Based on my talk at a national conference of UNESCO, in partnership with Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) - "Opening up by Closing the Circle: Strengthening Open Access in India" on 21 October 2013 at JNU

1. Open Access to Indian BioMedical Literature
Sukhdev Singh
@esukhdev and @eSukhdevSingh

2. Access: Pre-Internet India
• ICMR-NIC Centre for Biomedical Information
provided:
– 1986 - Online Access to MEDLARS, NLM, US
– 1990 - Provided Remote Access to MEDLINE
Database on NIC Servers (Delhi) over NICNET /
Dial-Up Modems

3. Open Access: Post-Internet India
• 1998 – Bibliographic Database IndMED released for
access over Internet – http://indmed.nic.in
• 2003 – Hosting of Full Text Indian Bio-Medical Journals
– MedIND at http://medind.nic.in
• 2005 – OpenMED – http://openmed.nic.in -Subject
Repository

4. IndMED
• IndMED = INDexing of Indian MEDical Journals;
http://indmed.nic.in
• Why?
– Poor representation of Indian medical Journals in PubMed.
(MEDLINE)
– To expose the Indian medical research literature globally
• Started to Index Non-PubMed but quality Indian
journals, now Indexes even PubMed journals hosted
on MedIND (Full Text)
• Indexes only peer reviewed journals
• Provide a world wide free access over the Web

5. MedIND
• MedIND = Medical Journals from INDia;
http://medind.nic.in
• Why?
– One point source for Free Full Text of Indexed Indian
Medical Journals
– To expose the Indian medical research literature globally
– Cross Linking Reference, Abstract with Fulltext Articles
• Provide a world wide free access over the Web

6. MedIND provides free access to
65 Indian Medical Journals
http://medind.nic.in

7. Indian Academy of Sciences
• Journal of Biosciences
• Journal of Genetics

9. 304 + Journals

11. Some facets of Open Access to BioMedical Literature in India

12. Cumulative Number of Journals Registered in DOAJ
[http://doaj.org] Year Wise shows India is ranked at number 3
worldwide

13. Number of Journals Registered in DOAJ Each Year shows the
Indian Bio-Medical Journals were leaders in Open Access till
2010.

14. However has only 8/64 = 12.5 % share in Indian
Repositories
•
64 Registered Repositories from India in OpenDOAR - http://opendoar.org
• 8 Repositories in Health and Medicine
• Eprints@CMFRI (CMFRI Digital Repository) / Multi-disciplinary
• Digital Knowledge Repository of Central Drug Research Institute
(DKR@CDRI) / Biology and Biochemistry; Health and Medicine
• Eprints @MDRF / Diabetes
• EPrints@NIRT / Tuberculosis
• Indian Academy of Sciences: Publications of Fellows Multidisciplinary / Abstracts Only
• IR@NPL / Multi-disciplinary
• Knowledge Repository Open Network (KNoor) / Multidisciplinary
• OpenMED@NIC /Bio-Medical Subject Repository

15. No Mandatory Archiving Policy
• ROARMAP - http://roarmap.eprints.org/
• None in Bio-Medical / Health Domain

16. What about the Quality of Open
Access Journals from India?

17. These are the India Top 20 Journals accord to
their Impact Factors (2012)
Rank
1
Journal Name
DISASTER ADV
ISSN
0974-262X
IF(2012)
2.272
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
ENERGY SUSTAIN DEV
INDIAN J MED RES
INDIAN J PHYS
J BIOSCIENCES
PHARMACOGN MAG
J CHEM SCI
INDIAN J DERMATOL VE
INDIAN J EXP BIOL
INDIAN J CANCER
0973-0826
0971-5916
0973-1458
0250-5991
0973-1296
0974-3626
0378-6323
0019-5189
0019-509X
2.221
2.061
1.785
1.759
1.525
1.298
1.206
1.195
1.131
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
ANN THORAC MED
J FOOD SCI TECH MYS
NEUROL INDIA
J VECTOR DIS
INDIAN PEDIATR
INDIAN J BIOCHEM BIO
EPISODES
NATL MED J INDIA
1817-1737
0022-1155
0028-3886
0972-9062
0019-6061
0301-1208
0705-3797
0970-258X
1.123
1.123
1.044
1.041
1.036
1.026
0.95
0.908
19
20
INDIAN J MED MICROB
CURR SCI INDIA
0255-0857
0011-3891
0.907
0.905

18. Visited URLs of India Top 20 Journals
URL
DISASTER ADV
http://shankargargh.org/disascurrissue.aspx
ENERGY SUSTAIN DEV
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy-for-sustainable-development/
INDIAN J MED RES
http://www.icmr.nic.in/Publications/IJMR.html
INDIAN J PHYS
http://www.springer.com/physics/journal/12648
J BIOSCIENCES
http://www.ias.ac.in/jbiosci/index.html
PHARMACOGN MAG
http://www.phcog.com/
J CHEM SCI
http://www.springer.com/chemistry/journal/12039
INDIAN J DERMATOL VE http://www.ijdvl.com/default.asp
INDIAN J EXP BIOL
http://nopr.niscair.res.in/handle/123456789/39
INDIAN J CANCER
http://www.indianjcancer.com/
ANN THORAC MED
http://www.thoracicmedicine.org/
J FOOD SCI TECH MYS
http://www.springer.com/food+science/journal/13197
NEUROL INDIA
http://www.neurologyindia.com/
J VECTOR DIS
http://journaldatabase.org/journal/issn0972-9062
INDIAN PEDIATR
http://www.indianpediatrics.net/
INDIAN J BIOCHEM BIO http://nopr.niscair.res.in/handle/123456789/34
EPISODES
http://www.episodes.co.in/
NATL MED J INDIA
http://www.nmji.in/
INDIAN J MED MICROB
http://www.ijmm.org/iamm.asp
CURR SCI INDIA
http://www.currentscience.ac.in/
Journal Name

19. Best of India is 16/20 i.e. 80% GREEN

20. Top ranking Bio-Medical Journals of India are
all OPEN

21. Hence
India’s best Quality papers are published in
Open Access Journals !
Also it means (at-least for India) Open means Quality

22. Future ?
• Need to sustain the Open Access Publishing
Trend
• Lobby for Institutional Mandates
• Promote Open Access Repositories
• Promote Self- Archiving among Authors
THANK YOU