ICAR Transitions to OA

"The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) recently joined the open access (OA) movement. It announced its intentions to implement an academic and research OA policy during the next 3 years. The Directorate of Knowledge Management in Agriculture, India’s technology information agency, will organize workshops and engage with personnel and administrators, editors, and publishers to assist in the OA transition. ICAR is an autonomous organization under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India. It manages the country’s agricultural research and education initiatives such as horticulture, fisheries, and animal sciences. ICAR has been at the forefront of efforts to increase India’s food production and crops and to promote higher education in agriculture. ICAR publications that will be included in the OA policy range from journals and conference proceedings to annual reports and newsletters. These publications, as well as unpublished materials, may be freely shared in public repositories and on social media sites. As part of the policy instructions, ICAR institutes will set up an OA institutional repository and a central metadata and full-text harvester for all repository records. Authors using ICAR-sponsored research will be required to submit their manuscripts to the OA repository."