Improving the visibility of Indian
Research:
An Institutional, Open Access
Publishing Model
T.B. Rajashekar (Raja)
National Centre for Science Information
Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore – 560 012 (India)
(raja@[Link])
Indo-US Workshop on Open Digital Libraries
and Interoperability, June 23-25, 2003
NCSI, Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore
• A central e-information facility and department
• Provide desktop access to global e-information sources
• e-journals, databases, web resources, news
• SciGate – The IISc Science Information portal
• E-JIS – the e-journal gateway
• Promote visibility of IISc research
• eprints@iisc - The IISc ePrints archive – online repository of IISc research
papers
• Conduct publications-based impact studies
• Education and training
• 18-month post-graduate training course on ‘Information and Knowledge
Management’
• Short term training courses – content management, DLs
• Undertake sponsored development projects
• ‘K-Library’ – VIC, ICICI Knowledge Park
• Beta testing of Greenstone DL (UNESCO)
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
Agenda
• The Problem
• OAP and global access to Indian research
• Enabling technologies for OAP
• OAP in India: Current status and potential
• Proposed OAP system
• Deployment strategy
• Challenges and issues
• Areas for collaboration
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
The Problem
• Declining visibility and impact of Indian
research
• Several causes
• Information related issues
• Poor local access to global research
• Poor global access to Indian research
• How do we improve the situation?
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
Local access to global research
• Consortia approach - license campus-wide
access to international e-resources
• MHRD (INDEST), CSIR, INFLIBNET
• J-Gate & JCCC – Indian initiative – access
to global journal literature
• Expectations: Improved R&D productivity,
quality of teaching and learning
• Issues: Archiving, personalization, usage
monitoring and impact analysis
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
Global access to Indian research
• Key challenge:
How do we reciprocate the information flow
and improve visibility and impact of Indian
research?
• Possible solution: Institutional level, open
access publishing
• Institutions set up digital repositories of their
research output and provide open access
• Adopt inter-operability standards
“Acting locally, Thinking globally” – Christine Borgman
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
Open Access Publishing (OAP)
• Free online access to scholarly material
• “Public Domain” and “Open Access” material
• Global movement in support of open access
• Agencies and initiatives
• International and national level workshops
• “International Symposium on Open Access and the
Public Domain in Digital Data and Information for
Science”, Paris, 10-11 March 2003 (ICSU, UNESCO,
ICSTI)
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
Enabling Technologies for OAP
• Open source DL/repository software
• GSDL, [Link], DSpace, CDSWare (OAI compliant)
• Open source software for online journals and
conference publishing
• OJS of PKP project (OAI compliant)
• Metadata schemes, name spaces, vocabularies
• OpenArchives – Interoperability framework (OAI-
PMH Protocol for metadata harvesting)
• XML – information structuring / exchange
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
• Data Provider
•Maintain repository
•Expose metadata
according to a metadata
standard (e.g. DC)
•Register with OAI
•Service provider
•Register with OAI
•Extract metadata from
registered repositories
(‘harvest’)
•Provide services (e.g.
central index)
Example: Institutional eprint archives that use [Link] software (DP).
ARC service from ODU (SP).
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
OAP and India: Current Status and
Potential
• Significant R&D base (2001)
• 2,900 organizations with R&D support
• Large number of R&D labs under govt. agencies in
several S&T domains
• 300 universities
• Research publishing (2002)
• 34,000 journal articles indexed in international
databases
• 17,000 indexed in WOS – 5,600 from 50 institutions
(IISc, CSIR, IITs, TIFR)
Significant potential for improving
“Research Capacity” T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
OAP and India: Current Status and
Potential
• Open access examples:
• 11 journals of the Indian Academy of Sciences
• UDL project - IISc
• Vidyanidhi – theses – University of Mysore
• Data sets – NCL, Pune
• 4 journals from INSA
• Metadata: INDMED, INFLIBNET
• OAI-compliant repository
• eprints@iisc – IISc
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
eprints@IISc – Home Page
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
eprints@IISc – Deposit Process
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
eprints@IISc – Deposit Process
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
eprints@IISc – Deposit Process
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
eprints@IISc – Deposit Process
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
eprints@IISc – Deposit Process
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
eprints@IISc – Browse
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
eprints@IISc – Metadata Display
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
eprints@IISc – Full Text Display
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
eprints@IISc – Advanced Search
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
ARC – A Cross Archive Search
Service
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
ARC – A Cross Archive Search
Service
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
ARC – A Cross Archive Search
Service
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
Proposed OAP System
Develop a national network of distributed, inter-operable, open
access digital repositories of S&T scholarly material
• Data providers • Service providers
• Academic & govt. R&D • One or more – domain
institutions specific, multi-domain
• Science journals • DP can act as SP
• Science academies and • Commercial possibilities
societies, academic & (value-added services)?
govt. R&D institutions
• New online-only e-
journals (e.g. graduate
students)
• Metadata, if full material
cannot be made online T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
Proposed OAP System
• Institutional repository features
• Uses a OAI compliant repository software
• Configures the repository for agreed content
specifications
• Supports distributed, intranet, online submission
by researchers
• Support for moderation/ peer review
• Support for browse and search
• Exposes metadata for harvesting
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
OAI compliant
repository
(Data
Provider)
OAI compliant
repository
(Data
Provider)
Metadata Service
Harvesting Provide
OAI compliant r
repository
(Data
Provider)
Service
Provide
r
Search User
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
Deployment Strategy
• Phased approach
• Feasibility: 2-3 institutions in 2 administrative domains –
IISc/IIT (MHRD), CSIR labs
• Institutional repositories, central search service
• Firm-up implementation mechanism
• Administrative/ financial mechanism – extend scope of
existing consortia + other funding sources
• Expand the model to bring in other national level
resources (legacy, new)
• Ensure interoperability with global service providers
Essential - Structured & planned approach. National level
coordination for concept promotion, feasibility, training,
development, support and implementation.
Key Benefits
• Improved visibility and impact – institutional,
national
• Improved management of institutional IP (e.g.
establish priority)
• Contribute to institutional KM (e.g. knowledge
‘reuse’)
• Improved research collaboration –
inter-departmental, inter-institutional, international
• Enhanced status and reputation – attract talent
and funding
• Enhanced ‘research capacity’
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
Challenges and Issues
• Essential and desirable features of repository
software, infrastructural requirements
• Content related standards and specifications
(document types, metadata, formats, vocabulary,
citations)
• Promotion of repository usage by researchers
• Peer review and quality audit norms
• OAI-PMH support for non-OAI compliant systems
• Automatic metadata identification, indexing,
categorization, summarization
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
Challenges and Issues…
• Development of national level harvesting services
• Content management – workflows, processes
• IP issues – ownership and use of repository
content
• Preservation for long term access
• Usage monitoring and impact (ROI) studies
• Integration/ co-existence with traditional publishing
systems
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
Conclusion
• Indian perspective
• Research, development, implementation
and deployment of OAP systems will be of
significant interest and benefit to both the
countries
• Contribute to development of global open
digital library
• Further the cause of DLs as a field of study
T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
