This document discusses open access to scholarly literature. It defines open access as digital content that is free of charge and most copyright/licensing restrictions. Open access aims to spread knowledge and allow ideas to build upon one another. Benefits include increased visibility, usage, and impact of research. Strategies to achieve open access include self-archiving in repositories and publishing in open access journals. Many funders and institutions now mandate open access policies. Alternate metrics also aim to assess research in ways other than journal impact factors.

1. Open Access?
•Open Access literature is digital, online, free of
charge, and free of most copyright and licensing
restrictions (Peter Suber, 2004)

2. Why Open Access?
● Open Access seeks to return scholarly
publishing to its original purpose: to spread
knowledge and allow that knowledge to be built
upon (righttoresearch.org).
● It ensures that the community has free and
immediate access to the literature before and
after it has been reviewed and published
(jneurosci.org).

3. Benefits of Open Access
•For researchers, it brings increased visibility, usage
and impact for their work. http://www.openoasis.org/
•Scholarly articles that are available in open access
form are downloaded and cited more often than
articles published only in subscription-based
journals, and that citations occur more quickly than
with a traditional publication cycle.
http://library.duke.edu/
•Universities & Research Institutes - greater
visibility, clearer management information.
http://sparceurope.org/

4. Greater Openness to Research Outputs
•Improves the potential social and
economic impact of research.
•Makes research outputs travel further.
•Enables researchers themselves to
benefit.
•Provides greater value for money
to funding bodies.
Source: CIARD

5. Strategies to Achieve Open Access
•Budapest Open Access
Initiative (2002)
recommends:
• Self-Archiving – Depositing
refereed journal articles in
open electronic archives.
• Open Access Journals – New
generation of journals
committed to open access
which will not invoke copyright
to restrict access.
Source: http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai-10-recommendations

6. Self Archiving
• Pre-Prints : first draft of the article - before
peer-review, even before any contact with a
publisher
• Post-Prints : version of the paper after
peer-review, with revisions having been
made.

7. Eprints
•Eprints - free software
interoperable with all other
open archives, ready to be
registered and for their
contents to be harvested
into searchable global
archives.
•University of Southampton
•http://www.eprints.org/

8. SHERPA/RoMEO
•Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving
• http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
•68% of publishers formally allow some form of
self-archiving.
•31 publishers from India.
•1024 globally.

9. Institutional Repositories
•An Institutional Repository is an online locus for
collecting, preserving, and disseminating, in digital
form, the intellectual output of an institution
(INASP, 2013).

10. Institutional Repositories
● “Institutional repositories increase visibility
and opportunities for researchers” -Sarah
Tanksalvala
● Institute’s research reputation increases
when all the scholarly outputs are
showcased (abilities and expertise).

11. Open Access Mandates
http://roarmap.eprints.org/

13. DOAJ – Indian Journals

14. DOAJ

15. DOAJ – Members

16. National Data Sharing and Access Policy
• Aims at the promotion of a technology-based
culture of data management as well as data
sharing and access.
• It opens up, proactively, information on available
data, which could be shared with civil society for
developmental purposes.
• The policy has limited its scope to data owned by
the agencies, departments/Ministries and entities
under the Government of India.
http://www.dst.gov.in/national-data-sharing-and-accessibility-policy-0

17. Sci-Hub Sept. 2015 - Feb.
2016.
Source: http://www.nature.com/news/paper-piracy-sparks-online-debate-1.19841

18. IARI – Availability &
Accessibility
•Publications from IARI are available to subscribers
of the CeRA – public availability to IARI publications
is very meager.
•Availability and accessibility of IARI publications
(2008–2010), only 9% were open access journals
and 14% of the published articles could be found
on Eprints@IARI.
•Thus, only up to 23% of the IARI’s published
literature is available and accessible to the public.
Tandon et.al. 2013 (pre-print

19. The Barriers
•No mandate for researchers to make their data,
information and knowledge publicly accessible.
•Does not have infrastructure and tools to make
data, information and knowledge openly
accessible.
•Insufficient technical expertise on opening up
access to knowledge.
Source: CIARD

20. The Solution
•Institutes should have the policies
and resources to enable to harness
the new digital technologies and to
make data and information more
easily accessible.
Source: CIARD
Data and information power innovation — restricted
access represents a barrier to innovation.

21. Figshare

25. CC-BY Attribution 4.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
•You are free to:
• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any
medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
for any purpose, even commercially.
•The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long
as you follow the license terms.

26. Alternate Metrics
• San Francisco Declaration on Research
Assessment
– “Do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact
Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of
individual research articles, to assess an individual
scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or
funding decisions”
• Altmetric.com
• ImpactStory

27. DST – DBT on Metrics
• “The DBT/DST affirms the principle that the
intrinsic merit of the work, and not the title of the
journal in which an author’s work is published....”
• “DBT/DST does not recommend the use of journal
impact factors, as a surrogate measure of the
quality of individual research articles, to assess an
individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring,
promotion, or funding decisions”.
Source: dbtindia.nic.in/docs/DST-DBT_Draft.pdf

28. Open Access India - Advocacy
•Advocating for
giving score for
Open Access
publishing in DOAJ
Indexed Journals.
•Advocating for not
to use Impact
Factors for
•assessment
•appointment
•advancement

29. Thank You