Open Access News

News from the open access movement

Monday, July 07, 2008

India's publicly-funded project to support OA repositories at Indian universities has now launched 10 pilot repositories:

One of the objectives of this project is to help the academic and research institutions of national importance to set up their interoperable, open access repositories. For the present, the following pilot IRs have been set up by with the initial technical support of the project team. Several other institutions have been contacted and we are hopeful that few more repositories will come up in the near future.

Using ePrints:

ePrints@IAS, Indian Academy of Sciences

ePrints@NIAS, National Institute of Advanced Studies [Screenshot]

Open Access IR of Bangalore University, Bangalore [Screenshot]

ePrints@UAS(B), University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK Campus, Bangalore.[Screenshot]

ePrints@KU, Kuvempu University, Shimoga [Screenshot]

ePrints@IFIM-An Open Access Repository of Institute of Finance and International Management, Bangalore [Screenshot]

ePrints@IIMB-An Institutional Repository of Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore

ePrints@AIFD-Army Institute of Fashion and Design, Bangalore [Screenshot]

Using Dspace:

BHELSpace@epd, Electroporcelains Division, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. (BHEL), Bangalore [Screenshot]

DSpace@BVBCET, B.V. Bhoomaraddi College of Engineering and Technology, Hubli [Screenshot]

The project is not new, but I notice that I've never blogged background information on it. It's funded by India's Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) and carried out by the National Centre for Science Information (NCSI) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). It includes the CASSIR cross-archiving search engine for Indian repositories, which launched in February 2007. I can't find a home page for the project, at least under what appears to be its official name, Development of OAI-Based Institutional Research Repository Services in India, but here's a description of it from the DSIR page on the Technology Information Facilitation Programme (last revised April 28, 2008):

There has been a growing realization that with the growth of internet use, the printed journals may no more be able to survive as a primary means of scholarly communication. The electronic medium offers faster, wider and cheaper means of communication as compared to the printed medium. It is therefore proposed to support Open Archive Initiative of journal articles published in India. Academic and Research Institutions would be encouraged to set up institutional or national open archives in particular disciplines - covering disciplines in which India has strength like mathematics, statistics, and geo-science, etc....

Posted by Peter Suber at 7/07/2008 11:34:00 AM.

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.

Why the OAN volume has been low since January 16, 2010

Why I curtailed my blogging on July 1, 2009

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.