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@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in)
Indo-US Workshop on Open Digital Libraries
and Interoperability, June 23-25, 2003

T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
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, eprint.org, 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 eprints.org 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
• Data providers
• Academic & govt. R&D
institutions
• Science journals
• Science academies and
societies, academic &
govt. R&D institutions
• New online-only e-
journals (e.g. graduate
students)
• Metadata, if full material
cannot be made online
• Service providers
• One or more – domain
specific, multi-domain
• DP can act as SP
• Commercial
possibilities (value-
added services)?
Develop a national network of distributed, inter-operable, open
access digital repositories of S&T scholarly material

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)
OAI compliant
repository (Data
Provider)
Service
Provider
Service
Provider
Metadata
Harvesting
Search User

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.

T.B. Rajashekar
NCSI, IISc
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