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854,26 Jan - 1 Feb 2009
National Symposium on ‘Open Access and Building Institutional Repositories (NSOABIR)’
The unprecedented escalation in the
journal subscription price, together with increased number of scholarly
communications resulting in more number of new journals have lead even
well-endowed institutions in developed countries to reduce number of
renewals of journals ever year. This journal crisis and the
developments in Internet technologies paved the way for Open Access
Movement (OAM) world over. The open access literature plays a vital
role; both in terms of research communication and access, provided, of
course, the benefits in terms of economic and social recognitions are
assured by this system. With this critical situation facing the
scholarly community, the Information Center for Aerospace S &T
(ICAST) had organized a three day National Symposium on ‘Open Access
and Building Institutional Repositories (NSOABIR)” during 21st to 23rd
January 2009 as a part of NAL’s Golden Jubilee celebrations at NAL
premises. Nearly 60 delegates from academic, R&D and Corporate
sectors participated in this meet. The inaugural session started
with an invocation followed by a welcome address by Dr. I R N Goudar,
Head ICAST and Chairman of the symposium. He introduced the chief guest
and mentioned that CSIR has taken an initiative in promoting Open
Access by way of constituting a ‘Group on Open Access for Science
Publications (GOASP)’ with a mandate to come out with CSIR policy on
OA, steps to be taken to build Institutional Repositories at all
CSIR laboratories to negotiate with publishers in the matter concerned
to copyright and IPR issues. As has been the tradition ,the chief guest
Prof. Subbaiah Arunachalam lit the e-lamp. Ms. Poornima Narayana,
convener of the symposium presented a detailed account about the theme
and the program details. Prof. Subbaiah Arunachalam delivered a
keynote address on ‘“Why do we need open access to science? A
developing country perspective” and gave a comparative scenario about
the Open Access movement in the world, Asia and especially in India. He
called upon the scientists, researchers and academicians to make their
publications open for increasing visibility, usage and impact factor
while overcoming the fear factors such as the copyright problems
etc. He brought to the notice of audience that National Knowledge
Commission under the chairmanship of Mr. Sam Pitroda has already
recommended implementation of OA in the country, setting up of
Institutional Repositories by every institution which is the most
effective open access channel. In his Presidential remarks, Dr. A R
Upadhya , Director NAL mentioned the importance of open access in the
current situation stressed that information has to reach the grass root
level for the less privileged in the country by making the scholarly
communication open as OA provides easy and low cost access. Mr. Shyam
Chetty , Chairman Library Advisory Committee & Head, Flight
Mechanics Division released the Symposium CD containing the
presentations of the resource persons, the software DSpace for setting
up of IRs and other useful publication. Dr. M N Satyanarayana,
convener, NAL Golden Jubilee Committee proposed the vote of thanks.
The
technical sessions addressed the relevant issues of the Open Access
Initiative/Movement like Scholarly Communication, OA journals,
Digitization and Digital Workflow , Institutional Repositories, IPR and
Copyright issues of OA and IR, CSIR Metadata Harvesting service and two
case studies those of NIO, Goa and NAL. The resource persons were Dr. H
S Siddamallaih, NIMHANS, Mr Raghuraman and Mr. Francis from NCSI/IISc,
Mr. T B Ananad, GEIT, Mr. Sahu, NIO and Dr IRN Goudar and Ms.
Poornima Narayana from NAL. The second day was completely
dedicated to lecture/demonstration on setting up of IRs using DSpace,
the most popular Open Source software jointly developed by HP
Laboratories and MIT, USA. Dr. A R D Prasad and Dr. Devika Madalli from
ISI, Bangalore explained the various factors involving in setting up of
IRs including an account on DSpace, Metadata standards (Dublin Core)
etc. apart from giving a detailed demo on installing DSpace
administering IR, depositing and document review/moderate before the
documents are made available on IR. All the sessions had very
active interaction from the participants.
The
highlight of the symposium was a two hour panel discussion on the
topic’ Impact of Open Access on Science Communication” on
the last day which was addressed mainly to scholars and researchers in
an attempt to inform them about the impact of open access on new forms
of scholarly/scientific communication. While open access is gaining
strength and popularity as a new model for dissemination of
information, there are still many issues yet to be addressed such
as pricing models, peer reviewing, indexing and impact factors,
archiving and the stability of this new publishing model for scientific
literature. The discussion turned out to be a ‘real brain
storming session’. The panelists were chosen from scientific/academic
community, the information seekers and information managers, the
information providers like Mr. N V Satyanarayana MD, M/s
Informatics India (Pvt) Ltd. as the moderator and other members were
Dr. H S Siddamallaiah, PSO, NIMHANS, Dr. M D Deshpande, Head, Research,
M S Ramaiah School of Advanced studies, Dr. A R D Prasad from ISI and
Dr. L Venkatkrishnan and Dr. I R N Goudar from NAL Two
recommendations were made in matters like archiving and funding for
publication activity as a part of R&D budget. The valedictory
session was chaired by Mr. N V Satyanarayana, and presided by Dr. M R
Nayak, Advisor (M&A), NAL.
Ms. Poornima Narayana
