Open Access Scholarship

"Some years ago, Prof. Shalini Urs of the University of Mysore made a concerted effort to aggregate one aspect of Indian scholarship through the Vidyanidhi project. Vidyanidhi (Meaning ‘Treasure of Knowledge’ in Sanskrit) is India’s premier Digital library initiative to facilitate the creation, archiving and accessing of doctoral theses. Vidyanidhi is an information infrastructure, a digital library, a portal of resources, tools and facilities for doctoral research in India. Vidyanidhi is envisioned to evolve as a national repository and a consortium for e-theses through participation and partnership with universities, academic institutions and other stake holders. Vidyanidhi enhances access to Indian theses and enlarges the reach and audience for Indian doctoral research works. Sadly, this has not worked as well as it should have....However, the UGC [University Grants Commission] has now stepped in, and made it mandatory that University theses be made available online, though not necessarily in one place, thereby (and as usual) frittering away our scholarship in dribs and drabs...."