Centre for 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)

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[]. 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.

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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).

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[]. 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

NGO invites public to peruse its accounts

praskrishna — 2013-05-21T14:38:38Z

Domlur-based The Centre for Internet and Society opens its books for anyone to see and track every rupee of the Rs 13.13 crore it received from donors.

This article by Vandana Kamath was published in the Bangalore Mirror on May 18, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

In an unusual but ‘clean’ way of celebrating its fifth anniversary, a city-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) has invited the general public to inspect its books of accounts, check out its list of donors and view contracts. At a time when several NGOs are under the scanner for trying to shroud financial transactions in secrecy, The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a non-profit research organisation that defends consumer rights on the Internet, has upped its policy of transparency a notch.

Located in Domlur and largely patronised by Bangalore’s tech community, CIS’s books of accounts will be available for public scrutiny during its fifth anniversary celebrations from May 20 to 23 and will show how the NGO has spent the Rs 13.13 crore it has received from donors since its launch.

Speaking to Bangalore Mirror, CIS executive director Sunil Abraham admitted that the move was to dispel any lingering doubts on the motives of his organisation. “These days, many NGOs have been in the news for misappropriation of donations,” Abraham said. “We want to keep our books of accounts open to the public. Apart from details like salaries drawn by each board member, many other details like contractual obligations with entities, details of donors and official travel expenses by board members can also be obtained. Anybody can walk into our office and ask to see the accounts. A photocopy of all the details will also be given to them at the earliest.”

In fact, a recent debate in the Rajya Sabha centred on the lack of transparency among NGOs receiving contributions from overseas after the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) was passed in 2010. With 17 donors, a majority of who are from overseas, CIS ensures that every rupee obtained is well spent and accounted for.

“We have made public a list of donors and their share of contributions to our society,” Abraham said. “This will give everybody a clear picture of the funds we receive and where and how it is being spent.”

CIS is primarily funded by the Kusuma Trust, The Wikimedia Foundation and The Hans Foundation among others. The society was founded in 2008 and has 17 staff of whom four are based in Delhi and the rest in Bangalore. The society also has seven distinguished fellows and five fellows.

It conducts policy research programmes on topics like accessibility, access to knowledge, openness, internet governance and telecom. The society has churned out 641 research items in five years that include essays, books and blog entries on the topics. It has also conducted research on the accessibility of the e-governance system and has suggested ways to make it more disabled-friendly.

As part of its anniversary celebrations, the society will hold a four-day event in its office starting May 20 that will include an exhibition showcasing its activities so far. Various artists like Kiran Subbaiah, Tara Kelton, Navin Thomas and Abhishekh Hazra are expected to participate and give live demonstrations.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/bangalore-mirror-vandana-kamath-may-18-2013-ngo-invites-public-to-peruse-its-accounts

THE PORN ULTIMATUM?

praskrishna — 2013-06-05T09:56:24Z

Ravi Sharma (name changed), a 22-year old auto driver, watches adult-rated movie clips on his smartphone whenever he is on a tea break. Like most of his friends in New Delhi, Sharma has a flash drive reserved for sleazy movies. Sharma’s access to pornography could soon become a crime, much like assault or drunken driving, if Kamlesh Vaswani has his way.

This article by Adith Charlie, Rajesh Kurup and Priyanka Pani was published in the Hindu Business Line on May 21, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Vaswani, an Indore-based lawyer had filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in Supreme Court, requesting to make watching porn a non-bailable offence. He also wants a complete ban on pornography. He says he has his reasons too.

In a recent incident in the capital, a five-year-old girl was allegedly raped by two men and left to die. According to media reports, the accused had watched porn on their mobile phones minutes before the crime. There has been a 7.1 per cent increase in crime against women nationwide since 2010, as per data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Vaswani believes that the free availability of porn is making the country unsafe for women.

Nirmala Samant Prabhavalkar, member of National Commission for Women (NCW), says that viewing porn, especially at an impressionable age, becomes “an addiction and trains the mind in an inhumane and sadist way”.

According to Google Trends, India ranks fourth in the world for searching the word ‘porn’, a testimony that pornography, mainly electronic, is available across the country. New Delhi has the dubious distinction of the highest-worldwide percentage of searches for “porn” in 2012.

As smartphones become ubiquitous and cheaper (price starts around Rs 3,000) they offer a perfect medium for viewing adult content. A 2011 study by IMRB found that one in every five Indian mobile users wants adult content on 3G-enabled phones.

A different view

Vaswani is not the only crusader against pornography, but is a representative of the minority. The majority favours another strand of thinking: that what an adult views in his private space should not be controlled by the establishment.

They feel that increased censorship of the web would clamp down on the constitutionally enshrined principles of the freedom of speech and expression.

But what is termed as pornography, or what degree of obscenity should be blocked?

Interestingly, the term pornography when used in relation to an offence is not defined in any statutes in India. It is obscenity that has been effectively explained in the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.

The section 67 of the Information Technology Act states that publishing or transmission of obscene and sexually explicit material in electronic form is punishable. Child pornography, is prohibited under Section 67B of IT Act.

According to the Indian Penal Code (Section 292) a person in mere possession of the obscene stuff for his personal use without any intention of producing or disseminating the material is not culpable.

However, obscenity means different things for different people.

“In countries such as Saudi Arabia, even showing cleavage falls under pornographic purview. So, who decides what is morally acceptable in the Indian society?” asks Rajesh Chharia, President of the Internet Service Providers Association of India.

Technologically possible

A blanket ban on porn Web sites, as is the case in Denmark and Australia (for extreme content), risks banning innocent Web sites too. In 2008, whistle blower WikiLeaks had released the names of sites which were blocked by Denmark’s regulators. Many regular sites were erroneously included in the list. Porn, available in India, is mainly hosted on overseas servers, making it difficult to monitor them, while those on domestic platforms can be easily restricted, according to Vishak Raman, Senior Regional Director of Fortinet, a network security provider. Yet, the technology exists for making a full-fledged ban on porn possible.

In case the Supreme Court upholds the PIL, the onus of implementation will be on the telecom regulator, the Department of Telecommunications and, the Department of Information Technology.

Raman says that companies like his can provide a ‘semi-inline’ solution, for a multi-million dollar fee, to block porn. It is unlikely that DIT and DoT will bear the cost of the entire exercise.

Thus, the ISPs would have to make the investments for a porn-free internet, says an industry official.

Sexual Behaviour

But then could pornography be solely responsible for aggressive sexual behaviour? Contemporary literature does provide some insights. Watching pornography does contribute to an increased risk of violent behaviour but only in men who have aggressive sexual tendencies, as per research by Neil Malamuth, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. In other words, porn does not turn all ordinary men into rapists.

“There has been definitely a spurt in sex-related crimes in the country. However, we can’t say that a total ban on porn will free the society from such evil, but yes there should be a restriction on content on Internet,” NCW’s Prabhavalkar said.

On a TV talk show, porn star and actress Sunny Leone had said: “It's complete nonsense to blame rape on adult material out there. Education starts at home. It's the moms and dads sitting with their children and teaching them what is right and wrong.”

When eWorld approached Leone to understand her outlook on the PIL, husband Daniel Webber said that they do not have any views on the matter. “Whatever is decided by the Supreme Court in this country is decided,” he said.

The Establishment

Pranesh Prakash, a policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, says that the government cannot cite the IT Act and block content on grounds of it being immoral following the 2009 amendments to the Act.

In 2010, the Bombay High Court, had rejected a PIL filed by Janhit Manch. The NGO wanted the court to direct the government to block pornographic Web sites on the grounds that they have “an adverse influence, leading youth on a delinquent path”. The court held that it would be unconstitutional to do so as it would be infringing on the citizens’ freedom of expression.

Further, the Court observed said that the petitioner should file a complaint under the IT Act, if he feels aggrieved.

Says Nithianandan Balagopalan, a Mumbai-based lawyer: “Any law that falls foul of fundamental rights of a citizen of India is open to be challenged in a court of law and can be struck down as being ‘ultra fires’ if indeed found to be so.

Yet, Vaswani believes he has a strong case. “The court (in the 2010 Janhit Manch PIL) might have passed orders safeguarding the freedom of free speech and expression. What we are discussing here is not speech, but conduct. This cultural pollution has to stop,” he was quoted in the media.

Some experts believe that proper enforcement of existing laws are more important that enacting new ones. “There should be stringent punishment for those involved in organised production and distribution of pornographic material. The police must not be lenient with such people,” says Ramesh Vaidyanathan, Managing Partner of Advaya Legal.

Around the world

India is not the only democracy in the world to consider a ban on pornography. The latest to join the ranks is Iceland, which too wants a ban as part of its attempts to completely do away with the country’s sex industry. In 2009, it introduced fines and jail terms for those who patronise prostitutes, and later in 2010 it banned strip clubs.

A ban on porn would mean restrictions on the use of the Internet. A free Internet stimulates innovation. The world's largest democracy and a model for much of the developing world, India is set to become one of the most important test cases for the future of Internet freedom globally. Any decision by the Supreme Court on this front would be path-breaking, ramifications of which would be felt for a long time to come.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/hindu-businessline-adith-charlie-rajesh-kurup-priyanka-pani-may-21-2013-the-porn-ultimatum

Institute on Internet & Society

praskrishna — 2013-05-21T09:39:55Z

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

WORLD WIDE PLAYGROUND

praskrishna — 2013-06-05T09:47:33Z

The Delhi High Court recently asked the central government to explain why minors are allowed to create online accounts on social networking sites such as Facebook or Orkut. The High Court’s question stems from a petition filed by former senior BJP leader K.N. Govindacharya last year.

The Op-ed was published in the Telegraph on May 15, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Govindacharya argued that by allowing minors to open accounts on social media sites, the companies of these sites were violating the Indian Majority Act, 1875, the Indian Contract Act, 1872, and the Information Technology Act, 2000.

One of Govindacharya’s main concerns is that when minors give false information to open an account on an online portal, they are liable to be held guilty for a criminal offence.

“Providing false information about oneself is more of a crime than a civil wrong,” explains Debsankar Chowdhury, a Calcutta-based cyber law expert. “However, if it is provided with an intention to enter into a contract which otherwise is not allowed, it is tantamount to fraud under Section 17 of the Contract Act of 1872.”

For minors, though, Chowdhury points out that the Juvenile Justice Act, 2005, will be brought into play, and they will face lighter sentences.

As for the social networking companies themselves, according to the law of the land they can be held accountable if a user provides them with false information. As Pavan Duggal, a Supreme Court advocate and expert on cyber law, points out, “All social networking sites are intermediaries under Section 2(1)(w) of the amended Information Technology Act, 2000. They are made responsible for all third party data or information made available by them under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000.” As such, social networking sites would be held accountable for allowing people, especially minors, to create fake profiles on their networks under Section 79 and 85 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, he adds.

The other problem here is that while a social networking site like Facebook allows anyone over 13 to open an account, according to Indian law, anyone under 18 years of age is a minor; and a minor cannot enter into a contract with any entity. “The issue raised in Govindacharya’s petition is of a fundamental nature,” opines Duggal. “Section 3 of the Indian Majority Act, 1875, clearly states that every person domiciled in India shall attain the age of majority on his completing the age of 18 years. However, Facebook allows 13-year-olds to become its members. Since children lack the inherent capacity to contract under the Indian Contract Act, 1872, the contract entered into between Indian children below the age of 18 years and Facebook is null and void.”

But though the nitty gritty of the law seems to be weighted against children below 18 — or even 13 — joining social networking sites, not everyone believes that kids should be prevented from having a presence online. Six months ago, 10-year-old Shruti (name changed) met with an accident, and was bedridden for some time. She was bored and miserable. To cheer her up, her father signed her on to Facebook — yes, by providing false information about her age.

Other parents may not take a similar view of their young children joining Facebook under false pretexts. But Ashok Agarwal, a Delhi-based lawyer and child rights activist, believes that Govindacharya’s petition demonstrates an outdated way of thinking. “We are letting children speak at the UN and in Parliament, but we don’t want to let them speak online,” he says. “Allowing children to use sites like Facebook doesn’t hurt them, and if anything, denying them access to it would be denying them their universal Right to Participate. This right is part of Unicef’s Convention on the Rights of the Child.” And also it’s denying them access to a tool and medium that is, and will be, an integral part of their lives, adds Agarwal.

Leaving aside the debate on whether or not children below a certain age should be allowed on social networking sites, Chowdhury points out that right now there is no means of checking the age of those who are signing in to these online portals.

In fact, Section D of Govindacharya’s petition does point out the need for some kind of verification process when people create an online account, much like what phone service providers do when someone applies for a new connection.

But experts point out that this is not feasible in the case of social networking sites. Says Chowdhury, “Mobile companies operate their network in specific locations, whereas sites like Facebook exist worldwide. Moreover, these portals don’t take a single penny from their users. So do you really think it is possible to make offline verification?”

Indeed, verification of user data — ostensibly to cut out underage persons from logging on to social networking sites — has much wider ramifications. Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, points out that it could start a downward spiral towards loss of online privacy. “If anyone wants to create an account on a website, but has to provide some sort of verifiable data, you’re going to remove a person’s ability to post anonymously on the Internet. Then what happens to freedom of speech? People like to post online anonymously, but if everyone’s identity is known, that privacy is revoked.”

The effect of social networking sites on children will be debated for a long time. But clearly, it would be tough to enforce laws to prevent children from logging on to these sites.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-telegraph-op-ed-may-15-2013-world-wide-playground

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD 2013) - CIS panel

maria — 2021-09-27T08:34:34Z

Interested in understanding the importance of accessibility and how technology can become more accessible by persons with disabilities? Read this post on the Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)!

Last week, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) held a panel on the Global Accessibility Awareness Day which entailed a three hour discussion on how technology can become more accessible by persons with disabilities. GAAD is a community-driven effort with an aim to raise the profile of digital accessibility and people with different disabilities. The target audience of the panel was the design, development, usability and related communities who build, shape, fund and influence technology and its use. This event consisted of presentations by Accessibility professionals in the industry, as well as of hands on demonstrations of how people with disabilities can use technology.

Vivek Gaikwad started his presentation by defining the term “accessibility” as easy access and by pointing out that the World Health Organization considers “disability” an umbrella term covering impairment, activity limitation and participation restriction, which would not only entail the deaf and blind, but even pregnant women. Assistive technology was defined as a device, a technology or a process used by individuals with disabilities to perform functions which might otherwise have been impossible. Gaikwad emphasized that accessibility is an extremely significant issue in terms of legal compliance and would also help create new markets by including people with disabilities.

Section 508 of the U.S. Workforce Rehabilitation Act 1973 was pointed out by Gaikwad, as well as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) - developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative- which provide an internationally recognized benchmark for accessibility of web content. Gaikwad argued that India should comply with such guidelines and that the best practices to adopt could be the following:

● Provide an appropriate alternative text for all images

● Provide meaningful and hierarchical heading structure

● Provide accessible colours

● Ensure that the application is usable by both the keyboard and the mouse

● Ensure that the focus caret is shown on the active control on the screen

● Ensure that the link purpose is clear

● Specify language of the page

● Understand ECAG 2.0/Section 508 thoroughly

● Educate teams/peers

● Create your own best practices and share them

● Learn how to use a screen reader/other testing tools

● Think in different ways to satisfy a guideline

Lavanya Lakshman started her presentation by introducing the the different types of disabilities and by emphasizing the significance of accessibility. In particular, Lakshman argued that accessibility is important not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is the law, it offers benefits for all users, it enhances innovative technology and it creates new market opportunities. Lakshman referred to the various assistive technologies used by persons with disabilities, such as screen readers, to use the computer. It was emphasized that SME testing is important because experts understand how the underlying technologies interact and that end-user testing is also crucial because they are the real experts in their own abilities and their own assistive technology. Accessibility can be tested through automated tools and manual testing and SME testing can be conducted through screening, tool based inspection and evaluation, and code inspection. Laksham highly emphasized that most assistive technologies for people with motor disabilities either work through the keyboard or emulate the functionality of the keyboard, which is why assistive technologies - such as an over sized trackball, an eye-tracker and a head-wand, were recommended.

Srividya Vaidyanathan argued that audio visual media accessibility is needed by everyone and that it should not only be restricted to persons with disabilities. Intelligence picture and sound, accessible players and access services are needed and as there is not much of TV and radio accessibility in India, this field should be further developed. Vaidyanathan also referred to the various types of access services, such as captions (closed and open), sign language and audio description.

Anusuya Das focused her presentation on the print disabled, which are persons who cannot read standard print because of visual impairment, cognitive disabilities (such as dyslexia, autism, ADHD and others), or physical disabilities that limit one´s ability to hold a book. In particular, she argued that braille books include print alternatives and that time and format are critical factors while creating accessible materials. Structure, navigation and simplicity are central concepts of accessible content and it should comply with the Digitial Accessibility Information System (DAISY) standards, which are international standards for accessible content. Das referred to the various advanced accessibility features, such as bookmarking, and emphasized that combined text and audio can increase learning effectiveness by nearly 50%. E-Pub is the mainstream standard, but the United Nations have recommended the DAISY standards. My Studio PC, Obi, Microsoft save as DAISY, Sigtuna DAR 3, Tobi and Dolphin Producer include authoring and production tools.

Das also referred to the various types of DAISY books which may include a full audio and navigation centre, text and no audio or text with audio. Das emphasized upon the need to create accessible word documents, as well as to give alternate text for images and to edit hyperlinks. Principles for regional languages were mentioned, along with the need to convert texts to other formats, such as converting word to HTML. Das also argued that accessible powerpoint files should be created, which would ensure that files have correctly-structured headings among other features. PlexTalk Portable Recorder includes a hardware option for people with disabilities, while Symbian Nokia phones include mobile phone options and other software options are included in the DAISY Book Players.

Rama Chari, the final panelist, referred to the various types of disabilities, as well as to the built needs of people with disabilities. She emphasized that easy navigation in a website is extremely important and that the architecture should be simplified. It was further argued that India should comply with the international standards for information accessibility and that some of the best practices need to be adopted to create new standards. However, such practices vary from state to state in India (e.g. the fire safety standards) which is problematic. Nonetheless, Chari mentioned an organization in Delhi called “Accessibility”, which has very useful guidelines; these include standards for ramps, staircases and washrooms, and it is significant to evaluate the challenges that people with different disabilities face in order to improve such standards.

A discussion on the various tools to increase accessibility followed the presentations of the five panelists, as well as a hands on demonstration by Vivek Gaikwad of how to use more accessible mobile phones. The outcome of the GAAD panel was that in the current Digital Age, persons with disabilities should not be marginalised, but should be included in the social, political and economic structures of the contemporary digitised world. The tools discussed throughout the panel could potentially provide a decisive step in ensuring that persons with disabilities have equal access to technology. As technology today is the gateway to the contemporary world, accessibility is a fundamental human right and persons with disabilities should not be excluded. Through the thorough examination of the various needs of persons with disabilities and the subsequent enactment of adequate laws, standards and guidelines, India should enhance accessibility to technology if it wants to be the democracy it claims to be.

Presentation File

Srividya's Presentation

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/global-accessibility-awareness-day-event

Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment

subha — 2013-07-17T06:35:15Z

This blog encompasses the status of Odia Wikipedia and assessment of the needs for growth of the community.

This blog is part of the annual work plan for Odia Wikipedia which was updated on Odia Wikipedia and Meta Wiki.

Odia is one of the official languages of India. It is the official language of Odisha and the second official language of Jharkhand. Odia is also spoken in parts of West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. By 2011 census there are 3.6 crore Odia speakers across the world. Literacy rate of Odisha is 73.45 per cent (82.4 per cent male, 64.36 per cent female).

Majority of the computer users in Odisha were on Microsoft Windows platforms. Windows did not have a stable Odia language support until the release of Windows Vista. This would have forced majority of the computer users prefer English on Odia for internet communication. As per the 2011 census only 5.1 per cent of the 9,661,085 households of Odisha had computers and 1.4 per cent (357,460 households) of the households had access to internet. Odia Wikipedia has only 13 active contributors[1] who are based both in and out of Odisha and contributed to 3715 articles.[2]

Low computer/internet penetration, lack of promotion/outreach of Odia Wikipedia are some of the major factors which resulted in low Wikipedia participation. Odia Wikipedia celebrated its 9th anniversary on January 29, 2013 which is marked to be the date of its first edit in 2004.[3] The project was inactive for about 8 years until February 2011.[4]

Community building process slowly started by February-March 2011 by some of the active wikipedians in Bengaluru and gradually in six other cities in and out of Odisha.[5]The community so far has organized 18 meet-ups, 10 workshops and worked on a major media donation project on Wikimedia Commons.[6] Six on-wiki projects on various subjects[7] and rolled a Wikipedia education program.[8]

Fact Sheet

Wikimedia projects	No. of Editors/Contributors (2011-12)	No. of Editors (2012-13)	No. of Active editors (2011-12)	No. of Active editors (2012-13)	No. of Articles/ entries (2011-12)	No. of Articles/ entries (2012-13)	No. of Page views per months
Wikipedia	29	64	19	14	1951	3209	330161
Wiktionary	6	14	1	2	98	155	30618

Identified Needs

This section gives a broad idea of the challenges for community/wikipedia growth for which there is a need of programatic and technical intervention.

Lack of awareness

Lack of media presence: Mainstream Odia language media is still unaware of the presence and importance of Odia Wikipedia. There is a need for wider media coverage about Odia Wikipedia.
Lack of focussed meetups/outreach events due to dispersed community: Outreach events and meetups have not been customized for the target audience and have been done in a low scale because of the small community dispersed in six different cities. Physical meetups often have been more on technical issues and not much focus on designing strategies for growing content and community. Experienced wikipedians conducting outreach need to be trained properly to conduct productive outreach events.
More city centric communities: Majority of community members are located in three major cities; Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Nalconagar. This has resulted in outreach events being more delimited to these three cities only. There is a need for taking Odia Wikipedia to more cities.
Target age group for outreach: Till date the targeted audience for outreach are mostly engineering/other students based in cities where English is predominantly the language of communication in terms of written/computer communication and partly verbal communication. Many of the elderly masses are unaware of even the existence of Odia Wikipedia. More of young professionals, elderly and retired professionals need to be involved in the outreach.

Accessibility issues

Technical hindrance

Lack of Unicode usage: Printing industry professionals still use non-Unicode fonts for typing. There are at least three major different typing schemes and font categories used across the industry (includes book/magazine/newspaper publishers, print/digital media). Font converter tools of high accuracy are needed for easy conversion of such available content and using them as primary resources.
Lack of support in typing schemes: Those who are experienced in typing schemes other than the ones used on Odia Wikipedia (InScript, Transliteration, Phonetic) often fail to adapt the typing schemes of Odia Wikipedia. There is a need of new typing schema for simplifying typing in Odia.

Content

Lack of Open-Source culture: There is very little presence of the open source methodology across academia, media industry and public and private sector organization. A lot of resources produced are either not digitized and distributed or copyrighted. This has been a road block to the Wikipedia community to make use of any kind of archived and digitized resource. Wikipedians need to be connected to more open source communities, exchange ideas/information and spreading words across other communities.
Lack of resource dissemination because of support: Some of the digitized resources are not being distributed because of shortage of manpower and resource. A book digitization project initiated by Srujanika faced many hindrances during distribution including copyright issues, hosting and manpower for support. Such resources need to be gathered and distributed for community use.

Community

Role of experienced wikipedians: There is a need of more experienced wikipedians coming forward to take the lead of projects along with their primary contribution for articles. Wikipedia could be a platform for them to reach out to more people who are in the domain of knowledge dissemination and language resource building.

[1]. Wikimedia stats. January 2013

[2].https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics

[3].http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriya_Wikipedia

[4].http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Tinucherian_and_Shijualex/Wiki_Community_development_in_India_and_newsletter/Report#Bhubaneshwar

[5].http://shijualex.in/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2011/

[6].https://or.wikipedia.org/s/ay

[7].https://or.wikipedia.org/s/jf

[8]. https://or.wikipedia.org/s/cgj

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-needs-assessment

Google Policy Fellowship Programme: Call for Applications

praskrishna — 2013-05-17T01:01:47Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (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 Google Policy Fellowship offers successful candidates an opportunity to develop research and debate on the fellowship focus areas, which include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom, for a period of about ten weeks starting from July 7, 2013 upto October 1, 2013. CIS will select the India Fellow. Send in your applications for the position by June 15, 2013.

To apply, please send to google.fellowship@cis-india.org the following materials:

Statement of Purpose: A brief write-up outlining about your interest and qualifications for the programme including the relevant academic, professional and extracurricular experiences. As part of the write-up, also explain on what you hope to gain from participation in the programme and what research work concerning free expression online you would like to further through this programme. (About 1200 words max).
Resume
Three references

Fellowship Focus Areas

Access to Knowledge: Studies looking at access to knowledge issues in India in light of copyright law, consumers law, parallel imports and the interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property rights, targeted at policymakers, Members of Parliament, publishers, photographers, filmmakers, etc.

Openness in India: Studies with policy recommendations on open access to scholarly literature, free access to law, open content, open standards, free and open source software, aimed at policymakers, policy researchers, academics and the general public.

Freedom of Expression: Studies on policy, regulatory and legislative issues concerning censorship and freedom of speech and expression online, aimed at bloggers, journalists, authors and the general public.

Privacy: Studies on privacy issues like data protection and the right to information, limits to privacy in light of the provisions of the constitution, media norms and privacy, banking and financial privacy, workplace privacy, privacy and wire-tapping, e-governance and privacy, medical privacy, consumer privacy, etc., aimed at policymakers and the public.

Telecom: Building awareness and capacity on telecommunication policy in India for researchers and academicians, policymakers and regulators, consumer and civil society organisations, education and library institutions and lay persons through the creation of a dedicated web based resource focusing on knowledge dissemination.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Google Policy Fellowship program?

The Google Policy Fellowship program offers students interested in Internet and technology related policy issues with an opportunity to spend their summer working on these issues at the Centre for Internet and Society at Bangalore. Students will work for a period of ten weeks starting from June 1, 2013. The research agenda for the program is based on legal and policy frameworks in the region connected to the ground-level perceptions of the fellowship focus areas mentioned above.

I am an International student can I apply and participate in the program? Are there any age restrictions on participating?

Yes. You must be 18 years of age or older by January 1, 2013 to be eligible to participate in Google Policy Fellowship program in 2013.

Are there citizenship requirements for the Fellowship?

For the time being, we are only accepting students eligible to work in India (e.g. Indian citizens, permanent residents of India, and individuals presently holding an Indian student visa. Google cannot provide guidance or assistance on obtaining the necessary documentation to meet the criteria.

Who is eligible to participate as a student in Google Policy Fellowship program?

In order to participate in the program, you must be a student. Google defines a student as an individual enrolled in or accepted into an accredited institution including (but not necessarily limited to) colleges, universities, masters programs, PhD programs and undergraduate programs. Eligibility is based on enrollment in an accredited university by January 1, 2013.

I am an International student can I apply and participate in the program?

In order to participate in the program, you must be a student (see Google's definition of a student above). You must also be eligible to work in India (see section on citizen requirements for fellowship above). Google cannot provide guidance or assistance on obtaining the necessary documentation to meet this criterion.
I have been accepted into an accredited post-secondary school program, but have not yet begun attending. Can I still take part in the program?

As long as you are enrolled in a college or university program as of January 1, 2013, you are eligible to participate in the program.
I graduate in the middle of the program. Can I still participate?

As long as you are enrolled in a college or university program as of January 1, 2013, you are eligible to participate in the program.

Payments, Forms, and Other Administrative Stuff

How do payments work?

Google will provide a stipend of USD 7,500 equivalent to each Fellow for the summer.

Accepted students in good standing with their host organization will receive a USD 2,500 stipend payable shortly after they begin the Fellowship in June 2013.
Students who receive passing mid-term evaluations by their host organization will receive a USD 1,500 stipend shortly after the mid-term evaluation in July 2013.
Students who receive passing final evaluations by their host organization and who have submitted their final program evaluations will receive a USD 3,500 stipend shortly after final evaluations in August 2013.

Please note: Payments will be made by electronic bank transfer, and are contingent upon satisfactory evaluations by the host organization, completion of all required enrollment and other forms. Fellows are responsible for payment of any taxes associated with their receipt of the Fellowship stipend.

*While the three step payment structure given here corresponds to the one in the United States, disbursement of the amount may be altered as felt necessary.

What documentation is required from students?

Students should be prepared, upon request, to provide Google or the host organization with transcripts from their accredited institution as proof of enrollment or admission status. Transcripts do not need to be official (photo copy of original will be sufficient).

I would like to use the work I did for my Google Policy Fellowship to obtain course credit from my university. Is this acceptable?

Yes. If you need documentation from Google to provide to your school for course credit, you can contact Google. We will not provide documentation until we have received a final evaluation from your mentoring organization.

Host Organizations

What is Google's relationship with the Centre for Internet and Society?

Google provides the funding and administrative support for individual fellows directly. Google and the Centre for Internet and Society are not partners or affiliates. The Centre for Internet and Society does not represent the views or opinions of Google and cannot bind Google legally.

Important Dates

What is the program timeline?

June 15, 2013	Student Application Deadline. Applications must be received by midnight.
July 1, 2013	Student applicants are notified of the status of their applications.
July 2013	Students begin their fellowship with the host organization (start date to be determined by students and the host organization); Google issues initial student stipends.
August 2013	Mid-term evaluations; Google issues mid-term stipends.
October 2013	Final evaluations; Google issues final stipends.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/google-policy-fellowship-call-for-applications-2013

CIS anniversary

praskrishna — 2013-05-06T07:28:07Z

The Centre for Internet and Society will celebrate five years of its existence with an exhibition showcasing its works and accomplishments.

This was published in Hindu Business Line on May 5, 2013

The exhibition will be held concurrently at both Bangalore and Delhi offices from May 20 to 24, 2013, said a press release.

“To promote transparency, we're getting the general public to be our auditors by throwing open our account books and contracts which show how we have spent the Rs 8.3 crore received from our donors.”

The exhibition will also see artists like Kiran Subbaiah, Tara Kelton, Navin Thomas, Abhishek Hazra, among others exhibiting their works, as well as lectures.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-business-line-may-5-2013-cis-anniversary

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS

praskrishna — 2014-02-25T09:15:58Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is celebrating 5 years of its existence with an exhibition showcasing its activities and accomplishments. The exhibition will be held at its offices in Bangalore and Delhi from May 20 to 23, 2013.

Download all the posters exhibited during the recent exhibition here.

As a move to promote transparency, CIS is inviting the general public to be its auditors by throwing open its account books and contracts which show how it has spent the Rs. 13.13 crores received from its donors. The four-day event will see renowned artists like Kiran Subbaiah, Tara Kelton, Navin Thomas and Abhishek Hazra featuring their work and also giving live demonstrations.

Agenda

Open exhibition on all the 4 days from 10.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m., in Bangalore and Delhi. The evening programmes will be held in Bangalore. Dinner will be served right afterwards.

Evening Programmes

May 20, 2013

18.00 19.00	Why did I buy a set-top box?: What we know, don't know and need to know about Digitalisation — A Talk by Vibodh Parthasarathi Why are we being asked to install set-top boxes? How will this change what we want, and pay for, on TV? Grappling with these questions, the talk will evaluate the rationale of the digital migration in cable currently underway, and the less talked about digital migration being planned for the public broadcaster. These scarcely debated and often contentious issues form the core of a recent Country Report on the Media in India, anchored by the speaker. The India Country Report, the first inter-sectoral and policy oriented study of our electronic media landscape, finds the ongoing digitalisation of cable, the infusion of digital tools in the press and the proposed digital switchover of the public broadcaster, posing varied challenges not only to journalism but to public interest at large. This report is part of a global initiative, Mapping Digital Media, examining opportunities and risks amidst the transitions to a digital media ecology across 50 countries. Video
19.00 19.30	Film Screening on Cyber Cafes of Rural India by Video Volunteers Video Volunteers in partnership with CIS have been documenting the cyber cafes of rural India. Kamini Menon and Christy Raj will do the screening of seven 2-minute films: Cyber Cafe Trends Slowly Changing in Imphal by Achungmei Kamei (Manipur) Transgender Interaction with Cyber Cafes by Christy Raj (Karnataka) Cyber Cafes Prevail Over Mobile Phones in Nagaland by Meribeni Kikon (Nagaland) Mobile Technology Threatens Cyber Cafes in HP by Avdhesh Negi (Himachal Pradesh) Cyber Cafe Visit - A Day's Journey by Saroj Paraste (Madhya Pradesh) The Challenges of Establishing Cyber Cafes by Rohini Pawar (Maharashtra) The Community Service Centre - Myth or Reality? by Neeru Rathod (Gujarat) Video
19.30 20.00	Hindustani Classical Performance by Aditya Dipankar
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283 Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

May 21, 2013

18.00 19.00	Screening of Sabaka A young elephant trainer in India vows revenge against the cult that killed his family. He seeks help from the local Maharajah who refuses, and he sets out alone to battle the enemy... Sabaka is a 1954 film produced and directed by Frank Ferrin starring Boris Karloff, Reginald Denny, June Foray, et.al.
19.00 20.00	Slouching towards Tlön: An Encyclopedia for the 2nd century of Indian cinema — A Talk by Lawrence Liang Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen’s Encyclopedia of Indian cinema (1994) marked an important moment for the study of Indian film history. In the two decades since its publication we have seen a rise in the academic community working on Indian film history along with the rise of various new archival initiatives online. Materials that were hitherto unavailable have also made their way into the public domain via the efforts of film historians, cinephiles and other enthusiasts. It is perhaps fitting to think about what a collaborative encyclopedia of Indian cinema for the 21st century may look like. Using Rajadhayksha and Willemen’s Encyclopedia as a base, Lawrence has been working on an online version that incorporates moving images, photographs and archival materials and his presentation will open up questions of how one thinks of an online encyclopedia as well as larger conceptual questions of the relationship between the encyclopedias, the internet and moving image archives. Video
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283, Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

May 22, 2013

Cybersecurity, Privacy and Surveillance

18.00 18.30	“The Indian Surveillance State”— A Talk by Maria Xynou The Central Monitoring System confirms that, starting from last month ‘Big Brother’ is a reality in India. But how do authorities get the tech to spy on us? Maria has started investigating surveillance technology companies operating in India. So far, 76 companies have been detected which are producing and selling different types of surveillance gear to Indian law enforcement agencies. Join us to see India´s first investigation of who is aiding our watchers! Video
18.30 19.00	Why Privacy and How? A Talk by Bernadette Langle "But I have nothing to hide!" That's what most people think. Are you sure? What about all the services you use for free, don't you think the service provider has to spend money on that, and that he needs to earn it somehow? Bernadette will show some alternatives and also how easy it can be, to put your messages in a virtual private envelope as you use to do with messages on paper. Video
19.00 19.45	Cyber Security Preview — Presentation by Laird Brown and Purba Sarkar CIS in cooperation with Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, is developing a film project on cyber security in India from a civil society perspective. Laird will show the preview of the project. The preview will include an overview of the project along with a video footage from the first series of interviews. Video
19.45 20.00	Faking of Fingerprints: A Presentation by Bernadette Langle Bernadette will give a brief presentation on how easy it is to fake a fingerprint. Afterwards you can get hands-on. Fake a fingerprint yourself and take it with you to your home. Video Video
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283, Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

May 23, 2013

Kannada Language and IT

18.00 18.15	Kannada in Modern Era: A Guest Talk by Dr. Chandrashekhara Kambara Dr. Chandrashekhara will be the chief guest for this session and will give a guest lecture. Video
18.15 19.30	From Palm Leaf to Tablet – Journey of Kannada: A Talk by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja Kannada language which has a history of 2000 years and quite rich in literature started on palm leaves. Kannada advanced with modern times adopting the marvels of Information Technology. This is accomplished by successfully implementing Kannada in various facets of IT. It is being used everywhere from data driven applications to websites to hand held devices like tablets. These aspects will be brought out during the talk. Summary in Kannada: ತಾಳೆಗರಿಯಿಂದ ಟ್ಯಾಬ್ಲೆಟ್ ತನಕ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಪಯಣ ಸುಮಾರು ಎರಡು ಸಾವಿರ ವರ್ಷಗಳ ಭವ್ಯ ಇತಿಹಾಸವಿರುವ ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯದ ಉಗಮ ತಾಳೆಗರಿಗಳ ಮೇಲೆ ಆಯಿತು. ಕನ್ನಡ ಭಾಷೆಯು ಆಧುನಿಕ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ಅದ್ಭುತ ಕೊಡುಗೆಗಳನ್ನು ತನ್ನದಾಗಿಸಿಕೊಂಡು ಬೆಳೆಯಿತು. ಮಾಹಿತಿ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ಎಲ್ಲ ಅಂಗಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಕನ್ನಡವನ್ನು ಅಳವಡಿಸಿ ಬಳಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳುವುದರ ಮೂಲಕ ಇದು ಸಾಧ್ಯವಾಯಿತು. ಆನ್ವಯಿಕ ತಂತ್ರಾಂಶವಿರಲಿ, ಪ್ರತಿಸ್ಪಂದನಾತ್ಮಕ ಜಾಲತಾಣವಿರಲಿ, ಕೈಯಲ್ಲಿ ಹಿಡಿದು ಕೆಲಸ ಮಾಡುವ ಟ್ಯಾಬ್ಲೆಟ್ ಇರಲಿ –ಎಲ್ಲ ಕಡೆ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಬಳಕೆ ಆಗುತ್ತಿದೆ. ಈ ಎಲ್ಲ ವಿಷಯಗಳ ಕಡೆ ಒಂದು ಪಕ್ಷಿನೋಟವನ್ನು ಈ ಭಾಷಣದಲ್ಲಿ ನೀಡಲಾಗುವುದು. Video
19.30 20.00	Carnatic Music Performance by Nirmita Narasimhan Video
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283 Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

About the Speakers

Vibodh Parthasarathi	Vibodh Parthasarathi works with the Centre for Culture and Media Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He is also a Board Member at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. He maintains a multidisciplinary interest in media and development policy, business history of creative industries, and governance of media infrastructure. At the Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, his ongoing research addresses media policy literacy, the TV news industry and the digital switchover in India. He is the co-editor of the critically acclaimed tri-series on Communication Process (Sage).
Lawrence Liang	Lawrence Liang is the Chairman of the Board at the Centre for Internet and Society. He is a graduate of the National Law School. He subsequently pursued his Masters degree in Law and Development at Warwick, on a Chevening Scholarship. His key areas of interest are law, technology and culture, the politics of copyright and he has been working closely with Sarai, New Delhi on a joint research project Intellectual Property and the Knowledge/Culture Commons. A keen follower of the open source movement in software, Lawrence has been working on ways of translating the open source ideas into the cultural domain. He has written extensively on these issues and is the author of The Public is Watching: Sex, Laws and Videotape and A Guide to Open Content Licenses. Lawrence has taught at NLS, the Asian College of Journalism, NALSAR, etc., and is currently working on a Ph.D. on the idea of cinematic justice at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Maria Xynou	Maria Xynou is a Policy Associate on the Privacy Project at the CIS. She has previously interned with Privacy International and with the Parliament of Greece. Maria holds a Master of Science in Security Studies from the University College London (UCL).
Bernadette Langle	Bernadette Längle recently graduated in social and cultural anthropology, philosophy and computer science. She is also a so-called hacktivist together with one of the oldest hacker associations of the world, the Chaos Computer Club, having a lot of influence in German politics. As one of the core-team organizer of Chaos Communication Congress in Germany she also has a lot of experience in organizing events.
Laird Brown	Laird Brown is a strategic planner and writer. His core competencies are brand analysis, public relations, and resource management. Laird has worked at the United Nations in New York; high-tech ventures in North America, Europe, and India; and, is a guest speaker at ICT conferences internationally. He is currently working on a film project for CIS on cyber security in India with Purba Sarkar.
Purba Sarkar	Purba Sarkar is an associate producer with the cyber security film project. She holds a Bachelor in Technology degree from West Bengal University of Technology. Purba worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail for 4 years before joining CIS in January, 2013.
Dr.Chandrashekhara Kambara	Dr. Chandrashekhara Kambara is a prominent poet, playwriter, folklorist, film director in Kannada language. He is also the founder-vice-chancellor of Kannada University in Hampi. He is known for his effective usage of North Karnataka dialect of Kannada language in his plays and poems and is often compared with D.R. Bendre. He has been conferred with many prestigious awards including the Jnanpith Award (the highest literary honour conferred in India) in 2011 for the year 2010, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Padma Shri by Government of India, Kabir Samman, Kalidas Samman and Pampa Award. After his retirement, Kambara was nominated Member of Karnataka Legislative Council, to which he made significant contributions through his interventions.
Dr. U.B. Pavanaja	Dr U B Pavanaja holds a Master’s degree from Mysore University and Ph.D. from Mumbai University. He was a scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, for about 15 years. He has done advanced research in Taiwan. He resigned from BARC in 1997 and dedicated himself fully for the cause of Computer and Indian languages. He has to his credit many firsts, viz., first Kannada website, first Kannada online magazine, first Indian language (Kannada) website to receive Golden Web Award, first Indian language (Kannada) editor for Palm OS, first Indian language (Kannada) editor for WinCE device (HP Jornado 720), first Indian language version (Kannada) of universally popular Logo (programming language for children) software, etc. His Kannada logo won the Manthan Award for the year 2006. He was a member of the technical advisory committee setup by the Govt. of Karnataka for Standardization of Kannada on Computers (2000). He is also a member of the Kannada Software Committee of Govt. of Karnataka (2008-current).

The Artists

Kiran Subbaiah	Kiran Subbaiah studied sculpture at Santiniketan, MSU Baroda and the RCA London. He was an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie Amsterdam where he worked on art that incorporated informatics and electro-mechanics. He is also known for making videos using custom-built tools that enable him to perform multi-person film-making tasks single-handed. His art is shown extensively in India and abroad. Subbaiah is based in Bangalore and is represented by the Chatterjee and Lal gallery in Mumbai. Kiran will present the Spectator, a robot that can sense the presence of human beings around it. It tries to appreciate them as works of art.
Tara Kelton	Tara Kelton is an artist and designer. She has been living in Brooklyn, USA and Bangalore, India for the last three years. She received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2009. Kelton’s video, print, and web-based works investigate moments in which technology alters our perception of the physical world. Kelton has taught at the Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology and has recently exhibited her work at Vox Populi (USA), Franklin Street Works (USA), GALLERYSKE (Bangalore) and the India Design Forum (Mumbai). Tara will present Trace, a surveillance camera feed drawn in real-time by anonymous online workers.
Navin Thomas	Navin Thomas is a multimedia artist and a professional scrap market junkie, he spends a good quality of his precious time looking for obscure cultural misfits... after destroying most of himself in the 90's, he now spends his time restoring your mother's brother’s tin space toys and other unusual situations.
Abhishek Hazra	Abhishek Hazra approaches his art with a particular emphasis on the study of the historiography of science. He uses videos and prints that often integrate textual fragments drawn from real and fictional scenarios. He has previously exhibited and performed at Science Gallery, Dublin, HEART Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Casino Luxembourg Forum d’art Contemporain, Experiment Marathon Reykjavik, Reykjavik Art Museum and Kunstmuseum Bern. Abhishek was most recently an artist in residence at SymbioticA, the Centre for Excellence in Biological Arts, University of Western Australia, Perth. It was first performed as part of Beam Me Up, curated by Reinhard Storz and Gitanjali Dang, which was acknowledged by Pro Helvetia, New Delhi and German Book Office, New Delhi. Abhishek will be presenting #cloudrumble56 (attempted to re-animate sections of the Indian parliamentary archives — specifically, the transcripts of the scientist M.N. Saha's (1893-1956) interventions — through a performance that was transmitted only through live tweets on Twitter).
Aditya Dipankar	Aditya Dipankar started fiddling with music at the age of 4 when he started learning the tabla and then went on to play it for a long time. Years later, he discovered his strong inclination towards singing. Now, under the noble guidance of Pandit Vijay Sardeshmukh (Senior disciple of Pandit Kumar Gandharva), he is trying to understand the simplicity and spontaneity in the rich tradition of Hindustani classical music.
Nirmita Narasimhan	Nirmita Narasimhan is a Policy Director at CIS and works on accessibility for persons with disabilities. She was awarded the national award for empowerment of persons with disabilities by the President of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award. Nirmita Narasimhan is a disciple of Dr. Radha Venkatachalam and renowned maestro Prof. T.R. Subramanyam. She began learning music at the age of 5 and went on to complete her Ph.D. in this subject from the Delhi University. Nirmita has been performing since 1995 and received several accolades such as the Sahitya Kala Parishad Scholarship and prizes in several competitions. She received the Gold medal in MA for standing first in the University and also stood first in MPhil. She has released a CD on Ponnayya Pillai compositions and also sung in an album of varnams. Nirmita has performed in different places in India such as Delhi, Chennai, Tirupathi and Bangalore as well as in Singapore and has also given several thematic concerts such as Eka Raga Sandhya and Pallavi concerts.
Sharath Chandra Ram	Sharath Chandra Ram (Sharathchandra Ramakrishnan) has interests in multimodal art, cognitive science, accessibility, digital humanities and network cultures. He is a faculty at the Centre for Experimental Media Arts at the Srishti School of Art Design and Technology. At the Centre for Internet and Society he helped set up and manage activities at the Metaculture Media Lab : an open hackerspace and alternative platform for research and exchange. His writings and musings at CIS maybe found here: http://cis-india.org/author/sharath He graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in Artificial Intelligence specializing in interactive virtual environments. Previously as a Research Associate at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences he received a special mention award at the International Conference on Consciousness (2012) held at the National Institute of Advanced Studies for his work on ‘Cross modal Integration’. As an amateur radio broadcaster, he is a proponent of the free use of airwaves for relief work, education and transmission art. He has also been a development related radio journalist (PANOS @ Nepal, Voices UNDP@Bangalore), speaker at the International Ham Radio Convention (Port Blair, 2006) and as a film enthusiast has been a Press Reviewer for the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Locations

Bangalore

Centre for Internet and Society
No. 194, Second 'C' Cross, Domlur,
2nd Stage, Bangalore - 560071,
Karnataka, India
Ph: +91 80 4092 6283
Fax: +91 80 2535 0955

Delhi

Centre for Internet and Society
G 15, Top floor
Behind Hauz Khas, G Block Market
Hauz Khas,
New Delhi 110016
Ph: + 91 011 40503285

Event Brochure

Event Flier

Event Posters/Banners and Videos

Accessibility

National Resource Kit (PDF, PNG)
NVDA E-Speak (PDF, PNG)
International Collaborations (PDF, PNG)
Partners (PDF, PNG)
Publications (PDF, PNG)
Timeline (PDF, PNG)
Inclusive Planet (PDF, PNG)

In the below video Anandhi Viswanathan gives a demo of the National Resource Kit project and Rameshwar Nagar gives a demo of the NVDA and ESpeak (Text-to-Speech) project during the exhibition.

Access to Knowledge

Broadcast Treaty (PDF, PNG)
Copyright (PDF, PNG)
Software Patent 1 (PDF, PNG)
Software Patent 2 (PDF, PNG)
Pervasive Technologies (PDF, PNG)

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)

Factsheet (PDF, PNG)
Reaching Out (PDF, PNG)
Outreach (PDF, PNG)
Bridging Gender Gap (PDF, PNG)
Press Coverage (PDF, PNG)
Education Programmes (PDF, PNG)
Team Achievements (PDF, PNG)
Visualization (PDF, PNG)

Openness

Open Access to Scholarly Literature (PDF, PNG)
Open Access to Law (PDF, PNG)
Open Standards (PDF, PNG)
Free/Open Source Software (PDF, PNG)

Internet Governance (Free Speech)

Blocking of Websites (PDF, PNG)
Freedom of Speech (PDF, PNG)
Intermediary Liability (PDF, PNG)
Internet Governance Forum (PDF, PNG)

Internet Governance (Privacy)

Privacy Events (PDF, PNG)
Timeline (PDF, PNG)
UID (1) (PDF, PNG)
UID (2) (PDF, PNG)
DNA (1) (PDF, PNG)
DNA (2) (PDF, PNG)

Telecom

Institutional Framework for Indian Telecommunication (PDF, PNG)
Growth of Telecom Industry in India (PDF, PNG)
Delicensed Spectrum (PDF, PNG)
Spectrum Sharing (PDF, PNG)

RAW Monographs

Archives and Access (PDF, PNG)
Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities (PDF, PNG)
The Last Cultural Mile (PDF, PNG)
Porn, Law, Video Technology (PDF, PNG)
Re:Wiring Bodies (PDF, PNG)
Community Informatics and Open Government Data (Special Issue) (PDF, PNG)

News and Media

Media Coverage (PDF, PNG)
Organizational Chart (PDF)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/celebrating-5-years-of-cis

Goa chapter

praskrishna — 2013-05-02T06:33:24Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/goa-chapter.pdf

Centre for Internet and Society

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

Results

Discussion

Conclusion

Comments on the Draft ICAR Open Access Policy

Introduction

The Structure of the Report

Overview

Structural Feedback

Feedback on Existing Clauses

Suggested Changes

Concluding Observations

Use of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers

Methodology

Results

Conclusion

NVDA

RAW Monographs

NGO invites public to peruse its accounts

THE PORN ULTIMATUM?

A different view

Technologically possible

Sexual Behaviour

The Establishment

Around the world

Institute on Internet & Society

WORLD WIDE PLAYGROUND

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD 2013) - CIS panel

Presentation File

Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment

Fact Sheet

﻿Identified Needs

Google Policy Fellowship Programme: Call for Applications

Fellowship Focus Areas

Frequently Asked Questions

Payments, Forms, and Other Administrative Stuff

Host Organizations

Important Dates

CIS anniversary

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS

Agenda

May 20, 2013

May 21, 2013

May 22, 2013

May 23, 2013

About the Speakers

The Artists

Locations

Bangalore

Delhi

Event Brochure

Event Posters/Banners and Videos

Accessibility

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)

Openness

Internet Governance (Free Speech)

Internet Governance (Privacy)

Telecom

RAW Monographs

News and Media

Goa chapter

Identified Needs