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Open Access Journal Publishing in

the Agricultural Sciences

Thomas Abraham, Nagaraj Vaidya, Vimal Kumar,


Sridhar Gutam and Aneeja Guttikonda

thomas@oksociety.org

Open Knowledge Society, India

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Agricultural Research & Education in India

• Historically, Agricultural Research & Education in India have


been in the public domain.
• National Agricultural Research System (NARS) is the largest
system in the world.
• The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR): Apex
organization for promotion of Agricultural Research &
Education in India.
– 5 National Institutes; 5 National Bureaux
– 48 ICAR Research Institutes
– 138 Substations of ICAR Institutes 12 Project Directorates in crop
sciences and animal sciences
– 30 National Research Centres; 77 All India Coordinated Research Projects
– 41 State Agricultural Universities
– 1 Central Agricultural University

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Contd . . .

• ~100 professional societies in agriculture & allied disciplines


are working for the advancement of their respective
disciplines by publishing scholarly journals.
• These scholarly journals are the only vehicles of scientific
information dissemination in India.
• All these journals have ISSN numbers and rated by National
Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) on the scale of 1
to 10.
• Only 23 have their own websites and only 20 are in Thomson
Reuters Master Journal List and many of them are not
online.
• As researcher's output is measured by number of research
papers X Impact Factor (IF)/NAAS Rating, the researchers
send their articles first to international journals with high
impact factor.

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OA and OAP

• Open Access
o Digital, online
o Free of charge
o free of most copyright and licensing restrictions
• Internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder
• e-publishing using Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) and
Internet is making possible for timely low cost Online
Publication.
• OAP maximizes research impact & promotes research progress
where author's copyright is retained and acknowledged
• Policy declaration by journals & academies

*Source: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/brief.htm

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Issues facing OAP in India

• Fear that revenue loss from print subscriptions if journal becomes


OA
• Lack of IT infrastructure or the funds to develop it for using far
more efficient online means of managing and publishing journals.
• Other obstacles include uncertainty around copyright issues and a
lack of management support and clerical support.
• Lack of expertise in every organization to promote and creation of
institutional archives and encourage scientists to deposit their
papers
• Researchers are not aware of the fact that the editors of
renowned journals accepts the archived pre-print papers and also
permit the authors to archive and post-prints.

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Solution

• Need to create OA awareness


• In order to overcome these barriers, these professional
societies should play key role in:

• Removing access barriers to literature and accelerating


research by transforming print only to online
• Safe guarding the published literature by creating digital
archives.

• Hence OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS and OPEN ARCHIVES

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Other Constraints – TOLL ACCESS

• www.indianjournals.com is hosting online of various journals


being published by various scientific societies.
– Free preview of abstracts & one sample online issue.
• www.indianajournals.com
– Site is not easily accessible and needs a
subscription/registration.
• www.indianperodicals.in proposes to host journals online.
• Subscription price ~ Rs. 3000/- per year.

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ICT in Agriculture

• Well acclaimed projects in agriculture using Information and


Communication Technologies (ICTs) are:

• MSSRF’s Information Villages of Pondicherry


• Hewlett-Packard’s I-community
• Nagarjuna groups’ ikisan
• ITC’s E-Choupal
• Madhya Pradesh Govt.'s Gyandoot
• Similarly ICTs can be utilised for Open Access for wider
reach.

• Research showed that Open Access results in High Citation


(Eysenbach, 2006).

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Encouraging facts

• DOAJ
– 107 Indian journals
• ROAR
– 39 repositories
• NAIP under Consortium for e-Resources in Agriculture
(CeRA) from 2007-08 to 2011-12 with total a cost of Rs.
938.542 lakhs, ICAR is providing access to e-resources to
126 libraries.
• Science Citation Index Facility at Indian Agricultural
Research Institute (IARI) for evaluation of scientific
publications.

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Agricultural OA journals of India

• Journals in DOAJ
– JOURNAL OF TROPICAL AGRICULTURE
– MADRAS AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL
– VET SCAN
– JOURNAL OF SAT AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH

• Journals using OJS


– JOURNAL OF TROPICAL AGRICULTURE
– OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL OF MEDICINAL AND AROMATIC PLANTS
– KARNATAKA JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES
– MYSORE JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES (TESTING OJS)

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What Next?

• Now its the high time to transform Indian Agricultural


Journals into Open Access Journals and create Open Archive
Institutional Repositories.
• CSIR and CGIAR have now adopted OA.
• NARS needs to take an inventive step towards Open Access
and should adopt a A Open Access Policy for Indian
Agricultural Research.
– Authors should be made aware and insisted to submit papers
to OA journals and deposit their refereed research in a
central repository.
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OJS Initiatives
Š SJPI Project @ NCSI
● Partnership with PKP (Oct 2004 – Mar 2007)
● Demonstrated e-publishing with 13
prototype journals
● Harvester
● OJS in Hindi
● Workshops

Š Open Knowledge Society


● www.oksociety.in
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Open Knowledge Society
Š non profit organization
Š PKP partner in India
Š OKS supports
● publication of Open Access Journals
● conversion of print journals into online
versions
● creation of Institutional Repositories
● automation of libraries
● other activities that promote open access
to knowledge
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OKS Support

Š Medicinal and Aromatic Plant


Association of India
● Scientific society at National
Research Centre for Medicinal and
Aromatic Plants (NRCMAP)

Š Open Access Journal on Medicinal and


Aromatic Plants (OJAMP)

● http://oksociety.in/ojs/index.php/oajm
ap

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OKS Support

Š Demo system @ OKS


● http://ojsdemo.oksociety.in

Š Some of the test journals

● Mysore Journal of Agricultural Sciences.


● Journal of Spices and Plantation crop
● Journal of soil Science and management’
● Journal of Pest Management. Etc…

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Interventions of Open Knowledge
Society, India

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Open Knowledge Society - www.oksociety.in

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Open Knowledge Society envisioning

• A survey to assess agricultural information needs of farmers


and public
• support for the publication of agricultural information
materials in local languages
• Publication services for farmers and non-specialists (micro
blogging, Idea exchange forums, SMS services)
• Training services for public libraries and village libraries in
collection and preservation of indigenous knowledge in
agriculture practices
• Building of virtual communities for the interaction of
students, scientists, extension workers, administrators and
farmers

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OKS Project Proposal

• journals.in
• archives.in
• conferences.in
• Looking for funds
– Hardware & other infrastructure support
– Support for awareness programmes

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Conclusion

• The open access journals perform peer review and also make
the approved contents freely available to the world.
• Their expenses consist of peer review, manuscript
preparation, and server space.
• Both BioMed Central and Budapest Open Access Initiative
through its Open Society Institute waive the article-
processing charge and also provide grants to authors in low
and low-middle income countries to publish in the Open
Access Journal.
• Embracing the open source software and resources, all the
Asian countries' Journals are now online.
• More and more OA journals will increase the visibility of
Indian research

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Thank you

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