National Open Access Policy of India (Draft) Ver. 3 – Open Access India

"Purpose: Preparation of draft ‘National Open Access Policy’ for India to be submitted to: Ministries Human Resource Development and Science & Technology, Government of India on 14th February, 2017, the 15th anniversary of the BOAI (Budapest open access Initiative)

Rationale: In the year 2014, the two premier departments, Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and Department of Science & Technology (DST) under the Ministry of Science & Technology adopted open access (funder) policy. The national councils viz., Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) had already adopted open access policies prior to that. The University Grants Commission (UGC) under the Ministry of HRD has also adopted a policy for ‘Thesis/Dissertation’ deposit in a central repository, Shodhganga for public access. The government has now adopted ‘Open Data Use License’ and has formulated National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy. Efforts are being made for building MOOCs Swayam and National Digital Library and to make our country the truly Digital India with an unrestricted access to data and information. For this, there is a need to integrate all the platforms and resources to have an interoperability without any legal and technical restrictions so that there will be a seamless sharing of data and information across all the platforms related to Science, Education and Technology. Thus a National Open Access policy which covers all the publicly funded scholarships, including the data, needs to be in place. With the adoption of national policy momentum towards Open Science and Scholarship in India would be enhanced and will also set a precedent of good practice, especially in developing countries where access to published scientific literature is becoming difficult with the rising cost of journal subscriptions...."