India suffers doubly due to lack of open access - University World News

"Developing nations, especially India, increasingly face a challenge in prioritising their goals. One that has become increasingly relevant in this context, in the age of open knowledge, is the relevance of subscription journals in the dissemination of knowledge in a developing society ... The question therefore is: for public-funded universities and institutions, why should any Indian user have to cough up large sums of money to access their research output?  It is an openly acknowledged truth that - barring a very few universities and institutes - most Indian colleges, universities and research organisations or even practitioners cannot afford the money required to pay for subscribing to most well known journal databases or afford individual articles therein.  It would not be wrong to say that out of 30,000 plus higher education institutions, not even 1% has a library comparable to institutions in developed nations. And academic research output, especially in social science areas, need not be used only for academic purposes.   Practitioners - farmers, practising doctors, would-be entrepreneurs, professional managers and many others - may benefit from access to research, but unfortunately almost none of them would be ready or able to shell out US$20 or more for a few pages after viewing only the abstract in a country where around 70% of people live below US$2 a day. Open dissemination of useful academic knowledge remains therefore a neglected area in India ..."