Dear All, Greetings from the NCSI-Net Foundation (https://ncsinet.in/). NCSI-Net Foundation cordially invites you and your colleagues to Dr T.B. Rajashekar Memorial (17th) Lecture, 2022, on "Role E-Prints/Preprints in Scholarly Communication." By: Dr T. S. Kumbar Advisor (Library & Institute Archives) Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar Palaj, Gandhinagar 382 055| Gujarat. Date & Time: Saturday, 21 January 2023 at 11 a.m. Webinar Link: http://bit.ly/3HQAYjA The talk will be presided over by: Professor Subbiah Arunachalam, Visiting Professor, DST Centre for Policy Research, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Abstract of the talk: The traditional model of scholarly communication is undergoing a major change. For a long time, peer-reviewed journals formed as a widely accepted and recognised research communication channel. This model of communication has its advantages and disadvantages. With the advent of the web, a greater push for open access, especially open science frameworks and the urge to share research results among the scientific community much faster than the traditional journals lead to the emergence of preprints. Recently, COVID-19 accelerated the process and focused on Preprints more than before. The physics, mathematics and computer science researchers took the lead and redefined how scholarly communication must take by setting up a preprint archive, viz. arXiv.org as early as 1991. This preprint archive has set an example and brought in major changes. As a result, we now see more than a dozen active preprint archives that have gradually embedded themselves as one of the accepted channels of scholarly communication by researchers, funding agencies, publishers, and institutions. Considering that the fast and significant developments are taking place in preprints which should be of greater interest to library professionals, the talk will focus on the history of preprints and the current landscape, perspectives on preprints: advantages, disadvantages, concerns and challenges. The talk will also cover other areas such as technical infrastructure, models of preprint servers, key players in the preprints landscape and their roles, developments in the Open Science Framework Platform, aggregators, discovery platforms and other related aspects. An attempt will be made to briefly cover the role that the librarians can play in creating an awareness among researchers, academicians, and institutions not just to value preprints as a source of information, but also to recognise them as the very first place to share their research. A small case study carried out recently by IIT Gandhinagar Library will also be covered. An effort will be made to draw attention to ongoing discussions about social media coverage, open peer review and future developments as expressed by the experts in the scholarly communication domain. About the speaker: Dr T. S. Kumbar is currently (Nov 2021) working as Advisor (Library & Institute Archives) at IIT Gandhinagar. He has worked at the same Institute for almost a decade (since Feb 2012) and was actively engaged in setting up a state-of-the-art library service. Prior to this, he worked as Chief Librarian at DA-IICT, Gandhinagar, where he set up the library services from the very beginning. He was also with INFLIBNET Centre as Scientist D, where he initiated a number of new programs, including SOUL Software, E-Resources Consortium, Union Catalogues, ETD, DDS, and Retrospective Conversion, to name a few. Before moving to INFLIBNET, Dr Kumbar worked as Assistant Librarian at IIT Bombay, supervised serials, information services, and resource sharing and was involved in automating the library. Dr Kumbar holds PhD in Library Science from Gulbarga University, for which he was awarded Gold Medal. He has published more than 30 research papers and edited quite a few volumes in the areas of Library science. He is a recipient of • Fulbright Fellowship in Library & Information Technology 2001 • Canadian Faculty Research Fellowships 2006 • American Library Association Fellowship 1995-96 He has been awarded ‘Best Young Librarian’ by Satkal Trust and ‘Best Librarian’ by MANLIBNET in recognition of his contributions to the Profession. IIT Gandhinagar also honoured him with a long service award in 2022. He is a member of over a dozen national and international professional associations, including IFLA, ALA, SLA and NDLTD, and has been actively contributing to their activities and has been a member of committees setup by DST, MoE’s E-ShodhSindhu National Consortium. He currently serves as a member of the Library Advisory Committee of two universities and was on the Board/Council of ACM & IEEE, USA. About Professor Subbiah Arunachalam Prof. S. Arunachalam is globally known for his expertise in Scientometrics and their use for assessing the research impact on a wide scale ranging from individuals and departments to institutions and countries. He is probably the first in India to do scientometrics research and to talk about and advocate open access. His interests include scientometrics, science policy, information science, public understanding of science, openness in scholarly communication, ICT for Development and rural knowledge centres and improving information access for both scientists and the rural poor. He is one of the earliest in developing countries to use citation indexes to study developments in science and science policy. He was instrumental in CSIR, DBT and DST adopting Green open access as official policy. He is probably the only Indian Hon. Fellow of CILIP, UK. We look forward to seeing you at the event. With best regards, Francis Francis Jayakanth J.R.D. Tata Memorial Library IISc, Bengaluru - 560012 francis at iisc.ac.in