Wednesday 11 February 2009

A big step for OA in India

India's Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) has recommended that each of its 40+ laboratories adopt an OA mandate.

CSIR’s head of R &D said, in a memorandum to the Directors of all CSIR laboratories,
February 6th, 2009:

“The CSIR is pleased to approve the implementation of the following recommendations of the Group for Open Access to Science Publications (GOASP) of CSIR":

1. All research papers published from all CSIR laboratories be made open access either by depositing the full-text and the metadata of each paper in an institutional repository or by publishing the papers in an open access journal in the first place.
2. All the CSIR published journals to be made open access.
3. Each laboratory sets up its own interoperable institutional open access repository.
4. CSIR / lab sets up one or more centre(s) which would harvest the full-text and metadata of
these papers.
5. Each laboratory sets up Electronic Thesis and Dissertations Repository.
6. To hold a conference for creating awareness on Open Access.
7. To hold in house Training programmes on Open Access.
8. Sensitize CSIR researchers.

It is requested that the above Open Access activities are implemented at the earliest.”

CSIR is taking a strong lead in ensuring that much of the research carried out in India is made available to the international research community through open

access. This is an inspiration to research leaders in the developing world and – when fully implemented -.will enrich the knowledge base of researchers everywhere.