited with introducing e-tendering for the first time at BSNL.
Vishnu Vardhan
Vishnu Vardhan is the Programme Director of the CIS-A2K Team which works with Wikipedians and also conducts workshops and meetups in order to build Wikipedia community for Indic languages.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/institute-on-internet-and-society

Use made of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers to Publish their Findings

Madhan Muthu and Subbiah Arunachalam — 2013-07-04T04:45:39Z

Most of the papers published in the more than 360 Indian open access journals are by Indian researchers. But how many papers do they publish in high impact international open access journals? We have looked at India’s contribution to all seven Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals, 10 BioMed Central (BMC) ournals and Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports. Indian crystallographers have published more than 2,000 structure reports in Acta Crystallographica, second only to China in number of papers, but have a much better citations per paper average than USA, Britain, Germany and France, China and South Korea. India’s contribution to BMC and PLoS journals, on the other hand, is modest at best. We suggest that the better option for India is institutional self-archiving.

Muthu, Madhan and Subbiah, Arunachalam (2011) Use made of open access journals by Indian researchers to publish their findings. Current Science, 100 (9). pp. 1297-1306. Download the full research paper

How aware are Indian researchers of open access (OA) and its advantages 10 years after Stevan Harnad visited India and spoke about the need for adopting OA archiving? To answer this question, we looked at India’s participation in both OA institutional archiving and Indian researchers using OA journals to publish their findings. In this article, our emphasis is on the use made of selected high impact OA journals, particularly Public Library of Science (PLoS) and BioMed Central (BMC) journals and Acta Crytallographica Section E, the three leading publishers of open access papers in terms of number of papers published annually.

The Registry of Open Access Repository (ROAR) lists 2,047 repositories (data gathered on 17 December) of which 59 are from India. Included in the 59 repositories are the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR) journals repository, the Institute of Integrative Omics and Applied Biotechnology Journal repository and repetitive entries of five institutional repositories, viz. EPrints@CMFRI, EPrints@IIMK, EPrints@MKU, repository of INFLIBNET and the repository at the Cochin University of Science and Technology. Many Indian repositories listed in ROAR are inactive. There are at least five other Indian repositories not listed in ROAR, viz. Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, and Vidyanidhi, Mysore, both repositories of theses; International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Ministry of Earth Sciences and SARAI. In all, there are 33 OA repositories in India which include 24 institutional repositories, 4 subject repositories and 5 dedicated theses and dissertation repositories. The quality of tese repositories varies widely as well as their maintenance. Considering that there are more than 450 universities and several hundred research laboratories in the government, corporate and the non-government sectors, one would expect a very large number of institutional repositories in India. Furthermore, many of these repositories are not filling fast enough.

Out of the 5,897 OA journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals or DOAJ (data accessed on 17 December 2010) 276 are from India. Another database, Open J-Gate 5 , developed by the Bangalore-based Informatics India, lists 7,967 OA periodicals worldwide which include 4,773 peer-reviewed journals including 339 peer-reviewed Indian journals (Figure 1). There are a few other Indian OA journals which are yet to be listed in DOAJ and indexed in Open J-Gate. For example, two journals published by the Indian National Science Academy (Indian Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics and Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy) and two journals published by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences and Indian Journal of Animal Sciences) are neither indexed in Open J-Gate nor listed in DOAJ. DOAJ does not index Indian Journal of Natural Products and Resources (formerly known as Natural Product Radiance), published by NISCAIR. In all, there are more than 360 Indian OA journals. Needless to say a vast majority of papers, published in the Indian OA journals, are mostly written by Indian researchers. Incidentally, two Indian journal publishers, viz. Indian Academy of Sciences and MedKnow Publications figure in the top 14 OA journal publishers in the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) survey. Our focus here is papers published by Indian researchers in high-impact OA journals published outside India. We chose all seven journals published by PLoS, 10 BMC journals and Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports. We gathered data from the Science Citation Index – Expanded section of Web of Science between 11 and 29 December 2010. Countries were assigned to papers based on addresses in the by-line. If three authors then the paper was assigned to all three countries. Therefore, the sum of papers from different countries will be far more than the actual number of papers indexed in Web of Science.

Results

BioMed Central Journals
BioMed Central, established in May 2000, is the world’s leading OA publisher in the fields of medical research and biology and publishes 208 OA journals as noted on 28 December 2010. Not all of them commenced publication at the same time, not even the same year. Different journals started publication in different years. So far these journals together have published 99,717 articles, including 83,893 original research papers and 15,824 other types of articles (Table 1). Indian researchers have published 1,872 original research papers and 92 other types of articles (such as review articles) in these 208 journals. To see India’s record in perspective, we have provided data for 11 other countries. These include the other three BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa and China), South Korea and Israel, both of which have scientific enterprises comparable in size to that of India, and six advanced countries. USA stands out with close to 29,300 papers, followed by Great Britain (9,464 papers) and Germany (9,340 papers). China is way ahead of other BASIC countries, and India is ahead of Israel, Korea and South Africa in the number of papers published. Brazil is ahead of India in total number of papers but falls behind in the number of original research papers. It will be interesting to see why researchers from Brazil publish such a large number of review articles.

Of these 208 journals, only 77 have been listed in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 2009 and assigned an impact factor. (For a journal to get indexed in JCR it should have been in existence for longer than two years). We list in Table 2 those journals with impact factor greater than 4.000. Among BMC journals, Genome Biology has the highest impact factor (6.626). Other high impact factor journals are Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases (5.825), BMC Biology (5.636) and Breast Cancer Research (5.326). The following nine journals have published more than 2,000 papers so far (since they became OA journals): BMC Bioinformatics (4,078), BMC Genomics (3,204), Critical Care (2,787), BMC Public Health (2,580), Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica (2,575), BMC Cancer (2,344), Arthritis Research and Therapy (2,286), Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research (2,255) and Genome Biology (2,069). Ten journals have published more than 1000 papers but less than 2000. Four journals have published less than 100 papers. Five journals have citations per paper (CPP) higher than 10. These are Genome Biology (18.35), Veterinary Research (12.27), Genetics Selection Evolution (11.71), Respiratory Research (11.03) and Breast Cancer Research (10.33).

The number of papers published by authors in India in 10 BMC journals during 2003–2010 (data gathered on 13December 2010), the number of citations to these papers and cites/papers are provided in Table 3. To see the Indian papers in perspective, we have also given the total number of papers published in these 10 journals during the same period, number of citations received by them and the average number of citations per paper (CPP) as well as similar data for 11 other selected countries including five scientifically middle-level countries and six advanced countries. A quick look at the table reveals that there is a perceptible difference between the middle-level countries and the advanced countries.

Indian researchers have published 4.53% of the papers that have appeared in Malaria Journal, 2.49% of papers appearing in BMC Genomics, 1.77% of papers appearing BMC Public Health, 1.7% of papers appearing in BMC Bioinformatics, and 1.61% of papers appearing in BMC Evolutionary Biology. India’s participation in the other five journals is rather meagre. Looking at CPP, Indian contributions in nine of the ten journals have a lower CPP than the world papers. Year after year, Thomson Reuters’s ScienceWatch has shown that Indian research papers on an average have been cited less often than world papers in every field

But Indian papers in BMC Public Health have been cited on average 7.45 times compared to the world average of 5.59 CPP. This is rare and the researchers responsible for this deserve to be congratulated. It will be worth examining if India’s performance in public health research is of a higher class overall than research in other areas of medicine. The number of papers from China in BMC journals accounts for a much larger per cent than papers from India. For example, papers from China account for 10.0% in BMC Cancer, 7.75% in BMC Genomics, 5.74% in BMC Bioinformatics and 5.41% in BMC Evolutionary Biology. This is to be expected, as China is second only to USA in the number of papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and publishes more than three times the number of papers as India. Except in Breast Cancer Research, in which journal China publishes about 1% of papers, in all other journals, China’s CPP value is less than the journal average.

Although Brazil publishes fewer papers than India, it has an enviable CPP record in at least five journals considered here: Arthritis Research and Therapy (15.88; journal average 8.64), Genome Biology (23.43; journal average 22.50), Critical Care (11.96; journal average 8.23), Breast Cancer Research (10.71; journal average 8.52) and BMC Public Health (6.54; journal average 5.59). Israel, a small country with only a few research institutions and universities, has published fewer papers, but has a CPP higher than the journal average in seven of the ten journals. South Korea has a higher CPP for its papers in Arthritis Research and Therapy than the journal average.

Except for BMC Public Health, in all the other journals USA accounts for not less than 25% of papers and in some well over 40%. Also, in each of the 10 journals, USA has recorded higher CPP than the journal average. Great Britain is a distant second, but its share of papers in BMC Public Health and Malaria Journal is even higher than that of USA. Britain’s interest in public health and malaria research could be explained by over two centuries of her colonial connections. Also, in both these journals, Britain’s CPP is greater than the journal average. In fact, in both BMC Genomics and Malaria Journal, the CPP is highest for Britain.

Germany has published a larger number of papers in BMC Bioinformatics and BMC Cancer than Britain and France and these have been cited more often as well. Germany has published close to 10% of the papers in Genome Biology and these papers have recorded the highest CPP (33.08 compared to 25.78 for USA).

Acta Crystallographica
The International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) publishes Acta Crystallographica in six sections. Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online is the IUCr’s first electronic-only journal It is a rapid communication journal for the publication of concise reports on inorganic, metal-organic and organic structures. Unlike other fee-based OA journals published in the western world, this journal charges a modest USD 150 per article and it also offers a fee waiver for authors from developing countries.

During the seven years 2003–2009, this journal published 22,887 papers which were cited 35,078 times (Table 4). China accounted for more than 47% of these papers, followed by India (9.1%). However, papers from India averaged a higher CPP (2.13) than Germany, Britain and USA. Crystallography is a known area of strength in India. The earliest Indian paper in this field by Banerjee of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science appeared in 1930. Today, chemical crystallography is arguably stronger than all other aspects of crystallography in India, although in the early years physicists dominated the field. Work in biological crystallography started when G. N. Ramachandran, a physicist, started his work at the University of Madras in the 1950s. It will be interesting to look at the historical evolution of crystallography in India.

PLoS journals
We will now turn our attention to the PLoS journal There are seven journals in all. PLoS ONE (eISSN-1932-6203) is somewhat different from the other six PLoS journals. It is an international, peer-reviewed, OA, online publication that accepts reports on primary research from any scientific discipline. In-house PLoS staff and international Advisory and Editorial Boards ensure fast, fair, and professional peer review. In Table 5, we provide data on the number of papers published each year by authors from the 12 countries during 2006–2010. The USA has published the largest number of papers, viz. 6,501, which is more than four times that of Britain, its nearest rival. India has published 262 papers and has the least CPP, viz. 2.34, whereas all the other countries have a CPP of above 3.0. Britain has the highest, viz. 4.76, closely followed by Germany (4.73). The values for other countries are: USA (4.36), France (4.23), Canada (4.29), Israel (3.98), Japan (3.86), South Korea (3.82), South Africa (3.46), China (3.24) and Brazil (3.01). The journal has published during this period 14,071 papers at a CPP of 3.99. The number of papers published by the other six journals, number of times they are cited and impact factors of these journals are given in Table 6. In these journals, India has published 120 papers and these have been cited 1,022 times for an average of 8.52 CPP. The corresponding figures for other middle-level countries are: China (212 papers and 11.39 CPP), South Korea (62 papers and 17.47 CPP), Brazil (131 papers and 10.21 CPP), South Africa (137 papers and 18.42 CPP) and Israel (184 papers and 15.46 CPP).

Looking at individual journals (Table 7), one sees that in general the middle-level countries have published very few papers compared to the advanced countries. There are exceptions though. Israel has published 73 papers in PLoS Computational Biology, comparable to France’s 92 and higher than Canada’s 55 and Japan’s 46. In this journal Israel’s CPP (8.5) is comparable to the world average (9.1) and the CPP of Britain and higher than the CPP of Japan. In PLoS Medicine, India’s 38 papers have a CPP of 6.92, far below the journal average of 14.12, and less than that of the other 11 countries considered. In PloS Biology, India has a CPP of 15.77, far below the journal average of 31.69, whereas South Korea (54.78) and China (32.12) have a CPP higher than the journal average. In PLoS Genetics, Brazil, South Africa and Israel have a higher CPP than the journal average. Authors from USA publish the largest number of papers in each of the six PLoS speciality journals, followed by Britain. But USA leads in CPP in only two of them, viz. PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Computational Biology. Britain has the highest CPP for PLoS Genetics followed by USA. Japan has the highest CPP for PLoS Medicine followed by France. Canada has the highest CPP for PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases and PLoS Biology, the first of the PLoS journals.

Discussion

There has been a perceptible increase in the number of OA papers published in journals. Björk et al. have shown that the number of OA papers has been growing and for articles published in 2008, it stood at 20.4% of all papers published – 8.5% in journals (publisher sites) and 11.9% in searchable repositories. A recent forecast by Springer based on Web of Science data has shown that at the current rate of growth journal articles which are OA will likely grow from 8.7% in 2010 to 27% by 2020 assuming a constant annual growth rate of 20% as against 3% growth rate of papers indexed in Web of Science. It will be interesting to see if the number of papers published by Indian researchers in OA journals also increase year after year. Sathyanarayana of Informatics India tells us that the per cent of OA papers published by Indian researchers as revealed by Open J-Gate is higher than the world average (private communication), but we need a proper scientometric study to confirm this. Evans and Reimar have shown that for authors from developing countries free-access articles are cited much higher when they make them freely accessible over the Internet and that free Internet access widens the circle of those who read and make use of scientists’ investigation.An analysis of many MedKnow journals has shown that OA journals do not lose subscribers to print editions; on the contrary, the number of subscribers is increasing in most cases. Again, OA has helped MedKnow journals attract a larger number of paper submissions, hits and downloads, win more citations and improve impact factors.The Indian Academy of Sciences has also seen similar trends for their journals (G. Chandramohan, pers.commun). Data in Table 5 show that the number of papers published by each one of the 12 countries in PLoS ONE has increased over the years dramatically. We found similar trends for all PLoS journals (except PLoS Medicine) and several BMC journals including BMC Public Health, BMC Bioinformatics and BMC Genomics

Both BMC and PLoS charge article processing fees as do many other open access journals. BMC journals charge between $ 1450 and $ 1640, PLoS ONE charges $ 1350, and PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology $ 2900 and other PLoS journals $ 2250. This could be a deterrent to most Indian and other developing country researchers. However, these journals waive the processing fees if authors request before submitting their papers. But not all Indian scientists would like to request such waivers. Here is what Balarama leading Indian molecular biophysicist, says: ‘As an Indian scientist, I do not want my government funds to be subsidising Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals or any other non-Indian open access journal. Some journals waive these charges for authors from developing countries. But I do not think we should go begging for waivers.’

Conclusion

Indian researchers publish a large number of papers in OA journals, not necessarily because more than 360 Indian journals are OA. Their contribution to high-impact international biomedical OA journals is modest at best. However, India’s contribution to Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports is substantial. There are two reasons for this: India has a strong and vibrant community of inorganic crystallographers and the journal charges only $ 150 for processing a paper. A similar study on India’s participation in international OA journals in other fields, such as physics, chemistry, earth sciences and engineering will be interesting.

Ideally though, Indian researchers and funding agencies should prefer the institutional archiving route recommended by both Harnad and Balram One hundred per cent OA through archiving should be the national goal. As pointed out by Joshi and as has been demonstrated most recently by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi starting and filling an institutional EPrints archive is easy, inexpensive, and immensely beneficial to all. However, six years after the first workshop on setting up OA repositories was held in May 2004, we have not more than 40 active repositories in the country. We believe that such repositories would come up in most, if not all, higher educational and research institutions in the country if the Ministers in charge of both higher education and science and technology send out a note stating that from now on all publicly-funded research should be available through OA channels.

Muthu Madhan is in the ICRISAT, Patancheru 502 324, India and Subbiah Arunachalam is in the Centre for Internet and Society, No.194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur 2nd Stage, Bangalore 560 071, India.
*For correspondence. (e-mail: subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.com)

[]. Arunachalam, S., Advances in information access and science communication. Curr. Sci., 2001, 80, 493–494.

[]. Dallmeier-Tiessen, S., First results of the SOAP project. Open access publishing in 2010; http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.0506v11

[]. Registry of Open Access Repositories; http://roar.eprints.org

[]. Directory of Open Access Journals; http://www.doaj.org

[]. Open J-Gate; http://www. openj-gate.com

[]. BioMed Central: The Open Access Publisher; http://www.biomedcentral.com/

[]. Science in India 2004-2008, Scib ytes 2010, ScienceWatch.com; http://sciencewatch.com/dr/sci/10/jan10-10_2/

[]. Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online;http://journals.iucr.org/e/

[]. Banerjee, K., Structure of anthracene and naphthalene. Nature, 1930, 125, 456.

[]. Public Library of Science Journals; http://www.plos.org/journals/

[]. Björk, B.-C., Roos, A. and Lauri, M., Scientific journal publishing – yearly volume and open access availability.
Inform. Res., 2009, 14, Paper 391; http://InformationR.net/ir/14-1/paper391.html

[]. Björk, B.-C., Welling, P., Laakso, M., Majlender, P., Hedlund, T.and Guðnason, G., Open access to the scientific journal literature: Situation 2009.PLoS One, 2010, 5 (6), e11273; http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011273

[]. Hendriks, P., Open Access Publishing at Springer, Presented at Berlin 8 Open Access Conference, Beijing, China, 2010; http://www.berlin8.org/userfiles/file/Berlin8_OA_Conference_PH_v1.pdf

[]. Evans, J. A. and Reimer, J., Open access and global participation in science. Science, 2009, 323, 1025.

[]. Sahu, D. K., MEDKNOW: Open Access Publishing for Learned Societies and Associations, Presented at Berlin 8 Open Access Conference, Beijing, China, 2010; http://www.berlin8.org/userfiles/file/Berlin8.pdf

[]. Comparison of BioMed Central’s article processing charges with those of other publishers; http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apccomparison

[]. Jayaraman, K. S., Open archives – the alternative to open access, interview with Prof. P. Balaram, SciDev.Net, 9 July 2008; http://www.scidev.net/en/features/q-a-open-archives-the-alternative-to-open-access.html

[]. Harnad, S., How India can provide immediate open access now? Curr. Sci., 2008, 94, 1232.

[]. Joshi, N. V., Institutional E-print archives: liberalizing access to scientific research. Curr. Sci., 2005, 89, 421–422.

[]. Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute; http://eprints.cmfri.org.in

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/use-made-of-open-access-journals-by-indian-researchers-to-publish-their-findings

Comments on the Draft ICAR Open Access Policy

nehaa — 2013-05-28T06:44:45Z

The following comments were submitted to the Indian Council for Agricultural Research on May 23, 2013.

Introduction

The Centre for Internet and Society,[1] is is a not-for-profit research organization. Our substantive areas of work include openness (including openness of government data, open access to scholarly literature, open standards, free and open source software, open educational resources, and open video) access to knowledge and IPR reform, freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, digital humanities and digital natives.[2]It is our belief that openness and collaboration are the agents of innovation and creativity, and the advent of the internet has radically redefined the meaning and practice of openness and collaboration. Pursuant to our vision, we have been actively involved in the area of Openness and the promotion of open access.[3]

Key research and highlights of our work in these areas are as under:

Comments on the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance (Phase 1), submitted to the Department of Information and Technology.[4]
A Status Report on Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India.[5]
A Survey Report on the Online Video Environment in India.[6]
A Report on Open Government Data in India.[7]
An Open Government Data Study.[8]
Publication of multiple blog posts and the conduction of various events including workshops and seminars around Openness and Open Access.[9]

We hope that our commitment to Open Access and Openness, substantiated with our work in these areas leads you to consider our comments to your Draft Open Access Policy favourably.

The Structure of the Report

This report will deal provide feedback on the structure of the policy, various clauses of the policy, what clauses may be omitted (if any) and other clauses that may be included. Additionally, possible challenges that might require to be addressed in the implementation of this policy have also been indicated.

Overview

It is felt that the ICAR Draft Policy on Open Access is fairly comprehensive, covering most areas associated with its implementation, detailed, embodies the principles of openness and open access, and is a step in the right direction towards achieving open access to scientific and scholarly literature, acting as an example for other communities to do the same.[10]

Structural Feedback

It is suggested that the policy be structured along the lines of the UNESCO Library Open Access Policy, with headings including Introduction, the Objectives/Mission Statement of the Policy, Applicability, Repository, Roles and Obligations of various participants, Intellectual Property Law Issues and Implementation.[11]

Feedback on Existing Clauses

The decision of the ICAR to implement an Open Access Policy is commendable, and an encouragement to other institutions to follow suit.

The adoption of OAI-MHP standard will ensure interoperability, given that it is seen as the cornerstone in open access to institutional research output, and failure to utilize this standard would reduce accessibility and therefore the impact of materials, since they are invisible to each other.

The provisions of the content to be made a part of the repository, and the implementation are comprehensive and detailed. Inter alia, measures involving encouragement to publish in journals that allow for open access through archiving, workshops for advocacy and capacity building, adoption of the CC-NC-SA license are appreciated.

Suggested Changes

It is suggested that the Policy include provisions on information to be made available in accessible formats. In pursuance of the same, it is particularly suggested that the ICAR adopt measures to publish literature that is made available through this Open Access mechanism in formats accessible for visually impaired/print disabled persons, to truly realise the underlying aims of Open Access.

It is suggested that in addition to class/lecture notes already included under the content, ‘course content’ developed for any class/seminar/lecture in any university/college/educational institution be made a separate category of material to be included for open access.

It is suggested that the following sentence in the proposed policy be further clarified: “Scientists are advised to mention the ICAR’s Open Access policy while signing the copyright agreements with the publishers”- A clarification is required regarding the application of this sentence and its applicability. Would the policy apply to both those cases where the scientists have copyright over their work, and where the institute has copyright, or to only one of these scenarios?

It is suggested that the ICAR participate in the development and promote the building of cross institutional services (cross repository services) to further the aims of Open Access,[12] and the same be reflected in the forthcoming policy.

It is suggested that the forthcoming policy include an explicit provision on long term digital preservation[13] of the collected information, including possible measures that the ICAR may adopt to this end.

It is suggested that the forthcoming policy include a specific provision that requires contributing scientists/researchers etc. to explicitly declare that they have the copyright for and have obtained the necessary permissions to post and contribute to the Open Access Project.

It is suggested that the ICAR take steps for aiding the development of Open Access Journals. In furtherance of the same, the ICAR could have links of the websites of these Journals on its own repository, such that the link to the articles on the websites of these Journals leads directly to the ICAR Repository. Such a move would incentivise authors to contribute, since their effort would be recognised, and researchers would have a persistent source to cite from an archive. This effort would also be in consonance with the broader aims of Open Access that the ICAR is keen to achieve through its proposed policy.

It is suggested that the policy also include measures to encourage persons not members of the ICAR to contribute to the Repository.

It is suggested that as regards the implementation aspects of the creation of this repository, the ICAR would also have to ensure the creation of digital document identifiers for all content to be contributed to and housed on the repository. Additionally, the policy ought to also lay down standards of training and development of the staff and authors to submit content to the repository, and to be able to efficiently utilize the same. It is also suggested that the policy encompass the development of a framework for feedback for users and feedback from users, where the former would provide current statistics and details about articles and contributions to users, and the latter would be a mechanism for users to comment on their experience in utilising the repository.

Concluding Observations

The Centre for Internet and Society deeply appreciates the effort undertaken by the ICAR to bring about Open Access in its area of work, which is definitely a welcome step in the right direction. CIS hopes that given its commitment to Open Access and strong tradition of work in this area, the ICAR would give due regard to the observations made out in this report.

[1]. Hereafter referred to as CIS.

[2]. See http://cis-india.org/about for more details.

[3]. See http://cis-india.org/openness for our work on Openness.

[4]. Available at http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/comments-ifeg-phase-1

[5]. Available at http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/open-access-to-scholarly-literature

[6]. Available at http://cis-india.org/openness/online-video-environment-in-india

[7]. Available at http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/ogd-draft-v2-call-for-comments

[8]. Available at http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/open-government-data-study

[9]. See http://cis-india.org/@@search?SearchableText=open+access for details of our posts and events on Open Access.

[10]. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Open Access Policy Concerning UNESCO Publications, available at http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/ERI/pdf/oa_policy_en_2.pdf (last accessed 22 May, 2013).

[11]. Id.

[12]. Gerard van Westrienen and Clifford A. Lynch, Academic Institutional Repositories: Deployment Status in 13 Nations as of Mid 2005, available at http://dlib.org/dlib/september05/westrienen/09westrienen.html (last accessed 22 May, 2013).

[13]. Leslie Chan, Supporting and Enhancing Scholarship in the Digital Age: The Role of Open Access Institutional Repositories , Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 29 (3&4), 277, 282.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-on-draft-icar-open-access-policy

Use of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers

Subbiah Gunasekaran and Subbiah Arunachalam — 2013-07-04T04:50:49Z

Indian researchers have published more than 43,400 papers in over 4,600 journals in 2009 as seen from Science Citation Index (SCI) – Expanded. Of these, over 6,900 (or one in six) papers are published in 445 open access (OA) journals. The proportion of papers published by Indian researchers in OA journals is considerably higher than the world average, which is estimated to be 8.5–10.0%. Although India publishes well over a thousand journals, including about 360 OA journals, SCI Expanded indexed in 2009 only 101 Indian S&T journals including 46 OA journals. It is likely that the percentage of Indian papers in OA journals as seen from SCI will be higher if more Indian journals are indexed in SCI Expanded.

Subbiah Gunasekharan and Subbiah Arunachalam (2011) Use of open access journals by Indian researchers. Current Science, 101 (10). pp. 1287-1295. Download the full research paper

In a recent paper, Madhan and Arunachalam looked at the use made by Indian researchers of selected high impact open access (OA) journals, particularly Public Library of Science (PLoS) and BioMed Central (BMC) journals and Acta Crytallographica Section E. In this article, we report the use made by Indian scientists of OA journals that are indexed in Science Citation Index (SCI) Expanded. Web of Science (WoS) – SCI Expanded, indexes 8,368 journals, of which 836 are OA. We obtained the list of 836 OA journals from Thomson Reuters (Scientific).

Since 1989–1990 when the first four OA journals – Bryn Mawr Classical Review (http://bmcr.brynmawr. edu/), Postmodern Culture, Psycholoquy (http://www.ils.unc.edu/~arnsj/inls180-01/harnard.htm), and Public-Access Computer Systems Review – started publication, thousands of OA journals have been published. The number of OA journals as well as those indexed in WoS, are increasing steadily. Heather Morrison has been following the growth of OA journals over the past decade (Figure 1). Informatics India Ltd, publisher of Open J-Gate, has also started following the growth of OA journals (Figure 2). Currently (as on 30 September 2011), there are 7,070 OA journals according to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and over 9,300 OA journals (including more than 6,200 peer-reviewed) from over 5,000 publishers, according to Open J-Gate. Indeed, the growth rate has accelerated in the past few years, and currently it stands at four new titles per day. OA not only plays a crucial role in disseminating scientific knowledge at a low cost, making it more accessible and more visible locally and globally, but also plays an important role in preserving indigenous knowledge to enrich the new generations, says Iryna Kuchma.

New publishing models are emerging too. While PLoS publishes only seven OA journals and BMC publishes 221 peer-reviewed OA journals (as on 1 October 2011), SciELO publishes 875 OA journals from ten countries (as on 2 October 2011), and J-STAGE provides a portal for over 757 Japanese journals (as on 1 October 2011), most of them OA.

Earlier studies have shown that the greater accessibility and visibility of research papers published in OA journals have improved their impact and citations.

Evans and Reimer have shown that the openly available articles, especially from developing countries, are cited much more often by peers than articles behind a toll barrier. It is important to know how aware Indian researchers are of OA.

In this article, we have studied the contribution of Indian researchers to OA journals indexed in SCI Expanded in the calendar year 2009. There is another multidisciplinary abstract and citation database of research literature, viz. Scopus published by the Reed Elsevier group. Even though it indexes a larger number of journals and has citation data and other features available in WoS, it has some limitations when one wants to download and analyse large amounts of data. For instances, at any given time Scopus allows downloading only a limited number, viz. 2000 records. WoS does not impose any restrictions on the number of records downloaded. One can download metadata for the downloaded data, 500 records at a time and go on adding in steps of 500 using the ‘marked list’ facility. WoS has a history of about half a century and as its founder Eugene Garfield was interested in scientometric research of all kinds, his team shaped the database to lend itself not only to perform its primary function, viz. searching the literature, but also to provide a source for a variety of other tasks such as building science indicators and carrying out scientometric studies with ease. Surely

Scopus will offer such features as more and more researchers and science analysts start using it for such applications. Another database, viz. Open J.-Gate also indexes a large number of OA journals, but it does not provide citation information and hence could not be used in this study.

Methodology

We collected bibliographic data of research papers published by Indian researchers in the calendar year 2009 from the SCI Expanded section of WoS. Papers were included if at least one author had given an address in India. The data were downloaded in comma-separatedvalues (CSV) format and imported into MS Access. We wrote a few SQL scripts for analysing the data. We separated the list of the 836 OA journals indexed in SCI for our analysis. Apart from the list of 836 OA journals provided by the Thomson Reuters, there are nine other journals registered as OA in the Scopus source list (e.g. Chem. Pharm. Bull., Japan, ISSN 0009-2363, IF 1.507) which have been considered as OA journals in our study. The countries of publication of journals were collected from the source data indexed in Scopus. We preferred Scopus over the SCI database, because occasionally the country assigned to a journal in the source data of SCI differs from the individual entry for the paper in the set of records downloaded for our analysis. For example, Chinese Chemical Letters, published by the Chinese Chemical Society, Beijing, China, is also attributed to Elsevier Science Inc., New York, USA; the Chinese Journal of Chemistry, published by the Chinese Chemical Society, Shanghai, China, is attributed to Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, Germany in the data downloaded and also attributed to Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, USA in the list of journals indexed in SCI Expanded and Eur. Phys. J. – Appl. Phys., published by the Cambridge University Press, New York, is also attributed to EDP Sciences, France. Impact factor (IF) values of journals were assigned from Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 2010. Some journals are shown as having an IF value of zero; it means that either they were not indexed in JCR, or indexed recently but not yet assigned an IF. When assigning IF values from JCR 2010 by matching the ISSN using SQL script in MS Access, we found that 150 journals in our dataset did not match with the ISSN given in JCR 2010 (same title, but different ISSN – maybe of on-line and print version). For these 150 journals, we checked the journal titles manually and assigned IF values. Only 19 journals had IF and the rest (131) did not, and we assigned a value of zero. Some titles also had different abbreviations; for example, An. Stiint. U. Al. I-Mat. (in JCR) is rendered as Analele Stiint Univ. in SCI, and Probl. Atom. Sci. Tech. (in JCR) is rendered as Probl. At. Sci. Tech. in SCI. Thomson Reuters will do well if they take care of such discrepancies in journal title abbreviations and assignment of publishing countries.

Results

Indian researchers have used 4,603 journals to publish 43,481 research papers in 2009. They used 445 OA journals to publish 6,904 papers, which accounted for 15.88%, and 4,158 non-OA journals to publish 36,577 papers (Table 1). Of the 445 OA journals, 15 are published by MedKnow, Mumbai, India, and these carried 1,282 papers (http://www.medknow.com/). Björk et al. have shown that the number of OA papers has been growing and for articles published in 2008, it stood at 20.4% of all papers published – 8.5% in journals (publisher sites) and 11.9% in searchable repositories. A subsequent study commissioned by the European Commission called the SOAP project survey, the largest to touch issues in OA publishing so far reports that approximately 10% of papers published currently appeared in OA journals. Thus, contrary to the prevailing perceptions, Indian researchers are publishing a substantially larger percentage of their papers in OA journals than the rest of the world.

Table 2 shows the distribution of the papers by document type. About 83% of papers in all journals and 78.7% of papers in OA journals are articles, and 2.38% of papers in all journals and 0.54% of papers in OA journals are papers from proceedings. A little over 2% of papers in all journals and about 4.5% of papers in OA journals are editorial material.

Journal country
The 4,603 journals used by Indian researchers are published from 64 countries, but a substantial number of papers, more than 88%, have appeared in journals from five countries. These include 1,351 US journals publishing 10,284 (or 23.65% of all) Indian papers, 775 journals from The Netherlands publishing 9,202 (or 21%) of all Indian papers and 1,119 UK-based journals publishing 8,710 papers (accounting for 20%). Indian researchers used 101 Indian journals to publish 8,258 papers (18.99%) and 361 German journals to publish 2,195 papers. Table 3 gives a list of country of origin of journals, number of journals, number of OA journals and the total number of papers published in journals from each country. Out of the 1,351 US journals, 59 are OA; of the 1,119 UK journals, 71 are OA; of the 101 Indian journals 46 are OA and of the 361 German journals, 11 are OA; but only one of the 775 journals from the Netherlands is OA. This is largely because The Netherlands is the home of the world’s leading journal publishing companies and unlike in the USA, UK and India, there is hardly any journal in The Netherlands published by non-commercial publishers of scholarly journals. Indeed one of the companies has made a contribution to the election fund of an American Senator who brought up amendments to stall the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA). Many of these commercial publishers had even hired a public relations consultant ‘to take on the free-information movement, which campaigns for scientific results to be made freely available’.

One may wonder at the small number of Indian journals. In fact, Indian scientists publish in many more Indian journals, but they are not indexed in SCI Expanded or JCR. The distribution of OA journals indexed in SCI Expanded by country is revealing (Table 4). While countries like England and USA have 115 and 102 OA titles, The Netherlands has just 3 OA journals.

OA journals used
OA journals used by Indian researchers in 2009 are listed in Table 5. Only the 24 journals with at least 70 papers from India are shown. Of these 24 journals, only five have an IF of greater than 1.000, and only 18 have at least 100 papers from India and these 18 journals together accounted for 50.69% of India’s total OA journal output. Of these 18 OA journals, 16 are from India and one each from United Kingdom and Kenya. Of the 445 OA journals, Current Science (IF = 0.897) published by the Current Science Association in association with the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, tops the list with 597 papers, followed by Acta Crystallogr. Sect. E-Struct. Rep. (IF = 0.413) published from the United Kingdom, with 440 papers. The journal Indian J. Pharm. Sci. (IF = 0.455) has 326 papers. The overall average citation per paper (CPP) in OA journals is 1.27, a rather small number, and smaller than CPP for Indian papers published in all journals (including non-OA journals; 2.62). This is contrary to expectations and needs to be probed further;several studies have shown the citation advantage of OA.

Is there a difference in citability of papers published in OA journals by authors from developing and developed countries? Our results are for papers published in 2009 and the CPP is likely to improve with the passage of time.

But there are certain OA journals which have recorded high CPP for Indian papers. Notably, the UK-based journal Mol. Syst. Biol. (IF = 9.667) has one paper which received 23 citations. Similarly, Nucl. Acids Res. (IF = 7.836) has 17 papers from India which together received 321 citations for a CPP of 18.88. Five papers published in Molecules (IF = 1.988) received 69 citations. Three papers that appeared in PLoS Genet. (IF = 9.543) received 39 citations. Two review articles that were published in Biogeosciences (IF = 3.587) received 25 citations. Similarly, nine papers that appeared in PLoS Med. (IF = 15.617) received 101 citations for a CPP of 11.22. The Int. J. Electrochem. Sci. (IF = 2.808), being published by the Electrochemical Science Group, Serbia, since 2006, and indexed in JCR only from 2009, has 33 Indian papers that have received 227 citations, with an average citation per paper of 6.88.

The 4,603 journals in which Indian researchers have published have been classified by IF of journals as seen from JCR 2010 (Table 6). We notice that the ratio of OA journals to the total number of journals decreases with an increase in IF. This is to be expected, as many of the toll access journals with high IF have been around for a long time and most OA journals are less than 10 years old. About 2.5% of papers from India have appeared in 131 journals (including 26 OA journals), which are either not indexed in JCR 2010 or recently indexed but not assigned IF values. We have assigned their IF as zero. A little over 34% of all papers published by Indian researchers appeared in 1,471 journals, which include 235 OA journals with IF less than 1. About 56.5% of papers have appeared in 2,645 journals with IF in the range 1–4.499. Only 357 papers appeared in 66 journals, including three OA journals, with IF > 10. Of the 6,904 papers in OA journals, less than 4% of papers appeared in journals with IF = 0 and over 73% of papers published in 235 journals with IF less than 1. An item classified as ‘editorial material’ appeared in the OA journal CA-A Cancer J. Clin. (IF = 94.262) which has received three citations. Among the 445 OA journals, the high IF journals, e.g. PLoS Med. (IF = 15.617) has nine papers, viz. five articles, three editorial materials and one review which together received 101 citations; and PLoS Biol. (IF = 12.469), Mol. Syst. Biol. (IF = 9.667) and PLoS Pathog. (IF = 9.079) have one paper each and they have received 9, 23 and 6 citations respectively.

We notice that the average CPP correlates well with the IF of journals. For journals with IF up to 1.5, CPP is less than 2.0 and for journals with IF in the range 7–20, CPP is higher than 9.0. Indian papers published in 37 OA journals have CPP of 5 or greater. In contrast, Indian papers published in 149 non-OA journals have CPP of 10 or above.

Non-OA journals
Table 7 presents the use of non-OA journals by Indian researchers in 2009. They used 4,158 non-OA journals to publish 36,577 papers in 2009. Of the 101 Indian journals used, 55 are non-OA and they had carried 4,000 papers. Two Indian journals have been used to publish more than 300 papers, viz. Asian J. Chem. (IF = 0.247, 481 papers) and Indian J. Anim. Sci. (IF = 0.147, 312 papers). Other frequently used non-OA journals are from the US, The Netherlands and UK. Some non-OA journals have decent CPP values [e.g. Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser. (IF = 15.199) and Nat. Rev. Neurosci. (IF = 29.510) have each one paper from India with CPP of 505 and 112 respectively; other notable non-OA journals are Rep. Prog. Phys. (2 Indian papers, CPP 91.00), Chem. Rev. (4 papers, CPP 60.00), Nano Today (1 paper, CPP 59.00), N. Engl. J. Med. (20 papers, CPP 55.90), Phys. Rev. Lett. (82 papers, CPP 11.68), J. Org. Chem. (73 papers, CPP 10.22), Tetrahedron Lett. (264 papers, CPP 6.44), J. Hazard Matter (225 papers, CPP 8.02), Eur. J. Med. Chem. (156 papers, CPP 6.74) and Phys. Rev. D (165 papers, CPP 7.58)]. The 170 papers Indian researchers have published in the Swiss journal Ann. Nutr. Metab. (IF = 2.173) have not received any citation during the period. Of these 170 papers, 169 are meeting abstracts. Similarly, 102 meeting abstracts published in Abstr. Pap. Am. Chem. Soc. have not received any citations.

Distribution of Indian papers by subject
SCI provides a broad classification of journals by subjects and sub-fields. The classification is at the level of journals and not individual articles. In Table 8, we provide information on the distribution of Indian papers published in toll-access and OA journals by journal subfields. Chemistry (4,593 papers in 162 journals) and physics (2,694 papers in 104 journals) lead the list if we consider all journals. [Apart from chemistry we have ‘materials science: chemistry’ journals, polymer science, etc. and apart from physics, we have crystallography, ‘materials science: physics’, astrophysics, etc. That is to say the classification is not into water-tight compartments.] But if we consider only OA journals, then general science periodicals top the list (711 papers in eight journals, of which Current Science alone accounts for 597 papers, Def. Sci. J. accounts for 65 papers, Arab. J. Sci. Eng. accounts for 16 papers, Int. J. Phys. Sci. accounts for 12 papers, Sci. Res. Essays and Scienceasia have six papers each, and Maejo. Int. J. Sci. Technol. and S. Afr. J. Sci. have eight and one paper respectively). Chemistry journals come next (697 papers in 21 OA journals, of which the two sections of Indian J. Chem. account for 226 papers, E-J. Chem. accounts for 188 papers, J. Chem. Sci. accounts for 78 papers and Arkivoc accounts for 52 papers), followed by pharmacology and pharmacy (592 papers in 21 journals, of which Indian J. Pharm. Sci. accounts for 326 papers, Indian J. Pharmacol. accounts for 61 papers and Pharmacogn. Mag. accounts for 54 papers) and crystallography (440 papers from one journal – Acta
Crystallogr. Sect. E – Struct. Rep. Online).

Distribution of Indian OA papers by institution and cost of publication
We did not attempt to find out the distribution of all Indian papers (or just the papers published in OA journals) by institution, as the only way it could be done was to download each record and check the author affiliation manually. Considering the large number of records we are dealing with we thought the results would not be commensurate with the effort. Nor have we attempted to evaluate the costs to India of publishing in OA journals. In 2009, Indian researchers had published 2,646 papers in 399 OA journals published from outside India. Many of these journals may charge a fee from the author; some of them charge about US$ 3,000. However, many of these journals are ready to waive the charges for authors from the developing countries. But still some authors may have paid the fees. Gathering such data (how much Indian authors have spent in 2009 for publishing their papers in OA journals) is not an easy task. One has to contact each author.

Incidentally, no Indian OA journal charges an author side fee. Most Indian OA journals still sell subscription to their print versions; many of them carry advertisements; some of them are supported by grants from the government (Department of Science and Technology and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi).

Conclusion

OA to research findings can be provided by two ways: by publishing the papers in OA journals (the gold route) and or by placing the full text of the papers along with metadata in interoperable OA archives (the green route). At least three leading publishers of S&T journals in India have opted to go the OA way. MedKnow publishes more than 150 OA journals. The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, adopted OA for all its journals more than ten years ago. Indeed, Pramana, its physics journal, was made open access in July 1998. More recently, CSIR made all 16 research journals published by the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources OA. A few years ago the Indian Council of Medical Research made the Indian Journal of Medical Research OA. While these moves are certainly welcome, we believe that the OA archives route is the ideal solution, especially for developing countries. No matter whether they publish their papers in OA or toll-access journals, Indian researchers will do well to place the full text of their papers in institutional repositories. Stevan Harnad, founder of Psycoloquy stopped publishing the journal in 2001, as it became clear to him by then that author self-archiving in interoperable institutional repositories was the best route to ensure 100% OA to the world’s scholarly literature.

In November 2009, 41 Nobel laureates wrote an open letter to the US Congress expressing their support to OA to research. They believed that the open availability of research ‘will make it easier for scientists worldwide to better and more swiftly address the complex scientific challenges that we face today and expand shared knowledge across disciplines to accelerate breakthrough and spur innovation’. P. Balaram told SciDev.Net; ‘I think every institution should be encouraged to set up a repository. This is a problem-free model I want to promote. There may be a few glitches at the start, but the next generation of scientists will be comfortable with it’.

In a recent blog posting, Giridhar said ‘The best way to make the work open access in India is not necessarily by publishing it in open access journals but by depositing the article in an institutional repository’. The Indian Academy of Sciences has recently set up a repository for papers by all its Fellows, both living and deceased. As of 7 October 2011, more than 60,500 papers/documents were deposited, but a vast majority of them do not provide access to the full text. One has to be content with metadata and abstracts. CSIR has decided to set up repositories in each one of its more than 35 laboratories.

Note: Subbiah Gunasekaran is in the Knowledge Resource Centre, CSIR – Central Electrochemical Research Institute, Karaikudi 630 006, India and Subbiah Arunachalam is in the Centre for Internet and Society, No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur 2nd Stage, Bangalore 560 071, India. *For correspondence. (e-mail: guna1970@gmail.com).

[]. Madhan, M. and Arunachalam, S., Use made of open access journals by Indian researchers to publish their findings. Curr. Sci., 2011, 100, 1297–1306.

[]. McVeigh, M. E., Open access journals in the ISI citation databases: analysis of impact factors and citation patterns. A citation study from Thomson Scientific, October 2004; available at http:// scientific.thomsonreuters.com/m/pdfs/openaccesscitations2.pdf

[].Morrison, H., Dramatic growth of open access: Open Data Edition – Full Data, 30 September 2011; http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2011/09/dramatic-growth-of-open-access.html

[]. Jothy, S., Bridging the knowledge gap through open access. J. Gate Newslett., 2011, 3; http://www.informaticsglobal.com/iil_newsletter_openaccess.asp

[]. Kuchma, I., The state of open access publishing and open access repositories in Africa. Presented at Africa Day for Librarians, Nordic Africa Institute Library, Uppsala, Sweden, 9 November
2010.

[]. Lawrence, S., Free online availability substantially increases a paper’s impact. Nature, 2001, 411, 521

[]. Swan, A., The open access citation advantage: studies and results to date. Technical Report, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, 2010; http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18516/2/Citation_advantage_paper.pdf

[]. Gargouri, Y., Hajjem, C., Larivière, V., Gingras, Y., Carr, L., Brody, T. and Harnad, S., Self-selected or mandated, open access increases citation impact for higher quality research. PLoS One, 2010, 5(10), e13636.

[]. Wagner, A. B., Open access citation advantage: an annotated bibliography.Iss. Sci. Technol. Librarianship, 2010, Winter; http:// www.istl.org/10-winter/article2.html

[]. Evans, J. A. and Reimer, J., Open access and global participation in science. Science, 2009, 323, 1025.

[]. Björk, B.-C., Welling, P., Laakso, M., Majlender, P., Hedlund, T. and Guðnason, G., Open access to the scientific journal literature: situation 2009. PLoS One, 2010, 5(6), e11273.

[]. Dallmeier-Tiessen, S. et al., Highlights from the SOAP project survey. What scientists think about open access publishing, 20 January 2011; http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1101/1101.5260.pdf

[]. Giles, J., PR’s ‘pit bull’ takes on open access. Nature, 2007, 445, 347.

[]. An open letter to the US Congress signed by 41 Nobel Prize winners (10 November 2009); http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/ issues/frpaa/frpaa_supporters/nobelists_2009.shtm

[]. Jayaraman, K. S., Open archives – the alternative to open access, interview with P. Balaram, SciDev.Net, 9 July 2008; http://www.scidev.net/en/features/q-a-open-archives-thealternative-to-openaccess.html

[]. Madras, G., Impact factor and journals, 15 May 2011; http://giridharmadras.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_archive.html

Acknowledgement: We thank Thomson Reuters for providing the list of OA journals indexed in the Web of Science (SCI Expanded), and Ms S. Jothy, Informatics India Ltd, Bangalore, for providing Figure 2.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/current-science-vol-101-10-1287-s-gunasekharan-s-arunachalam-use-of-open-access-journals-by-indian-researchers

NVDA

praskrishna — 2013-05-23T04:45:15Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/nvda-e-speak.pdf

RAW Monographs

praskrishna — 2013-05-22T08:45:29Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/monograph-posters.pdf