Centre for Internet and Society

Wikipedia Live Phone-in Programme on HMTV

praskrishna — 2013-06-18T05:54:01Z

Vishnu Vardhan took part in a one hour live phone-in programme on Wikipedia. This was telecasted in HMTV on June 1, 2013.

Dr. Rajasekar, Administrator on Telugu Wikipedia; Malladi Kameshwararao, Journalist and Telugu Wikipedian; Rahimanuddin Shaik, Telugu SIG, Wikimedia India Chapter; and T. Vishnu Vardhan Programme Director, CIS-A2K participated in a one-hour live phone-in programme on Telugu Wikipedia broadcast by HMTV (a Telugu News Channel) on June 1, 2013. This is probably for the first time a television news channel in India has done a live phone-in programme on Wikipedia. HMTV had also done a half-an-hour feature on Wikipedia which was broadcast on May 30 and May 31, 2013.

Videos

Part 1

Part 2

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wikipedia-live-phone-in-programme

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education

praskrishna — 2013-06-07T11:30:29Z

The Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with HEIRA-CSCS, Tumkur University, CILHE-TISS and CCS (IISc) is hosting a one day Digital Humanities consultation on July 13, 2013 at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

Note: Following is a draft text which will be updated soon.

The digital age has had a huge impact on higher education in the last decade, transforming the modalities of both teaching and research. Consequently the very foundations of the systems of knowledge production and dissemination are being re-examined. This is due to the impact that the digital turn has had on already established systems, and to the exciting possibilities that it offers for radically transforming these systems. In tertiary education for instance, one of the ways in which the digital impact has made itself felt is to move the classroom online or to make resources freely available online, thereby providing access for new constituencies.

For researchers, digital archiving and digital publishing has made possible the same widening of access, while also enabling innovative ways of reading traditional objects of inquiry through the use of computational methods. While these developments are not confined to a specific domain of knowledge, the term most often used to reference them has been ‘Digital Humanities’. The term has gained currency worldwide perhaps because of the seeming incongruity of the relationship between the conventional humanities disciplines and what is deemed a technological development. This is a relationship that has not only produced new approaches to old material, but perhaps — even more significantly — reconfigured the objects and domains of inquiry themselves, and re-tooled the modes by which we conduct our research.

The five host institutions have engaged with each other in different collaborative initiatives over the years. Most significant among them have been (a) the exploration of integration, inter-disciplinarity and dialogue between the natural sciences and the social sciences/humanities; and (b) the production and deployment of critical resources in Indian languages in the higher education sector. We seek to bring these interests together in the proposed consultation aimed at setting agendas for digital humanities in India.

Exploring the possible connections between the human sciences and the digital domain could throw up many productive directions for the higher education system. One of the biggest challenges facing the system in India today is the issue of access and the quality of that access. In the coming decade, Indian higher education is estimated to achieve a Gross Enrolment Ratio of at least 20% (from the existing 12%). This immense new inflow into the education system poses significant institutional and pedagogic challenges. With English emerging as the global language for knowledge production, there is pressure on the Indian higher education system to move towards English-based teaching and learning. Simultaneously, here is a cognitive issue: of effective comprehension. Students who are first-generation learners are finding it increasingly difficult to negotiate with the English-only curriculum that presents itself to many as an insurmountable hurdle.

A new set of possibilities could open up if one were to examine this issue from the perspective of the Indian languages. For over 150 years these languages have been used in all modern institutions and practices (from banking to statecraft) and have developed their own concept ecologies and rich traditions of public intellectual discourse. Currently these languages and practices are being thrust into the background by the globalization of higher education. Re-inserting them into our classrooms and institutional arrangements would be crucial from two perspectives: a) providing newer avenues for students to re-negotiate curricular content which is predominantly in English and b) infusing new source materials into social, political, economic and cultural research on India, thereby increasing the relevance and dynamism of Indian social sciences and humanities. Needless to say, technology will play a major role in this context. Not only will technology figure prominently in addressing the question of access, equity and outreach, it will also help in bringing hitherto inaccessible intellectual resources into easily available and distributable forms. Also crucial to the question of access is the scalability that digital technology offers.

Through this interdisciplinary consultation, we hope to chart out the possible directions for digital humanities in India, which would include, among others, a strong engagement with Indian languages as well as a rethinking of how the sciences and the humanities could intersect. All of this is likely to hold paradigm-changing consequences for higher education: involving for example online learning, technologically enhanced learning, archival practices, new research methodologies, and the production of new and locally relevant knowledges.

We invite participants to make short presentations of 15 minutes each reflecting on the questions raised in this note, and bringing to the table issues raised by the initiatives in which they have taken part so far.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/digital-humanities-for-indian-higher-education

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Hasan (Coverage in Vijaya Karnataka)

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T07:22:57Z

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted a workshop in Hasan on June 4, 2013. Vijaya Karnataka published a report of the workshop on June 5, 2013.


Above is a report of the workshop in Vijaya Karnataka. The workshop was conducted by Dr. U.B.Pavanja on June 4, 2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/vijaya-karnataka-june-5-2013-report-of-kannada-wikipedia-workshop-in-hasan

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Hasan (Coverage in Samyukta Karnataka)

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T07:16:11Z

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted a workshop in Hasan on June 4, 2013. Samyukta Karnataka published a report of the workshop on June 5, 2013.


Above is the report in Kannada of the workshop conducted in Hasan on June 4, 2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/samyukta-karnataka-june-5-2013-kannada-wikipedia-workshop-coverage

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Hasan (Coverage in Prajavani)

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T07:05:25Z

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted a workshop in Hasan on June 4, 2013. Prajavani carried a report on June 5, 2013.


A Kannada Wikipedia workshop was conducted in Hasan by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja on June 4, 2013. Above is the report published by Prajavani in Kannada.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/prajavani-june-5-2013-kannada-wikipedia-workshop-coverage

RHoK Global June 2013

praskrishna — 2013-05-31T13:58:00Z

The Centre for Internet and Society is hosting the Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) Global event at its office in Bangalore on June 1 and 2, from 8.30 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.

RHoK is a rapidly growing global initiative encompassing a community of over 5,500 innovators in over 30 countries striving to make the world a better place by developing practical, open source technology solutions to respond to some of the most complex challenges facing humanity. We do this by defining problems, organizing hackathons, and ensuring projects are effectively deployed.

Bangalore has been hosting RHoK hackathons since 2010. RHoK pre-hackathon reception will be hosted on May 31, 2013 at CIS. The tentative plan for tonight's reception can be found at https://www.smore.com/x3fm

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/rhok-bangalore-2013

May 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-08-13T11:51:46Z

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

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

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

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

Accessibility

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

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

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

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

Banking Accessibility

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

Event Organised

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

Access to Knowledge and Openness

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

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

Announcements

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

Blog Entries

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

Event Organised

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

Event Participated In

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

Upcoming Event

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

Press Coverage

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

Access to Knowledge (Previously IP Reforms)
Blog Entry

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

Openness
Research Papers

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

Comments

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

Event Hosted

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

Internet Governance

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

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

Video Interview

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

Upcoming Event

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

Privacy

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

Events Co-organised

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

Events Participated In

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

Upcoming Event

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

Blog Entry

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

Media Coverage

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

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

Ongoing Event

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

The following unit was published recently:

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

Telecom

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

Newspaper Column

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

About CIS

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

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

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

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

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

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

CIS Signs MOU with TISS, Mumbai

praskrishna — 2013-07-04T04:15:54Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Language Area Work Plans

Telegu

Odia

Kannada

GOM (Konkani)

Bengali

Overall Support Across Indian Language Communities

Pilot Project - Performing Arts in India

Learning and Evaluation

Introductory note

Context

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

Objective

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

Methodology

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

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

A2K’s method of work

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

How to read this Annual Work Plan

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

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

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

Risk and mitigation

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

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

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

Language area work plans

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

Telugu
Odia
Kannada
(GOM) Konkani
Bengali

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

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

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

Overall A2K support to all Wikipedia communities in India

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

Pilot Project – Performing Arts in India

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

Learning and evaluation

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

Giving feedback

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

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

List of contributors

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

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

Wikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants

subha — 2013-07-17T06:33:20Z

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

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

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

1 http://bit.ly/11DMH5w

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

CIS Celebrates 5 Years: A Report in Udayavani

praskrishna — 2013-06-12T11:48:23Z

Udayavani on May 25, 2013, published a report of the evening programme hosted as part of the Centre for Internet and Society's 5 year celebrations in its Bangalore edition.

Dr. Chandrashekhara was the chief guest for the event on May 23, 2013. He gave a talk on Kannada in modern era.


Above is the report published in Udayavani on May 25, 2013

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/udayavani-may-25-2013-cis-celebrates-5-years

Telugu Wikipedia Meet-up @ CIS

praskrishna — 2013-08-19T06:53:03Z

The Centre for Internet and Society is hosting a meet-up on June 2, 2013 in its office in Bangalore, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. All are cordially invited.

Click to read the full details on Wikipedia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/telugu-wikipedia-meetup-at-cis

CIS Celebrates 5 Years: A Report in Prajavani

praskrishna — 2013-06-12T11:46:48Z

Prajavani published a report on the Centre for Internet and Society's 5 year celebrations organised in Bangalore on the final day, May 23, 2013. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a talk on Kannada and IT.


Given below is the report published in Prajavani on May 24, 2013:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/prajavani-may-24-2013-report-on-cis-celebrates-5-years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Results

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discussion

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comments on the Draft ICAR Open Access Policy

nehaa — 2013-05-28T06:44:45Z

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

The Structure of the Report

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

Overview

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

Structural Feedback

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

Feedback on Existing Clauses

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

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

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

Suggested Changes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Concluding Observations

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

[1]. Hereafter referred to as CIS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[11]. Id.

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

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

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