A Global View of Open Access – Part 6 | Tony Hey on eScience

"I am very pleased to introduce the sixth and last article in this series of snapshots of the progress towards open access around the globe. Muthu Madhan, manager of Library and Information Services at the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Patancheru, Hyderabad (www.icrisat.org) has kindly updated his 2011 status report on: “Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India — A Status Report”. In this blog entry he reports on the recent developments on OA in India as well as summarizes its origins. Open Access discussions began surprisingly early in India, dating back to a talk given by Stevan Harnad in September 2000. The first institutional repository was set up next year at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Unfortunately, although the report details many expressions of support for open access, there have been very few institutional or funder mandates that have been implemented to encourage the deposit of the full text of research articles. ICRISAT is one of the few institutions that has set up a repository and introduced a mandate. The situation seems a missed opportunity for Indian researchers but open access in India is complicated by the emergence of 100s of new ‘predatory journals’ claiming to offer open access for a fee. There is clearly much work to be done to realize true open access in India and it is to be hoped that OA initiatives such as that championed by the Global Research can help make a real difference ..."