The objective of this study is to analyze the present status of the open access movement in Pakistan, identify challenges, and make recommendations for the effective use of this publishing model. The article looks primarily at the open access movement in Asia, with special reference to Pakistan, India, and China. Findings show that, since the emergence of the Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2001, the open access movement has developed rapidly at the international level. From the Pakistani perspective, gold open access, in which articles or monographs are freely available in their original form on publishers’ websites, developed quickly. However, green open access, which relies on authors to self-archive their articles in institutional or subject repositories, has been relatively slow to develop. A lack of support from educational institutions, libraries, library associations, and funding bodies may explain the slow growth of green open access in Pakistan. The author recommends that Pakistani universities, research institutions, and funding agencies develop open access policies, set up institutional repositories, and encourage publishing in open access journals and self-archiving in institutional repositories.

The International Open Access Movement and Its Status in Pakistan.


Purpose
This study aims to analyze Open Access (OA) publishing trends and policy perspectives in India. Different aspects, such as the growth of OA journals digital repositories, the proportion of OA availability to research literature and the status of OA mandates and policies are studied.


Design/methodology/approach
Data for analyzing OA trends were gathered from multiple data sources, including Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), OpenDOAR, SCImago and Web of Science (WoS) databases. DOAJ and OpenDOAR were used for extracting OA journals and digital repository data. SCImago Journal and Country ranking portal and WoS database were used to obtain Indian publication data for assessing the proportion of OA to research literature. ROARMAP was used to study OA mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders in India. OA mandates and policies of major regulatory bodies and funding agencies were also reviewed using secondary sources of information and related websites.


Findings
India ranks number 15 and 17 globally for OA journals and OA repositories, with 317 journals and 98 repositories. Although India’s proportion to OA publications is 23% (7% below the world average of 30%), the annual growth rate of OA publications is around 18%. Although the governing bodies and institutions have made efforts to mandate researchers to adopt OA publishing and self-archiving, its implementation is quite low among Indian researchers, as only three institutions (out of 18 listed in the ROARMAP) are defined the embargo period. Funding agencies in India do not provide financial assistance to authors for the payment of Article Processing Charges despite mandates that research is deposited in OA repositories. India lacks a national OA policy but plans to implement a “one nation one subscription” formula to provide OA to scientific literature to all its citizens.


Research limitations/implications
The study has certain limitations. Because much of India’s research output is published in local journals that are not indexed in WoS, the study recommends conducting further analyses of publications using Scopus and other databases to understand the country’s OA publishing proportion better. A further study based on feedback from different stakeholders through a survey may be conducted for formulating a national OA policy.


Originality/value
The study is the first that used multiple data sources for investigating different facets of OA publishing in India, including OA journals, digital repositories, OA research output and OA mandates and policies for publicly funded research. The findings will be helpful for researchers and policymakers interested in promoting OA adoption among researchers worldwide.


Open access publishing in India: trends and policy perspectives

Higher Education System in India is the third largest in the world next to the United States and China. India’s contribution to OA Journal publishing is phenomenal. In the backdrop of these, this paper aims at critically analyzing the Open Access Mandates and Policies of higher education institutions and also the efforts made by other institutions including the research centers and government bodies in India. The paper describes the Open Access Movement and Open Access Publishing, essentially as a tool to achieve the noble ideal of ‘Information for All’ and democratization of information and knowledge. The paper describes various developmental initiatives and programs of Open Access Publishing in India, such as, Open Access India- an online community of practice, launching of LOAD (Listing of Open Access Databases), the initiatives taken by the CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research), DST and DBT in making it mandatory to maintain a repository / publish in OA of the government funded research results and also the mandates of other institutions. The paper also describes the efforts of INFLIBNET’s ShodhGanga project -- a digital repository of Indian theses and dissertations. The e-prints archives viz.,Eprints@iisc of Indian Institute of Science, NDL (National Digital Library of India) project, TKDL (Traditional Knowledge Digital Library) etc. A detailed study of the OA journals published from India and also chronological growth will be discussed, taking the DOAJ as the source. The available data at ROARMAP (Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies) on the Indian OA mandates shall be made use of in finding implementation of OA Mandates. The paper concludes that there is a need for a blanket mandate by the UGC and AICTE to publish the research publications of Indian academic community in OA.

S. Sudarshan Rao

Papers

Open Access Policies and Mandates: A Study of Their Implementation in Academic Institutions in India