Open access (OA) can help India make its scientific research widely accessible for greater impact at low costs, thus taking its research forward, according to Prof. Steven Harnad of the University of Quebec, Montreal and Southampton.
Current gaps were making things tougher for researchers in India, he observed in his comments in the Current Science journal. Published by the Current Science Association in collaboration with the Indian Academy of Sciences, the journal is projected as a medium for communication and discussion of important issues that concern science and scientific activity. Prof. Harnad has been a keen proponent of OA in academic publishing.
Even journals that are available online do not come for free. University libraries have to pay large subscriptions to allow their academics to easily access scholarly journal material online. Prof. Harnad observed that universities, research institutions and research fund providers across the world were at last beginning to require researchers to deposit online drafts of articles for their peer-reviewed journals in their institutional repositories. Such deposits of academic journals would not result in costs or copyright issues, he noted. This, he suggested, would make available all of India's research output to the rest of the world, and, in exchange, India would have open access to 'the research output of the rest of the world'.
Current Science had recently suggested in an editorial that Indian academic institutions are finding it 'exceedingly expensive' to have a well-stocked library of science journals. The editorial termed the pro-OA argument 'compelling', saying it was a 'new wind' blowing over the 'turbulent world of science publishing'.
OA scholarly publishing involves making material available to all potential users without financial or other barriers. It is observed to have proven successful, especially in fields like scholarly journals, e-text or other e-books (scholarly, literary or recreational), music and the fine arts. OA proponents argue that prices of scholarly journals have risen sharply, particularly over the past decade, making subscriptions to all key journals unaffordable, even to most universities in the affluent West.
