Friends and Fellow Information professionals, Please watch https://direct.mit.edu/books/pages/direct-to-open. MIT Press Direct to Open books were downloaded 176,300 times in 10 months. A few months ago, I alerted the members of this list to OpenStax https://openstax.org/, an educational technology nonprofit run out of Rice University, US and to the latest (10th) edition of the best selling chemistry textbook *Organic chemistry* by John McMurry being released as open access. Last year, Prof. Samiran Nundy, the renowned Gastro surgeon and Dean of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi made the book *How to Practice Academic Medicine and Publish from Developing Countries? - A practical guide* by Samiran Nundy https://www.google.co.in/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Samiran+Nundy%22&source=gbs_metadata_r&cad=7 , Atul Kakar https://www.google.co.in/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Atul+Kakar%22&source=gbs_metadata_r&cad=7 , Zulfiqar A. Bhutta https://www.google.co.in/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Zulfiqar+A.+Bhutta%22&source=gbs_metadata_r&cad=7 openly accessible to users in South Asia. Why can't higher educational institutions in India embark on publishing open access books? Librarians and information scientists may try to convince their vice chancellors/directors/deans to think about it. You may also take it up with the UGC and the Ministries of Higher Education and Science and Technology. There are many in India who can write excellent textbooks for all levels With warm regards, Subbiah Arunachalam http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4398-4658 http://www.researcherid.com/rid/B-9925-2009 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.