Improving the visibility of Indian Research: An Institutional, Open Access Publishing Model

Improving the visibility of Indian Research: An Institutional, Open Access Publishing Model

• T.B. Rajashekar (Raja) National Centre for Science Information Indian Institute of Science Bangalore – 560 012 (India) ([e-mail])

• Indo-US Workshop on Open Digital Libraries and Interoperability, June 23-25, 2003

NCSI, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

• A central e-information facility and department

• Provide desktop access to global e-information sources

• e-journals, databases, web resources, news
• SciGate – The IISc Science Information portal
• E-JIS – the e-journal gateway

• Promote visibility of IISc research

• eprints@iisc - The IISc ePrints archive – online repository of IISc research papers
• Conduct publications-based impact studies

• Education and training

• 18-month post-graduate training course on ‘Information and Knowledge Management’
• Short term training courses – content management, DLs

• Undertake sponsored development projects

• ‘K-Library’ – VIC, ICICI Knowledge Park
• Beta testing of Greenstone DL (UNESCO)

Agenda

• The Problem

• OAP and global access to Indian research

• Enabling technologies for OAP

• OAP in India: Current status and potential

• Proposed OAP system

• Deployment strategy

• Challenges and issues

• Areas for collaboration

The Problem

• Declining visibility and impact of Indian research

• Several causes

• Information related issues

• Poor local access to global research
• Poor global access to Indian research

• How do we improve the situation?

Local access to global research

• Consortia approach - license campus-wide access to international e-resources

• MHRD (INDEST), CSIR, INFLIBNET

• J-Gate & JCCC – Indian initiative – access to global journal literature

• Expectations: Improved R&D productivity, quality of teaching and learning

• Issues: Archiving, personalization, usage monitoring and impact analysis

Global access to Indian research

• Key challenge: How do we reciprocate the information flow and improve visibility and impact of Indian research?

• Possible solution: Institutional level, open access publishing

• Institutions set up digital repositories of their research output and provide open access
• Adopt inter-operability standards

Open Access Publishing (OAP)

• Free online access to scholarly material

• “Public Domain” and “Open Access” material

• Global movement in support of open access

• Agencies and initiatives
• International and national level workshops
• “International Symposium on Open Access and the Public Domain in Digital Data and Information for Science”, Paris, 10-11 March 2003 (ICSU, UNESCO, ICSTI)

Enabling Technologies for OAP

• Open source DL/repository software

• GSDL, eprint.org, DSpace, CDSWare (OAI compliant)

• Open source software for online journals and conference publishing

• OJS of PKP project (OAI compliant)

• Metadata schemes, name spaces, vocabularies

• OpenArchives – Interoperability framework (OAI-PMH Protocol for metadata harvesting)

• XML – information structuring / exchange

OAP and India: Current Status and Potential

• Significant R&D base (2001)

• 2,900 organizations with R&D support
• Large number of R&D labs under govt. agencies in several S&T domains
• 300 universities

• Research publishing (2002)

• 34,000 journal articles indexed in international databases
• 17,000 indexed in WOS – 5,600 from 50 institutions (IISc, CSIR, IITs, TIFR)

OAP and India: Current Status and Potential

• Open access examples:

• 11 journals of the Indian Academy of Sciences
• UDL project - IISc
• Vidyanidhi – theses – University of Mysore
• Data sets – NCL, Pune
• 4 journals from INSA
• Metadata: INDMED, INFLIBNET

• OAI-compliant repository

• eprints@iisc – IISc

Proposed OAP System

• Data providers

• Academic & govt. R&D institutions
• Science journals
• Science academies and societies, academic & govt. R&D institutions
• New online-only e-journals (e.g. graduate students)
• Metadata, if full material cannot be made online

Proposed OAP System

• Institutional repository features

• Uses a OAI compliant repository software
• Configures the repository for agreed content specifications
• Supports distributed, intranet, online submission by researchers
• Support for moderation/ peer review
• Support for browse and search
• Exposes metadata for harvesting

Deployment Strategy

• Phased approach

• Feasibility: 2-3 institutions in 2 administrative domains – IISc/IIT (MHRD), CSIR labs
• Institutional repositories, central search service
• Firm-up implementation mechanism
• Administrative/ financial mechanism – extend scope of existing consortia + other funding sources
• Expand the model to bring in other national level resources (legacy, new)
• Ensure interoperability with global service providers

Key Benefits

• Improved visibility and impact – institutional, national

• Improved management of institutional IP (e.g. establish priority)

• Contribute to institutional KM (e.g. knowledge ‘reuse’)

• Improved research collaboration – inter-departmental, inter-institutional, international

• Enhanced status and reputation – attract talent and funding

• Enhanced ‘research capacity’

Challenges and Issues

• Essential and desirable features of repository software, infrastructural requirements

• Content related standards and specifications (document types, metadata, formats, vocabulary, citations)

• Promotion of repository usage by researchers

• Peer review and quality audit norms

• OAI-PMH support for non-OAI compliant systems

• Automatic metadata identification, indexing, categorization, summarization

Challenges and Issues…

• Development of national level harvesting services

• Content management – workflows, processes

• IP issues – ownership and use of repository content

• Preservation for long term access

• Usage monitoring and impact (ROI) studies

• Integration/ co-existence with traditional publishing systems

Conclusion

• Indian perspective

• Research, development, implementation and deployment of OAP systems will be of significant interest and benefit to both the countries

• Contribute to development of global open digital library

• Further the cause of DLs as a field of study