Hello, Please find enclosed the minutes of the lecture "Open Archive Initiative in India" by Dr. T.B.Rajashekar, which was held on 30th March 2003 at NCSI. Thanks & Regards, -- NCSI-Net co-ordination team Minutes The monthly meeting for March 2003 was held on 30th March 2003. The speaker for the day was Dr. T. B. Rajashekar, who was sharing his experiences at the "International Symposium on Open Access and the Public Domain in Digital Data and Information for Science", which was held from 10-11 March 2003, in Paris. Organized by ICSU, CODATA, UNESCO and ICSTI, the symposium aimed to explore the value of public domain and open access data information. He started of by explaining the oft mis-understood terms "Public Domain" and "Open Access". Public Domain is defined as Sources and types of data and information whose uses are not restricted by statutory IP law and legislation. Information available for public use without authorization. Open Access is propriety information that is made available openly and freely available on the Internet or on other media by the rights holder, but retains some or all the exclusive property rights that are guarantee under statutory IP laws. Open access maybe provided by all types of public/private sector. Mentioning about the Workshop conducted on Science in the Information Society, he said that he was part of the working group, which consisted of 8-10 people. Their workgroup was focused on "Ensuring universal access to scientific knowledge internationally, including overcoming the digital divide." The action points, which the group came out with, are 1. Human and institutional capacity building, building on existing centers of expertise and stores of knowledge. 2. Encourage wider access of knowledge to the developing world. Explaining the need for OAP he said that the provision of free online access to quality information, open domain and open access to scholarly material. Enablers like OAI, BOAI, SPARC, FOS have enabled this service to gain popularity. Its of value to developing countries to help scientist protect IP, remove access barriers, enhance national research capacity, improve visibility leading to improve economy. The open Access Publication in India was explained with examples. Prominent are: 1. Indian Academy of Science (http://www.ias.ac.in), which has 11 journals online. The print edition is priced, but online available for free. 2. INSA, which was established in 1935 has archival issues of 4 journals online 3. Vidyanidhi the project by University of Mysore (http://www.vidyanidhi.org.in) 4. eprints at IISc (http://eprint.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in) 5. University Library project at IISc, which hopes to provide free to read, searchable collection of one-million books (out of copyright) 6. Scidata by NCL, which provides free access to all related data of NCIM (http://www.ncl-india.org/ncim) Others, which were mentioned, were 1. National Health Information Collection: A portal for Indian health data and information. They are developing free software for the same. 2. URDIP: Open access to Indian patents and medicinal plants 3. Scigate: Service from NCSI (http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in) 4. Aero Info: Aerospace virtual library He said that a model for OAP in India should evolve, which would create a national network of distributed inter-operable, open access digital repositories of Science & Technology Research material from Institutions and Journals. This should network with other global services. Research and Development centers should create their own digital repositories, incorporate peer review/quality control. Establish new online only open-access journals, science journals to adopt open access publication. The role of the librarian, he said is very significant in this scenario. The Librarian can help in creating and developing repositories and content management. He also suggested that a national level mechanism is very essential to promote OAP. Working groups should be set up to work towards this goal. It was a very educative talk, which revolved around Open Access and the myths surrounding it. He put across the entire concept in a very informative manner, thus educating the listeners to revolution, which is making inroads into the sub-continent very soon. Minutes recorded by Ayesha Taranum __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com