Open Access R & D

Objectives and Responsibility:

The current system of scholarly communication inhibits rather than promote access to scholarly information at a time when technology can enable vast improvement in access, speed of publication and save in the cost of publication. The present model of publishing is essentially a monopoly of publishers that is driven by the need to publish rather than the need for more information. The open access has emerged as a promising alternative to publisher-driven model of scholarly publishing that provides free access to scientific information to its users. The open access publishing model offers access to full-text of journals free of charge to a user through well-organized and professionally-managed web interfaces. The essential premise of open access movement is that the scientific community and society in general benefits from the open exchange of ideas and information unaffected and unencumbered from the limitations of subscription costs, licensing arrangements and copyright inherent to the traditional model of commercial journal publishing. Open access journals and institutional repositories are two routes of open access publishing system.

While open access journals are considered as "golden route" for providing access to peer-reviewed journal literature in electronic format free-of-charge without any restriction of access. Institutional repositories, considered as "green route" to open access publishing, are being set-up in research institutions with anticipation that the faculty and researchers would submit their preprints or post-prints of articles that are either accepted for publication or already published in traditional printed journals.

The Open Access R & D Group at the INFLIBNET Centre is working for spreading the open access movement in universities and institutions of higher learning. Major open access initiatives taken-up by the Centre includes OJAS, a platform offered to faculty and researchers in universities to host their open-access journals, and three institutional repositories, namely :ShodhGanga, ShodhGangotri and IR@INFLIBNET.