Editorial Note: The Mantra of Open Access

Abstract

Open access is a new trend in scholarly communication cutting across all the barriers specially restricting the roles of intermediaries with business interest. The information which is generated because of public funding or public participation must be accessed free or at minimal cost irrespective of caste, creed, colour, language and any other interlinked proximity. The digital revolution in India has opened several projects like Svayam, E-PG Pathshala to encourage e-learning. The open access brings opportunities for researchers from financially weaker institutions to read literature and other academic works for self-appraisal, and research. Things apart no institution can claim to have all the resources on a given subject. The Internet has become a medium to connect people sharing information widely. The open access has attracted the academicians and drove the publishing industry to loosen the ties of copyright. The policy of Gold open access where the author or the any other funding agency pays on behalf of the author to a publisher for publishing the research paper with open access. There has been awareness among researchers who publish with open access would have more probability of getting read and cited. This is a win-win situation for an author as well as the reader, who is an end user. A paradigm shift has been seen in India among the educational institutes to host the institutional publications through individual institutional archives. A big shift was seen in the last decade that many of the institutions had gone for creating Institutional Repositories (IRs). The idea has grown so that a national policy has been constituted by the University Grant Commission (UGC), India to submit the thesis and dissertations of the students in electronic form. The national program of Shodhganga at INFLIBNET is an acceptance of the reflection of the Open Access Movement. The open access does not only enable wide access but also restricts the plagiarism. This has brought quality in the ongoing researches in different disciplines including Library and Information Science. There was an increase of plagiarism with the propagation of the Internet. It was easy for a person to copy text and use without acknowledging the original. The plagiarism was seen using some others work as own, copying a portion of work and using as own and using others idea without citing the original. Thanks to the Internet and open access putting checks on such academic cheatings. The research in the Library and Information Science encompasses a number of dimensions from measuring the growth of subjects and users aspiration to bringing out new services to cater the users. Web 2.0 has come as an opportunity for the librarians to come up with new ideas and products as the service in the libraries which were never dreamt off. The interoperability across the platforms of different Web services like Facebook, Twitter, Google Map, YouTube, Mendeley, Zotero, etc. could be used for mashup services. The sharing of data and utilizing requires innovations which are to come from the library professionals. One need not be a technocrat to run any of such services but to come out with solution against the undisclosed demands from the users. There is always a debate that the Google is competing and competing hard against the library profession. People use Google more often for any kind of help related to their information requirement. Information literacy has gone up and even the least literates in the society find it easy to use the Internet for any kind of information call leaving apart the academicians and the professionals. The academicians and professionals get up-to-date information or data related to the work. Using books and going to libraries is reducing day-by-day threatening the very existence of the libraries as well as the library profession. However, the machine (Google) could never beat the human but certainly could give a challenge in search and retrieval of digital objects from an organized data structures. Librarians should harness the efficiency of the machine in search and retrieval and innovate new methods for feeding Right Information to the Right User at the Right Time. Today there is crisis of authenticity of information. It is very difficult to ascertain the authenticity of any information using online search tools like Google and here the opportunity is seen. The intelligent platforms are to be designed that could be interactive, humane, efficient and learn the needs of user and respond. The ultimate satisfaction of user should be the core while designing the library service.

Keywords: N.A.

View PDF