Speaker: Professor Leslie Chan, University of Toronto, Canada
Long before open access became a formal policy agenda, a commercial publishing model, or a measure of institutional performance, it was built through the care work of librarians, technologists, researchers, and advocates. This talk honours Francis Jayakanth, whose four decades at the Indian Institute of Science placed him at the heart of India’s early digital library and open access movements. From his early work at the National Centre for Science Information to the creation and long-term stewardship of ePrints@IISc, his development of interoperable systems, support for institutional repositories, professional training, and more than three decades of sustaining LIS-Forum, Francis exemplifies the often-unseen labour through which open knowledge infrastructures are created, governed, and maintained. Situating his contributions within the wider history of open access in India, the talk will also recognize pioneers such as Subbiah Arunachalam and T. B. Rajashekar, alongside the librarians, researchers, institutions, and community initiatives that established repositories, open journals, professional networks, and new forms of scholarly communication across the country. Retelling this history is particularly urgent at this juncture, as attention shifts toward centralized proprietary platforms, extractive publishing agreements, and prestige-branded programmes that can obscure the community-driven and commons-based foundations of openness. Honouring Francis is not simply an occasion to celebrate an exceptional career. It is also an opportunity to remember the people, relationships, and practices of care that made open access possible, and to renew our shared commitment to infrastructures that are non-commercial and interoperable, community governed, grounded in the commons, and sustained through care.
Date: Monday, 27 July 2026
Time: 4:00 PM IST (UTC+5:30)
Platform: Microsoft Teams
Teams Link:
https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/454657375013009?p=Mm9pMdgZO6YhANoU27About the Speaker
Professor Leslie Chan is Associate Professor, Teaching, in the Department of Global Development Studies and the director of the Knowledge Equity Lab at the University of Toronto Scarborough. An early practitioner of the Web for scholarly exchange and online learning, Leslie has been interested in the role and design of knowledge infrastructure and their impact on local and international development. In particular, he has been studying the geopolitics of academic knowledge production and the uneven power relations embedded in this production. Since 2000, Leslie has served as the director of Bioline International, an open access platform for scientific journals from the global south. Leslie was the PI of the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet). He has published widely on open access and knowledge production. Currently, he is on the board of several international organizations, including the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and the steering committee of Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI).
We warmly invite all LIS-Forum members and colleagues to join us for what promises to be a thought-provoking reflection on the history, values, and future of open access in India, while celebrating the enduring contributions of Francis Jayakanth.
We look forward to your participation.