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