Dear Library professionals, It is high time to discuss copyright policies, itsinfringement and why the academic community support open access initiatives includingSci hub. The debate is more relevant at present than ever as you all know aboutthe lawsuitfiled recently in the Delhi High Court by the major publishers against Sci-hub andLibGen for copyright infringement. The journal subscription model is pretty old and isaccepted by the academic community for centuries, but unfortunately somepublishing giants have become too greedy. On the other hand, everyone wants free access toscholarly information, but of course, not by violating copyright laws. Perhaps,we have to think of changing the copyright laws! In the race for free access toresearch information, we are destroying the quality and standard of scientificresearch and scholarship which is evident from copyright infringements, theproliferation of predatory journals with low-quality research papers, and OAjournals charging hefty Article Processing Charge (APC), etc. Ultimately, it isthe knowledge creators’ (authors) responsibility and not the librarians, whohave to ‘bell the cat’ or tame the big publishers to bring down journalsubscription prices. Plea of the commercial publishers Threeacademic publishers namely-Elsevier Ltd., Wiley India Pvt. Ltd., AmericanChemical Society filed a petition in Delhi High Court are asking for blockingof Sci-Hub and Libgen, the two websites who provide free downloads of researchpublications and books to research scholars and students. Thetrio publishers together publish 40% of scientific publications. If we take thefive top major publishers, they control more than 50% of thepublications in Science and Social Sciences worldwide, one of the largestconcentrations of market power in any sector. Profits and market caps for thepublishers have also swelled. Journal publishing is a $10 billion industry,with one of the highest profit margins of any sector. Forexample, Elsevier’s parent company RELX Group, boasts a nearly $35billion market cap. The profit margin of Elsevier is 37%, twice that ofGoogle, which dwarfs, by comparison, the margins of tech titans suchas Apple and Amazon also and is under attack globally for itsmonopoly practices and super-profits. The price of these journals has gone up 521% i.e. more than five timesin the last 30 years against consumer price index rise of only 118%. That meansthe price of these publications have become six times while the rest of thegoods is only twice of what they were 30 years back. This is the super-profits,unideal what we are supposed to pay for what is produced by us only. It isimportant to note the fact that commercial publishers are not paying a singlepi for the authors towards content. There is no practice of benevolence in terms ofcash to the authors nor any expenditure involved in review of paper. So, how far they are entitled forcopyright? Also if the employers claim copyright of the Patent, why don’t thesame logic apply in case of articles especially for scientific articles where aresearcher use the infra structure of the institution for his research. The publishers push the libraries to buy bundledsubscriptions of all their products, charge money for any article that maybe required by a researcher anywhere in the world, charging them from $30 to$60 per article. Hence, the premier publisher Elsevierrocked with 982 million dollars. In anutshell, the publishing giants are demanding that Sci-Hub and Libgen becompletely blocked in India through a so-called dynamic injunction. Thepublishers claim that they own exclusive rights to the manuscripts that theyhave published, and that Sci-Hub and Libgen are engaged in violating variousexclusive rights conferred on them under copyright law by providing free accessto their copyrighted contents. Discussion a. Puzzle The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientificsociety started in 1876 founded at New York University. Generally, non-profit organization would have been able to shoulder theresponsibility of free access to research but joined with Elsevier and Wiley infiling a suit against Sci hub. b. ‘Copyright infringement’ Let’slook at the landmark judgement given by the Delhi High Court in 2016 on the Delhi University photocopying case. Threepublishing giants – Oxford University Press, the Cambridge University Press andthe Taylor and Francis Group – had at the time banded together to sue DelhiUniversity and a photocopying shop operating under its license. Academicfraternity use research articles only for academic purpose and not for anyprofit. The court had ruled that compilation anddistribution of copies of texts of books prescribed in the syllabus did notinfringe any copyrights of the publisher as defined in the Copyright Act of 1957.Any number of photocopies could be madeand distributed, the court ruled, as long as it was meant for “purpose ofeducational instruction. d. Copyright policy in practice elsewhere 40 years back, in 1980 Universityof Ottawa (Canada) published guidelines for legal deposit legislation where itclearly states that though the publishers have control over their publication,the objective of accessibility to the national deposit collection cannot beignored. The journal article should be deposited at National Legal DepositInstitution. e. Public opinions Lis-Forum is the e-mail based largest discussion forum of libraryprofessionals in India. Since, last few weeks, huge discussion is going onregarding the plea of trio publishers in Delhi High Court. Many renownedlibrary professionals in India expressed their strong view that they areagainst to ban Sci-hub. Many tweaked in Delhi High court twitter and othersocial media that if it happens, it give rise to digital colonization etc. Let’s discuss alternative ways to tackle commercialpublishers. To overcome copyright issue, authors should know copyright laws,embargo period, and different OA methods to re-invent OA movement to resolvecopyright issue. a. Our scientific communityshould boycott review and publishing to foreign commercial publishers. b. Archiving preprints: To access free fulltext articles apart from searching in free Open Access journals, the next bestoption is uploading preprints of their papers in their IRs. c. Plan S is an initiative for OA Sciencepublishing launched in 2018 by "cOAlition S", aconsortium of national research agencies and funders from twelve Europeancountries. The plan advocates authors to publish their work in openrepositories or in journals that are available to all by2021. The "S" stands for "shock". NationalKnowledge Commission (NKC) & New Education Policy (NEP) can consider thebelow discussed points. i. As per the existing Book Act, submissionof published book in India in any language by the author/publisher ismandatory. In the same way, ruling can be made to submit an article publishedby the author. ii. Well-knownprofessional institutions like IITs, IIMs, IISc etc. can start domain-basedquality journals at par with the journals published byACM, ACS, ASCE and ASME. iii. Government can strengthen Indian ScienceAbstract (ISA) which has been published by (NISCAIR)which is covering around 1500 journals. iv. “One Nation,One Subscription” is our Prime Minister Sri Narendra Modi’s ambitious goal thatwill prove to be a game changer for the scientific community and individualresearchers. More significantly, the government has also proposed to buy bulksubscriptions of all the important scientific journals across the world, andprovide everyone in India to have free access to them. This avoids multiplesubscriptions and saves foreign exchange also. Government can boost ISA by taking stepslike a. Includejournals not only from Science but Social Sciences and Humanities also. b. AuthorisedGovt. agencies should recognize peer-reviewed quality journals and assist theauthors to avoid predatory journals. c. Rankingof Indian institutions which has been conducted by National InstitutionalRanking Framework (NIRF) should be based on ISA and not on Scopus. It force theauthors to publish in Indian journals which are open access compliant. In asignificant development, Government India is proposed to bring newScience, Technology, Innovation, Policy (STIP) which aims to establish a systemwhereby all researchers in India can access the research published in topinternational journals at no cost said Akhilesh Gupta, senior advisor to DST ina press release on 6th January, 2021. He continued that, “currentlythe subscription cost is exceeding Rs.1500 crore annually for which individualcolleges cannot negotiate with publishers. Only a small fraction of researchersis now able to benefit from theses subscriptions and we would like to changethat.” Scientific publishing has become a pure businessincreasingly characterized by consolidation, soaring subscription fees, andrising profit margins. As a result, plenty of scientists, students, andjournalists advocate for an empire of academic piracy as a necessity. It alsoleads to the question that what value the publishers add to any articlepublished. Open Access activists likeAlexandria Elbakyan and Peter Suber who advocate OA and provide the paywalljournals free of cost have become darlings of majority of academic communitythroughout the world, for which the greedy commercial journals are onlyresponsible. Commercial journals are a twice-paid product, bought first bytaxpayers and secondly by scientists. Here, we have to notice two points i.e.Academicians are not using the research articles for any commercial purpose andSci-hub, Libgen are not making any monetary benefit out of it. You can access the full article @https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ivtiVxelxw28p2EbQDapF-kERNON0bmH/view?usp=s... Dr. K.C.Gangadhar, Nitte Meenakshi Institute ofTechnology & Dr.Nagaraja A., RV Institute of Technology & Management, Bangalore