Open Access-3: Another interesting and informative mail from Mr.Subbiah Arunachalam
Research in Indian academic institutions - universities, IITs, IISc and other deemed universities and national laboratories - is by and large supported by taxpayers' money. But when the researchers finish some work and want to publish it, they give away the ENTIRE RIGHTS to journal publishers. Often these are commercial firms like GReed Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer and John Wiley. As most of these journals are very expensive - some of them charging annual subscription of over $10,000 - most Indian libraries would not be receiving them. As a result work published by an Indian researcher often goes unnoticed by researchers in the same field working in other Indian institutions. Besides the government which supported the research has no claim on its results. I suggest that we work towards mandating open access for all publicly funded research and Indian authors NOT surrendering all rights to publishers when they sign the publishers' copyright agreement.
Incidentally, no research performed in US Government laboratories (such as Brookhaven National Laboratory or Oak Ridge National Laboratory) is copyrightable! We should enact legislation in India to the effect that copyright to all research performed in government laboratories (CSIR, ICMR, ICAR, DAE, ISRO, etc.) will vest with Indian entities (say the laboratories or the council or department) and that all research supported fully or partially with public funds will be made freely available through open access. Faculties in both Harvard and Stanford Universities (some and not all) have voted unanimously to mandate open access to their research publications. The National Institutes of Health in the USA and six of the seven research councils in the UK have long ago mandated open access to all research they support. The Wellcome Trust, a major funder of biomedical research, has also mandated open access for all the research it supports. We need to adopt a similar nationwide open access mandate in India.
I tried to convince the Bioinformatics centres supported by the Department of Biotechnology. We first talked about it seven years ago at the annual meeting held at Pune. The idea was approved, but till this day the DBT has not implemented it, although this topic comes up virtually in every annual meeting of the coordinators of the Bioinformatics centres. I have also written to many other science managers of the country with limited success. Three CSIR laboratories have set up institutional open access archives and it is likely many more will do so in the near future. May be we should alert the CGA!
I request this group to take this up as its agenda.
Best wishes.
Arun
[Subbiah Arunachalam]
Grateful thanks to Mr.Subbiah Arunachalam.
Research in Indian academic institutions - universities, IITs, IISc and other deemed universities and national laboratories - is by and large supported by taxpayers' money. But when the researchers finish some work and want to publish it, they give away the ENTIRE RIGHTS to journal publishers. Often these are commercial firms like GReed Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer and John Wiley. As most of these journals are very expensive - some of them charging annual subscription of over $10,000 - most Indian libraries would not be receiving them. As a result work published by an Indian researcher often goes unnoticed by researchers in the same field working in other Indian institutions. Besides the government which supported the research has no claim on its results. I suggest that we work towards mandating open access for all publicly funded research and Indian authors NOT surrendering all rights to publishers when they sign the publishers' copyright agreement.
Incidentally, no research performed in US Government laboratories (such as Brookhaven National Laboratory or Oak Ridge National Laboratory) is copyrightable! We should enact legislation in India to the effect that copyright to all research performed in government laboratories (CSIR, ICMR, ICAR, DAE, ISRO, etc.) will vest with Indian entities (say the laboratories or the council or department) and that all research supported fully or partially with public funds will be made freely available through open access. Faculties in both Harvard and Stanford Universities (some and not all) have voted unanimously to mandate open access to their research publications. The National Institutes of Health in the USA and six of the seven research councils in the UK have long ago mandated open access to all research they support. The Wellcome Trust, a major funder of biomedical research, has also mandated open access for all the research it supports. We need to adopt a similar nationwide open access mandate in India.
I tried to convince the Bioinformatics centres supported by the Department of Biotechnology. We first talked about it seven years ago at the annual meeting held at Pune. The idea was approved, but till this day the DBT has not implemented it, although this topic comes up virtually in every annual meeting of the coordinators of the Bioinformatics centres. I have also written to many other science managers of the country with limited success. Three CSIR laboratories have set up institutional open access archives and it is likely many more will do so in the near future. May be we should alert the CGA!
I request this group to take this up as its agenda.
Best wishes.
Arun
[Subbiah Arunachalam]
Grateful thanks to Mr.Subbiah Arunachalam.
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