 |
Subbiah Arunachalam | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Academic career | |
| Institutions |
|
Subbiah Arunachalam (born 1941) is a Chennai, India-based information consultant known for his campaigns in favour of open access for academic journals in developing countries. He has been associated with the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation.
Linked with the Indian academic and scholarly communities for over three decades, Arunachalam has held posts of editor of scientific journals such as the Indian Journal of Technology, Journal of Scientific & Industrial Research, Indian Journal of Chemistry, Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences, and Pramana.
In an interview, [1] Arunachalam described his career: "I started out as a student of chemistry, and after obtaining a Masters in Chemistry at Annamalai University in 1963, I took a research assistant’s job at the Central Electro Chemical Research Institute, Karaikudi. I worked there for 21 months, doing research in electroplating."
"In May 1965, I moved to New Delhi, to work as an editorial assistant in the Publications & Information Directorate of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR). Then in 1969, I took three years' leave to pursue research in physical chemistry at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore."
Arunachalam has said he has never taken a course in information science, but "simply developed a natural flair for some aspects of information science, largely focused on the needs of students of science seeking information for research, and those wanting to look at and 'evaluate' performance in scientific research."
Since the 1970s, he has been on the editorial boards of journals like Current Contents, Journal of Information Science (since its launch in 1979), Scientometrics, Public Understanding of Science, and Current Science.
He has also been involved in various other roles—science writer, researcher in chemistry, teacher of information science, librarian, executive secretary of the Indian Academy of Sciences, and member of the editorial boards of scientific journals. In recent years, he has been Distinguished Fellow at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation and at the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore).
In mid-2006, Arunachalam described his role thus: "Currently, I am active in two areas, in both of which my flair for information work comes in handy. For more than ten years I have been a full-time volunteer at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), in Chennai. There I am part of the Information Village Research Project, which uses new ICTs to empower rural communities, and an adviser to the National Virtual Academy."
He is also on the executive committee of the Global Knowledge Partnership, and the international advisory board of the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD). Arunachalam is one of three secretaries of Mission 2007, a Government of India-initiated project which aims at taking the "knowledge revolution" to India's villages. Besides, he is a member of the Working Group on Libraries set up by India's National Knowledge Commission.
In a post made in 2003, Stevan Harnad, another Open Access (OA) advocate, called Arunachalam "India's and the Developing World's great advocate for open access". [2] Arunachalam had then been named as Co-Director of the CogPrints Archive.
Arunachalam has said that his "interest in promoting Open Access specifically started around 1996, when I began working as a visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai".
He has argued that research performed in India, and funded by Indian taxpayers, is reported in a few thousand journals, both Indian and foreign. But since some of these journals are very expensive, "many Indian libraries -- including sometimes the author's own institutional library -- are not able to subscribe to them. As consequence, other Indian scientists working in the same, or related, areas are unable to read these papers. This is a problem common to all developing countries."
Arunachalam's view is that "if all these papers were published in OA journals, or if the authors made them freely available on the Web by self-archiving them — either in institutional OA archives or in central archives like arXiv and CiteSeer — then the problem would vanish." He is known to favour the self-archiving route for Indian researchers. This is because, he says, "it would allow us to achieve 100% OA (open access) more quickly."
Indian research is believed to be published in equal proportions in both Indian and foreign journals, but most Indian ones have a very poor circulation. Resultantly, Indian research work does not reach a wide audience, "affecting both its visibility and its impact". Hence, Arunachalam has argued that Open Access archives are "very important" for the Indian researcher, whom it could offer greater visibility.
Stevan Robert Harnad is a Canadian cognitive scientist based in Montreal.
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined, or libre open access, barriers to copying or reuse are also reduced or removed by applying an open license for copyright, which regulates post-publication uses of the work.
Bharat Ratna Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan was an Indian agronomist, agricultural scientist, geneticist, administrator and humanitarian. Swaminathan was a global leader of the green revolution. He has been called the main architect of the green revolution in India for his leadership and role in introducing and further developing high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice.
The adjective free in English is commonly used in one of two meanings: "at no monetary cost" (gratis) or "with little or no restriction" (libre). This ambiguity can cause issues where the distinction is important, as it often is in dealing with laws concerning the use of information, such as copyright and patents.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of Open Peer Commentary established in 1978 by Stevan Harnad and published by Cambridge University Press. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2022 impact factor of 29.3.
Hindawi was a publisher of peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journals active in scientific, technical, and medical (STM) literature. It was founded in 1997 in Cairo, Egypt, and purchased in 2021 for $298 million by John Wiley & Sons, a large US-based publishing company.
An open-access mandate is a policy adopted by a research institution, research funder, or government which requires or recommends researchers—usually university faculty or research staff and/or research grant recipients—to make their published, peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers open access (1) by self-archiving their final, peer-reviewed drafts in a freely accessible institutional repository or disciplinary repository or (2) by publishing them in an open-access journal or both.
The Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) is a non-profit trade association of open access journal and book publishers. Having started with an exclusive focus on open access journals, it has since expanded its activities to include matters pertaining to open access books and open scholarly infrastructure.
Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model, where the journal or publisher prioritizes self-interest at the expense of scholarship. It is characterized by misleading information, deviates from the standard peer-review process, is highly non-transparent, and often utilizes aggressive solicitation practices.
An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee which is sometimes charged to authors. Most commonly, it is involved in making an academic work available as open access (OA), in either a full OA journal or in a hybrid journal. This fee may be paid by the author, the author's institution, or their research funder. Sometimes, publication fees are also involved in traditional journals or for paywalled content. Some publishers waive the fee in cases of hardship or geographic location, but this is not a widespread practice. An article processing charge does not guarantee that the author retains copyright to the work, or that it will be made available under a Creative Commons license.
Ajay Kumar Parida was an Indian biologist noted for his contributions in the fields of agriculture, plant molecular biology and biotechnology. In 2014, Parida was awarded the Padma Shri Award by the President of India for his contribution in the field of Science and Technology.
Swaminathan Sivaram is an Indian polymer chemist, inventor, institution builder and a former director of the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. He is known for his pioneering work on alkylation of tertiary alkyl halides with trialkylaluminum and olefin polymerization and holds the highest number of US patents by an Indian working outside the US. He is a fellow of several significant professional organizations. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri, in 2006, for his contributions to Indian science.
Tapas Kumar Kundu is an Indian molecular biologist, academician and at present the Director of Central Drug Research Institute, a prestigious research institute of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research at Lucknow. He is the head of the Transcription and Disease Laboratory of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. He is known for his studies on the regulation of Gene expression and his contributions in cancer diagnostics and the development of new drug candidates for cancer and AIDS therapeutics. He is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Sciences, India and a J. C. Bose National Fellow of the Department of Science and Technology. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2005, for his contributions to biological sciences. He is also a recipient of the National Bioscience Award for Career Development of the Department of Biotechnology.
Usha Ranjan Ghatak was an Indian synthetic organic chemist, stereochemist and the director of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS). He was known for his contributions in developing novel protocols of stereoselective synthesis of diterpenoids. He was an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1974, for his contributions to chemical sciences.
Adusumilli Srikrishna (1955–2013) was an Indian organic chemist and a professor at the department of organic chemistry at the Indian Institute of Science. He was known for his researches on radical cyclisation and natural products synthesis. He was an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences, India and the Indian Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1997, for his contributions to chemical sciences.
Animal Sentience: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling is a peer-reviewed academic journal. Its subject matter, animal sentience, concerns what and how nonhuman animals think and feel as well as the scientific and scholarly methods of investigating it and conveying the findings to the general public. The initial publisher was the Animal Studies Repository of the Institute for Science and Policy of The Humane Society of the United States, now the Animal Studies Repository of WellBeing International. The editor-in-chief is Stevan Harnad.
The following is a timeline of the international movement for open access to scholarly communication.
In India, the Open Access movement started in May 2004, when two workshops were organized by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai. In 2006, the National Knowledge Commission in its recommendations proposed that "access to knowledge is the most fundamental way of increasing the opportunities and reach of individuals and groups". In 2011, the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) began requiring that its grantees provide open access to funded research, the Open Access India forum formulated a draft policy on Open Access for India. The Shodhganga, a digital repository for theses, was also established in 2011 with the aim of promoting and preserving academic research. The University Grants Commission (UGC) made it mandatory for scholars to deposit their theses in Shodhganga, as per the Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of M. Phil./Ph.D. Degrees Regulations, 2016. Currently, the Directory of Open Access Journals lists 326 open access journals published in India, of which 233 have no fees.
In Canada the Institutes of Health Research effected a policy of open access in 2008, which in 2015 expanded to include the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The Public Knowledge Project began in 1998 at University of British Columbia. Notable Canadian advocates for open access include Leslie Chan, Jean-Claude Guédon, Stevan Harnad, Heather Morrison, and John Willinsky.
Diamond open access refers to academic texts published/distributed/preserved with no fees to either reader or author. Alternative labels include platinum open access, non-commercial open access, cooperative open access or, more recently, open access commons. While these terms were first coined in the 2000s and the 2010s, they have been retroactively applied to a variety of structures and forms of publishing, from subsidized university publishers to volunteer-run cooperatives that existed in prior decades.
| International | |
|---|---|
| Academics | |
