A growing number of Indian journals are reportedly converting to the open access format of Internet publishing. Many leading journals such as those published by the Indian Council of Medical Research, Indian National Science Academy and the Calicut Medical College are already open access.
The state-run National Informatics Centre as well as private firm MedKnow reportedly publish open access journals on behalf of about 75 societies. In November 2007, academic publisher Sage Publications and Hindawi Publishing Corp announced an agreement to jointly launch and publish a suite of fully open access journals. Under the model, all Sage-Hindawi journal articles are to be made freely available online via the Hindawi platform, funded by author charges.
Apart from individual journals, open access is making its impact at the repositories level too. Nearly 30 institutions have set up their own institutional open access repositories using free software and open source software such as EPrints and DSpace. The Indian Institute of Science (IIsc) was the first to set up the IISc EPrints archive, which has over 8,000 records.
The country is making significant development at the level of open access courses too. This refers to programmes for study, which offer access to everyone, regardless of whether they are formally students or not in an institution.
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