Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 18:14:40 +0530 From: Subbiah Arunachalam Dear Vijayakumar: We are talking to the Open Society Institute about the status of India. For the first time they may make an exception and are likely to provide partial support to our OA workshops in May. I am also talking to the National Academy of Sciences, USA, to make available PNAS free on the Internet to Indian researchers immediately on publication. Often one is confronted with the question: Have we done whatever WE COULD before seeking help from others? Often the answer is no. For example, it does not take much effort or money to set up interoperable institutional open access archives, and yet I do not know of any Indian institutional archive other than the one at IISc, B'lore. It does not take much money to make our journals open access, and yet only a small number of our journals have gone open access. I must congratulate Dr D K Sahu of Bombay who has done an excellent job in making the electronic versions of more than a dozen Indian medical journals freely accessible on the Internet. At a meeting of INDEST held on 7 October, a decision was taken to set up institutional archives in the major INDEST institutions (following the model of IISc), but so far no archive has been set up. I wrote to key persons in those institutions more than once, but I have received no reply from all but one of them (my friend Jeevan from IITKh). Incidentally, international connections do not play much of a role in getting things done; persistence does. Best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] -----Original Message----- From: Mailing List Manager [mailto:mailman@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in] Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2004 10:20 AM To: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] FW: [BOAI] New PLoS/OSI institutional membership grants Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 03:44:43 -0800 (PST) From: JK Vijayakumar George Soros is founder and chairman of the Open Society Institute and the Soros foundations network (http://www.soros.org/)Soros foundations are autonomous institutions established in particular countries or regions to initiate and support open society activities. The priorities and specific activities of each Soros foundation are determined by a local board of directors and staff in consultation with George Soros and OSI boards and advisors. As per the guidelines the fundings will go to the countries where Soros Network is active.Unfortunately India is not covered under this catagory (http://www.soros.org/openaccess/grants.shtml) I hope Shri Arun can utilise his international relations in open access initiative to activate Soros network in India, and then ask for fundings.

India is again excluded as was done earlier with HINARI and AGORA!

Arun

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