CSIR to create open access repositories - The New Indian Express

"In a bid to break the monopoly of publishers quoting exorbitant rates to grant electronic resources for research, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is now creating an ‘open access repository’ of its own papers. Speaking at the national conference, Reaching Out to Users through Technology (Route 2013), R R Hirwani, head of CSIR Unit for Research and Development of Information Products, said, 'With publishers trying to exploit their monopoly position and quoting unreasonable prices for granting electronic access to research resources, the plan is to create an open access repository of CSIR’s own papers and help other laboratories with copies of papers from journals subscribed by them,' said Hirwani 'If we are to access major science journals from well-known publishers, we have to shell out `50 crore a day. Now, with publishers moving to usage-based model, we would have to pay in dollars for every single download, including our own research papers. And, the cost would be in the range of $15-$35 per download,' said Hiwarni. He said as per the mandate of Open Access for CSIR, all research papers published from CSIR laboratories and supported by a grant from CSIR would be made ‘open access’ by depositing the full text and the metadata (electronically archived data) of the paper in an institutional repository. He also said that each CSIR laboratory would set up its own inter-operable, institutional, open access repositories for research papers, electronic thesis and dissertations. The Scientific and Industrial Research Unit for Research and Development of Information Products will set up a central harvester, which will harvest the full text and meta data of these papers, which will be made open access."