Thank you Sukhdev for your feedback on the workshop and sharing the informal discussions you had with the participants. I was tempted to answer you immediately, but thought I should analyze the 'official' feedback first. The workshop website now has all the content and is available at: http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/ojs-workshop/material.html Even the official feedback confirms that the fear most publishers have about going Open Access(OA) is losing subscriptions. This is despite Dr. D.K. Sahu's talk which showed a few of the journals hosted OA by Medknow have actually increased subscriptions over a period of three years. (Page 46 on http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/ojs-workshop/presentations/Sahu-Medknow.pdf) On the other hand, they have had a number of benefits by going OA, like increased visibility and hence increased submissions to the journals (even increased international submissions from countries like UK) and therefore greater impact (Page 42 to 45). We should note that in the feedback, the publishers who are not willing to publish OA, are willing to provide 'delayed OA'. Let me also address the following concern of yours:
I also perceive another threat to OA in India from emerging commericalinterests in making journals online. These commerical interests areselling the argument to professional associations / societies to stopthe hard-copy journal publication and save money. Instead they will puttheir journals in online - only mode after charging some annual feeper society member. Once in Online-Only mode, they can provide freeaccess to society members. For non-members they will be charging andsharing the revenue with society. I wonder, in what way that willbenefit the journals. Is online publishing that expensive? Or theworld is desparate to read Indian Journals after making subscriptioncharges. This would only defeating the cause of OA, atleast in India.
Most Societies and Associations which publish in the print mode currently do not have the resources (both financial and manpower) to host their own content online. Even if the software is free, they need some server space and someone to manage it (which would not be a major concern for many Academic and Research organizations). That is why they look towards commercial establishments to fulfill these needs. Is there something that we can do about this situation? Even if someone does go to a commercial service provider to make their content online, I would suggest that they keep the rights to manage the journals' access and subscriptions. As for limiting access to a country or subject or any other way, it does not make sense at all. Some things, like OA, should have no limit (like Shahrukh Khan says in his Ad for Airtel!). with regards, Suvarsha *********************************************************************** Suvarsha Walters, Project Assistant, National Centre for Science Information Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore - 560 012 INDIA Ph (Off): 080-23600271 / 22932511 E-mail: suvarsha_w@yahoo.com suvarsha@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in ************************************************************************
I am just back from the "National Workshop on Scientific JournalPublishing in India, 10th - 11th Feb. 2006. " <http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/ojs-workshop/schedule.html > to myoffice at Delhi. I would like to share some of my discussions with fellow participantsof the workshop during dinners at the place where we stayed. I thinkit is important to share it with you all because such informaldiscussions reveals facts that are otherwise difficult to reveal withformal discussions or "scientific surveys". Major concern of Editors was - if they go Open Access, theirsubscription numbers would go down. However this is in contradictionto my experience with Indian Biomedical Journals [http://medind.nic.in ] . Nobody has yet noticed drop in suscriptionnumbers. Rather, few of them were glad to share the fact that theirsubscription has increased. Whether, it is due to their onlinepresence?, is a matter to investigate. During our Dinner and Evening walks - One silly suggestion also cameup. This was to have Open Access within the country only. That is, letus make our journals Open Access but restrict their access to Indiaonly. I would classify this suggestion very "dangerous" to the wholemovement of OA. If other countries especially the West and Americansbuys this very argument - God only knows, with what we will be leftwith. Science should not be at the mercy of Geographical Bounderies.Moreover the very purpose of our OA movement should be to expose ourIndian output to the world community. I also perceive another threat to OA in India from emerging commericalinterests in making journals online. These commerical interests areselling the argument to professional associations / societies to stopthe hard-copy journal publication and save money. Instead they will puttheir journals in online - only mode after charging some annual feeper society member. Once in Online-Only mode, they can provide freeaccess to society members. For non-members they will be charging andsharing the revenue with society. I wonder, in what way that willbenefit the journals. Is online publishing that expensive? Or theworld is desparate to read Indian Journals after making subscriptioncharges. This would only defeating the cause of OA, atleast in India. --Sukhdev Singh, NIC.http://openmed.nic.in _______________________________________________ LIS-Forum mailing list LIS-Forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum