Perspectives on open access publishing in India: Interview with Sridhar Gutam
Immediate and unrestricted access to published research is becoming ever more critical. The open access movement, which aims to achieve this goal, has evolved significantly worldwide over the years. Several universal and regional factors are shaping open access practices in different countries, and in this interview, we take a closer look at open access in India.
India is among the top 5 research-producing countries in the world, and with it being a lower-middle-income economy, its researchers often face cost barriers when both reading research and publishing it. In addition, its research environment presents some specific challenges in the wide adoption of open access models.
This year’s International Open Access Week focuses on Community over Commercialization. And so, for his views on the theme and the open access movement in India, I reached out to Dr Sridhar Gutam, founder of “Open Access India”—a community dedicated to enhancing accessibility to agricultural research information.
Dr Gutam is a senior scientist at ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, India, and specializes in the plant physiology of agricultural and horticultural crops. He holds a PhD in Plant Physiology from the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute and is part of the Agricultural Research Service under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. He is a fervent advocate for open access, open data, and open education and played a pivotal role in implementing open access policies within the ICAR.
In addition to his academic achievements, Dr Gutam has pursued professional development in intellectual property rights, having completed courses from WIPO, NALSAR University of Law, and IIM Ahmedabad. He has also participated in the Copyright & Right to Research Seminar at the American University Washington College of Law. Through his research and advocacy, Dr Gutam contributes to knowledge dissemination and fosters collaboration in the agricultural research community.
You have been a proponent of open access publishing in India for many years. Can you share an overview of the work you’ve done as part of the open access movement and the changes you have seen happening during this time?
I closely followed the initiatives of International Crops Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and The Global Forum on Agricultural Research and Innovation (GFAR) in the realm of open access in agricultural sciences, and my goal was to raise awareness within the Indian Council of Agricultural Research/National Agricultural Research System (ICAR/NARS).
I received significant support from all three of these organizations. Subsequently, we launched the first open access journal in ICAR, the Open Access Journal of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, in 2009. We utilized the Open Journal Systems (OJS) software created by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), thanks to the assistance of the Open Knowledge Society.
In 2011, my friends from FAO AIMS and GFAR encouraged me to establish a community of practice called Open Access India. Under this umbrella, we undertook various initiatives. We organized online seminars that brought together individuals to enhance awareness of open knowledge management in agriculture. We also presented papers on the potential of open access in Indian agriculture. We actively advocated for the implementation of the open access policy of ICAR, following the CSIR Open Access Policy.
Although ICAR initially intended to develop its proprietary software for transitioning its flagship journals into the online open-access format, we successfully persuaded them to adopt OJS. Currently, ICAR hosts approximately 100 journals on its epubs platform. Collaborating with Creative Commons India, the Centre for Internet & Society, and Wikimedia India, we played a key role in promulgating the Delhi Declaration on Open Access, which boasts signatories from around the world and the support of UNESCO.
We actively contributed to the formulation of the National Open Access Policy (Draft) for India, although it was not ultimately considered by the relevant government departments/ministries. We also joined DOAJ to raise awareness about open access journals and their inclusion in the DOAJ index. Our collaboration with Creative Commons India aimed at creating awareness about open licensing.
With the backing of the Open Science Framework, we launched AgriXiv and IndiaRxiv preprint repositories for agriculture and Indian sciences, respectively. We collaborated with Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) to develop learning modules on open access and worked with UNESCO on the Global Open Access Portal.
Furthermore, we partnered with Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) Argentina and AmeliCA Mexico to promote non-commercial open access infrastructure and policies for India. As a result, Journal of Horticultural Sciences now offers multiple reading formats and is indexed in Redalyc.
These are just a few examples of the numerous initiatives and efforts that Open Access India has undertaken over the past two decades to advance open access in India’s scientific community.
How is the open access landscape in India similar to or different from those in other parts of the world?
The landscape of open access in India is evolving, following a global trend. However, what continues to steer scholarly communications in India is the pursuit of a high impact factor or journal prestige. Many open access journals favored by Indian authors impose substantial article-processing charges (APCs), which often prove unaffordable. Meanwhile, subscription-based journals restrict the free sharing of articles. Although ResearchGate has gained popularity as a repository among Indian authors, institutional repositories are not seeing significant contributions of postprints. Notably, IndiaRxiv and AgriXiv (now partnered with Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International [CABI] as agriRxiv) are facing challenges in garnering preprints, whereas bioRxiv, in contrast, is experiencing a surge in contributions from Indian scientists.
The much-anticipated One Nation One Subscription policy promises to ensure free access to paywalled academic research papers for everyone in India. If this comes into force, what impact can it have on research and researchers in the country?
I have reservations about the current system’s effectiveness when it comes to accessing academic publications. The landscape is vast, encompassing a wide range of topics, perspectives, publishers, and a staggering volume of articles, often coupled with high subscription fees. It’s perplexing that researchers often have to purchase access to papers produced by their own colleagues.
This raises questions about the relevance of open access mandates set forth by funders such as the Department of Biotechnology/Department of Science and Technology (DBT/DST), the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), ICAR, and others. If these mandates were fully effective, there wouldn’t be a need to acquire access to works authored by Indian researchers with Indian funding.
Moreover, when it comes to accessing papers authored by individuals outside of India, we should assess their relevance to the Indian research community. During a G20 meeting, scientific advisors suggested the concept of inter-linking institutional repositories (inter-operability). If implemented, this could eliminate the necessity for journal subscriptions altogether.
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) indexes over 20,000 journals with approximately 9,400,000 articles. If authors have a strong desire to access papers from so-called prestigious journals published by commercial publishers, there is a need for increased awareness about scholarly communication and the intention to disseminate research results.
Preprint repositories are also on the rise, adding to the available resources. Instead of emphasizing subscriptions to journals, as mentioned in the Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (STIP 2020) draft, the government should consider supporting Indian journals in transitioning to online, open-access platforms and assist in making them available in multiple reading formats. The AmeliCA XML software could play a significant role in this endeavor.
The proportion of research published in open access journals by researchers in India has tended to be lower than the global average. In your view, is this because of high APCs of gold open access journals, a potential lack of awareness about alternative open access routes, wariness about open access publishing, or other reasons?
The Indian system for evaluating researchers and faculty relies heavily on impact factors, a practice that requires reconsideration. Journals with high impact factors often exhibit higher rejection rates under the subscription model. However, in the open access model, they tend to accept more papers, albeit with the authors bearing APCs. Unfortunately, not all projects funded by Indian Government agencies allocate funds for publication charges, creating a dilemma.
In our pursuit of publications in high–impact-factor journals, we often find ourselves unable to afford APCs, leading us to publish in subscription-based journals that restrict accessibility. On the other hand, open access journals, especially those indexed in the DOAJ, which don’t charge APCs, may not boast high impact factors and, consequently, aren’t a priority for Indian authors. Curiously, the University Grants Commission-Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (UGC-CARE) list overlooks DOAJ and doesn’t acknowledge it on a par with the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases. This discrepancy contributes to the limited publication by Indian authors in DOAJ-indexed open access journals.
It is imperative that research assessment boards become informed about open access and the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which emphasizes that impact factors are inadequate proxies for measuring publication quality. They must also recognize that publishing articles in journals is just one step in a continuous process that extends beyond journal publication. Encouraging and rewarding preprints should be an integral part of this approach.
What role do you see community-driven open access models playing in the goal of making all research fully and immediately free to access by anyone?
Significant progress in the realm of open access has largely been the result of dedicated community efforts. The development of essential software, licensing frameworks, advocacy campaigns, and indexing initiatives has been driven by passionate communities. Before governments recognized its importance, it was these communities that passionately championed the immediate availability and accessibility of published research for the advancement of science.
In some countries, governments have since enacted national laws to support open access, but the Global South, particularly Latin America, stands out as a shining example of the transformative impact of open access. While the Indian government is making strides, there is still work to be done. Repositories remain underpopulated. An exemplary initiative is AmeliCA-Redalyc, which utilizes the AmeliCA XML software to assist journals in presenting their articles in multiple formats. Additionally, platforms like PKP’s OJS and Open Preprint Systems (OPS) facilitate the launch of open access journals and preprint repositories.
Creative Commons and CrossRef are instrumental in promoting open licensing and indexing. Thanks to these efforts, the Internet Archive ensures perpetual availability of all openly licensed scholarly research outputs on the Internet. These collective endeavors by various communities are driving the open access movement forward. Communities of practice, such as Open Access India, should intensify their advocacy efforts to raise awareness among researchers, research assessment boards, and funders.
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