Dear Sir: Thanks very much for the compliments. It is indeed very heartening to see the 5000 hits on our IR. We still have a long way to go. Our desire is to be the first institution, at least, in the country, whose publications are 100% open access. Of the 5000 deposits, majority of the deposits have been done by the Centre's staff. So, all the credits should go to my colleagues who have been working tirelessly to achieve this milestone. Actually, the plan was to reach 5000 mark by June 3, which marked the first death anniversary of Dr. T. B. Rajashekar. We were off the target by couple of records. We eventually reached the 5000 mark on June 10. ePrints@IISc project was very close Rajashekar's heart. He would have been a very happy man had been amongst us today. As you may be aware, we are conducting a workshop on GNU EPrints during the last week of July 2006. We are getting overwhelming responses for the workshop. We want to ensure that at least 10 new repositories will come up in the country as the outcome of this workshop. Madhan Muthu's suggestion of having a meeting of repository managers is very timely. I'll check with our Chairman if NCSI can host this event. With regards, - Francis On Tue, 13 Jun 2006, Subbiah Arunachalam wrote:
Congratulations to NCSI Team! I just came to know that the IISc Eprints
server now
hosts 5,000 papers by the Institute's faculty and students. It is a milestone worth celebrating. When I come on 1 June I shall bring a packet of sweets.
Of course, we have a long way to go. For instance, we must persuade ALL our faculty and students to deposit their papers (full text) on their own initiative. We should reach 100% archiving. And we should persuade other Indian institutions to perform as well as IISc has done.
Madhan Muthu of NIT-Rourkela suggests that we should have a meeting of all repository managers, about 25-30 (?), to discuss how we could achieve 100% archiving by authors. If we hold such a meeting, say at IISc with DSIR support, we may also discuss issues relating to LOCKSS, preservation, standards, and advocacy.
Best wishes.
Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam]