UGC-Infonet E-Journals consortium initiative was undertaken by the Indian University Grants Commission (UGC) to facilitate free access to scholarly journals and databases in all fields and disciplines by the research and academic community across the country. All universities who are under the purview of UGC have been provided UGC-infonet Connectivity and access to scholarly e-Journals and Databases. More than 2,000 scholarly journals and databases were made available during 2004 and this number has increased to more than 4,500 full text e-journals since January 2005. As of May 2006, 122 universities are accessing resources from the programme. The access is based on IP range. This effort has had a noticeable impact on the research and academic community....
INFLIBNET, which is a library and information gateway for the scholarly community of India, has conducted five two-day national seminars with the following objectives....To inform the users about the UGC-Infonet initiatives....
Does Your Library Have All the Journals You Would Like? 86% (308 participants) persons responded No. This figure shows the crucial need that academics have for information. Only 14% of the participants are satisfied with their libraries....
Charging for E-journal Access. The participants were asked whether, since the entire service is offered free to universities, they agreed that universities should be charged to get access to many more resources. 40% of the respondents favor a nominal access charge. 54% are not in favour of any fee....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/28/2007 08:14:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
