India Open Access Workshops: Press Release (fwd)

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

               *Apologies for cross-posting*

___
Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 08:25:52 +0100
From: Leslie Carr <lac@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
To: AmSci Forum <american-scientist-open-access-forum@amsci.org>
Subject: India Open Access Workshops: Press Release

      Prior Subject thread:
      Workshop on Open Access
      http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3650.html

Executive Summary:

    (a) Indian Open Access Workshops a Great Success
    (b) Open Source Development Company offers pPrints Support for Very 
        Modest Fee
    (c) Further plans to promote Eprints across India, China and Brazil.

The Open Access workshops in Chennai, India 2-4 May 2004 and 6-8 May 2004
were conceived and organised by Subbiah Arunachalam, on a suggestion from
Prof. M S Valiathan, President of the Indian National Science Academy, and
held at the Bioinformatics Centre of the M S Swaminathan Research
Foundation

The workshops were attended by 50 scientists, research managers and
librarians from a wide range of research institutions from India (below).
The aim of the workshops was to enable each organisation to set up an
institutional EPrints archive; we confidently expect to see at least a
dozen sustainable, populated archives to appear within the next three
months. More than 150 people applied for the available places which were
limited by the requirement to provide hands-on access to computers for
instruction in the practical aspects maintaining an EPrints archive.

The workshops covered essential background (Open Access philosophy, the
theory of the Open Archiving Metadata Protocols, issues of document and
metadata formats) but majored on the practical aspects of using,
installing and configuring EPrint archives, with a particular focus on the
budgetary and management resources required for setting up a pilot project
within each organistaion to establish an institutional archive.

The participants were all highly motivated and technically very competent.
Indian researchers and institutions are particularly keen not only to
obtain more access to high quality research, but also to provide access to
high quality Indian research which they feel is under-represented in
international journals. Many of the participants have Linux servers,
excellent network infrastructure and a large number of publications to
hand, and consequently anticipate no difficulty in setting up an EPrints
server themselves, or in arranging institutional support for doing so.

One of the participants was the head of an Open Source Software company
operating in the not-for-profit and NGO sector with whom we are in
discussion about a service for installing, configuring, maintaining and
upgrading EPrints archives.

The organiser of the workshop, Professor Subbiah Arunachalam from the MS
Swaminathan Research Foundation, is next organising a meeting of
government officials representing India, China and Brazil to discuss
national and international policies for promoting Open Access and Research
Archiving. I have been invited to the annual ICCC Electronic Publishing
conference in Brazil to give a keynote, to meet Brazilian government
officials and to run a workshop on EPrints Archiving.

Research Institutes attending Workshops
================================
Bose Institute, Calcutta
Central Electro Chemical Research Institute, Karaikudi
Central Institute of Psychiatry, Kanke
Central Leather Research Institute
Central Potato Research Institute
Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture
Entomology Research Institute
Indian Agricultural Research Institute
Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute
Indian Institute of Technology (reps from each of 5 cities)
Indian National Science Association
Indian Institute of Astrophysics
Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode
International Crops research Institute for the semi-Arid Tropics
M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation
National Academy of Agricultural Sciences
National Brain Research Centre, Nainwal
National Chemical Laboratory
National Informatics Centre
National Institute of Nutrition
Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology
Tuberculosis Research Centre

Universities
------------
Anna University
Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Mumbai
Deemed University
Govind Ballabh Pant University Of Agriculture and Technology
Kerala Agricultural University
Maharashtra Animal and Fishery Sciences University
Shivaji University
Tamil Nadu Agricultural University
University Of Madras
University of Delhi
University of Kalyani

Other Organisations
----
Mahiti (software developer for civil sector http://www.mahiti.org/)
National Agricultural Technology Project (NATP, National Co-ordinator 
of 104 partners), Sir Ganga Ram Hospital

---
Les Carr
Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia (IAM) group
Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~lac/