This document discusses strengthening open access in South Asia through regional cooperation. It notes that while open access policies have been adopted in several South Asian countries since 2004, momentum has not been as strong as it could be. Barriers include a lack of clarity around legal issues, no incentives for open sharing, and reliance on journal impact factors for evaluation. Efforts are underway to create a national digital library in India and preprint repository. There is also a plan to form a regional open access forum modeled on Latin America. Strengthening cooperation and learning from successful strategies in Latin America could help boost open access in South Asia.

1. Strengthening
South-South Cooperation for
Advancing Open Access in
India & South Asia
Sridhar Gutam, PhD
Convenor, Open Access India &
Coordinator, Forum for Open Access South Asia
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 19-23 November 2018

2. Country DOAJ JOL Project OpenDOAR ROAR
Afghanistan NA NA 1 1
Bangladesh 20 142 12 10
India 249 NA 81 121
Maldives NA NA NA NA
Nepal 15 131 1 3
Pakistan 46 NA 3 4
Sri Lanka 12 77 13 1
South Asia 342 350 111 140

3. • 2004, seeds of the Open Access movement were sown in
India.
• 2009, the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research had
adopted its Open Access Policy
• 2013, the Indian Council for Agricultural Research
formulated its Open Access Policy
• 2014, the Department of Biotechnology and Department
of Science & Technology under the Ministry of Science &
Technology, Government of India adopted Open Access
policy
• 2016, University Grants Commission – Thesis Repository
• However, the momentum had not gained as it has should
have been in the country.

5. • Researchers and the research managers of the institutes or universities are not
clear about the legal issues of sharing the research outputs immediately.
• The possible reasons for the low populating rate of articles in the repositories is
that though the policies are in place, there are no rewarding/incentive
mechanisms for openly sharing the research outputs and due to copyright
transfer agreements.
• The research, evaluation and monitoring committees in the universities or
institutes solely depend upon publications in the journal impact factors.
• Availability of the relevant journals with higher impact factors from the South
Asian countries are limited in numbers and also have a high rejection rate.
• By publicizing fake metrics, large number of questionable journals are coming
up and are luring the scholars to submit articles to their publications.
• These journals are questionable journals which publish without any review, but
for a charge.
• The scholars are taking this road in order to publish in numbers and in no time.
• Though the availability of quality articles via repositories is less, the availability
of same via open access journals is much more.

6. • With the support of the Ministry of Human
Resources Development, Government of
India. Efforts are being made to deliver all
the openly available resources through a
single platform called National Digital
Library of India.
• Open Access India is planning to launch
IndiaRxiv (India Archive), a preprints
repository for Indian researchers with the
support of Centre for Open Science.
• Open Access India community submitted a draft of the National Open Access
Policy for India to the Ministries of HRD and S&T for mandating Open Access for
all the Public Funded research publications
(https://zenodo.org/record/1002618)

7. Communities of practice in South Asia
• International Federation of Medical Students Associations (IFMSA)
• Open Access Bangladesh
• Open Access India
• Open Access Nepal
• Open Access Pakistan
• SAARC Wikimedia
• DOAJ Ambassadors
Forum for Open Access in South Asia
• Sharing the status and challenges of Open Access
in South Asia
• Discussing the way forward and building the
Roadmap for Open Access
• Roadmap for Open Access in South Asia
• Open Access as default by 2030

8. • Open Access in India pounced ‘Delhi Declaration on
Open Access’ to commemorate the BOAI which was
adopted sixteen years ago. http://bit.ly/2KXnq6f
• The signatories of the declaration were not only of India,
but the other countries in the South and Global South.
• Supported by the Knowledge Societies Division, UNESCO.
• The communities of practice in South Asia under the
initiative of Open Access India are planning for the
formation of the regional Open Access forum on the
similar lines of Latin America.
• Workshop on Policies for Digital Scholarship - Issues with
Open Access (IDUAI2018 | Colombo, Sri Lanka)

9. • The South Asian region has to learn more from the Open Access
movement in Latin America.
• In the world's Open Access, Brazil's output is 55% whereas India's
output is 28%.
• In Global South, South Asia needs support of CLACSO and others
• The success stories and the strategies from Latin America along
with the successful research sharing, evaluation, monitoring
and rewarding mechanisms are very crucial learning resources
for the development of a regional cooperation for Open Access
policy and infrastructure development in South Asia.

10. Thank you
#CLACSO2018 | UNESCO &
Everyone
Sridhar Gutam, PhD <gutam2000@gmail.com>
Convenor, Open Access India http://openaccessindia.org/ | @asia_open
Coordinator, Forum for Open Access South Asia https://opensouthasia.wordpress.com/ |
@asia_open