The unprecedented escalation in the journal subscription price, together with increased number of scholarly communications resulting in more number of new journals have lead even well-endowed institutions in developed countries to reduce number of renewals of journals ever year. This journal crisis and the developments in Internet technologies paved the way for Open Access Movement (OAM) world over. The open access literature plays a vital role; both in terms of research communication and access, provided, of course, the benefits in terms of economic and social recognitions are assured by this system. With this critical situation facing the scholarly community, the Information Center for Aerospace S &T (ICAST) had organized a three day National Symposium on ‘Open Access and Building Institutional Repositories (NSOABIR)” during 21st to 23rd January 2009 as a part of NAL’s Golden Jubilee celebrations at NAL premises. Nearly 60 delegates from academic, R&D and Corporate sectors participated in this meet.
The inaugural session started with an invocation followed by a welcome address by Dr. I R N Goudar, Head ICAST and Chairman of the symposium. He introduced the chief guest and mentioned that CSIR has taken an initiative in promoting Open Access by way of constituting a ‘Group on Open Access for Science Publications (GOASP)’ with a mandate to come out with CSIR policy on OA, steps to be taken to build Institutional Repositories at all CSIR laboratories to negotiate with publishers in the matter concerned to copyright and IPR issues....
Prof. Subbaiah Arunachalam delivered a keynote address on ‘“Why do we need open access to science? A developing country perspective” and gave a comparative scenario about the Open Access movement in the world, Asia and especially in India. He called upon the scientists, researchers and academicians to make their publications open for increasing visibility, usage and impact factor while overcoming the fear factors such as the copyright problems etc. He brought to the notice of audience that National Knowledge Commission under the chairmanship of Mr. Sam Pitroda has already recommended implementation of OA in the country, setting up of Institutional Repositories by every institution which is the most effective open access channel. In his Presidential remarks, Dr. A R Upadhya , Director NAL mentioned the importance of open access in the current situation stressed that information has to reach the grass root level for the less privileged in the country by making the scholarly communication open as OA provides easy and low cost access....
The highlight of the symposium was a two hour panel discussion on the topic “Impact of Open Access on Science Communication” on the last day which was addressed mainly to scholars and researchers in an attempt to inform them about the impact of open access on new forms of scholarly/scientific communication. While open access is gaining strength and popularity as a new model for dissemination of information, there are still many issues yet to be addressed such as pricing models, peer reviewing, indexing and impact factors, archiving and the stability of this new publishing model for scientific literature. The discussion turned out to be a ‘real brain storming session’. The panelists were chosen from scientific/academic community, the information seekers and information managers....
Two recommendations were made in matters like archiving and funding for publication activity as a part of R&D budget....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/09/2009 11:28:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
