Open Access Publishing in India: Coverage, Relevance, and Future Perspectives

Abstract:  Open access (OA) publishing is a recent phenomenon in scientific publishing, enabling free access to knowledge worldwide. In the Indian context, OA to science has been facilitated by government-funded repositories of student and doctoral theses, and many Indian society journals are published with platinum OA. The proportion of OA publications from India is significant in a global context, and Indian journals are increasingly available on OA repositories such as Pubmed Central, and Directory of Open Access Journals. However, OA in India faces numerous challenges, including low-quality or predatory OA journals, and the paucity of funds to afford gold OA publication charges. There is a need to increase awareness amongst Indian academics regarding publication practices, including OA, and its potential benefits, and utilize this modality of publication whenever feasible, as in publicly-funded research, or when platinum OA is available, while avoiding falling prey to poor quality OA journals.