For academic institutions in India, a library well stocked with science journals can be an exceedingly expensive proposition....
[The OA] argument is compelling; science is most often paid for by public funds and therefore the results of research must be freely available to anyone who wishes to read. This will presumably enhance the worldwide reach of science. In effect, the internet revolution can be used to provide free electronic access to all articles. This is indeed a philosophy that must appeal to all except journal publishers....
The ‘pay for publishing’ model has been adopted by high profile journals that have been started by open access advocates, of which the journals belonging to the Public Library of Science (PLoS) stable are a prominent example. The costs to authors for publishing in the high impact, open access journals can be substantial; at times a figure as high as $6000 (a formidable Rs 2.5 lakhs) per paper has been estimated....For researchers in India, with the exception of a very small minority of exclusive institutions, this figure is unaffordable....
Mandating open access for all publicly funded research publications is easy to do by legislation. It is also a requirement that can be insisted upon by philanthropic private funding bodies like the Wellcome Trust and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute....
[A]n alternative strategy of promoting an ‘open archives’ movement seems practicable. Institutional repositories that maintain electronic files of all publications in a freely accessible form appear to be an attractive option for making research results widely available. Copyright issues remain, but many publishers seem comfortable with posting of publications on individual or institutional websites....
The idea of open, institutional archives is one that must be vigorously promoted in India. The introduction of legislation that vests copyright with institutions, in the case of publicly funded research, may also provide the necessary legal framework to avoid any contentious issues....
Comments. Dr. Balaram is entirely right to argue that OA repositories "must be vigorously promoted in India". However, he would strengthen his argument if he would correct two mistaken assumptions.
First, he assumes that all OA journals charge publication fees, but in fact most do not. For example, none of the OA journals published in India charges a publication fee, 67% of the journals listed in the DOAJ charge no publication fees, and 83% of OA journals from society publishers charge no publication fees. Among the OA journals which do charge fees, the leading publishers waive the fee when authors cannot pay it, and waive it no questions asked.
Second, he assumes that the only way to make an OA mandate lawful is to vest copyright in the mandating institution. But no OA mandate in the world works that way. There are several other and better solutions. One is the dual deposit/release strategy (also called the immediate deposit / optional access strategy) in which institutions require deposit immediately upon acceptance but do not make the deposited articles OA until the publisher's embargo runs or until they can obtain permission some other way. Another is the Harvard strategy, which asks faculty to retain key rights. But instead of granting copyright to the institution, authors only grant the university a non-exclusive license, which is all it needs. Moreover, universities can mandate OA for the research articles published by their faculty whether or not the underlying research was publicly funded.
Update (4/12/08). See the supportive reverberations in the Indian press, for example in India EduNews (reprinted in many other Indian papers).
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/11/2008 04:56:00 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.
