Abstract
Open access initiatives (OAI) have gained momentum and have been accepted by the academic communities of the world. The role of libraries in promoting open access culture in universities is much more crucial in many ways. In the present study, the university library system in Northeast India has been assessed about the OAI taken up by them. The same has enabled the authors to ascertain many clues of the university systems, services, facilities, establishment of institutional repositories, supporting open access publications, conducting advocacy programs, and many others as a sign of engagement in this movement. The findings of the study have shown that almost 90% of the university libraries of the region have supported the open access movement and some of the universities have also started to establish digital institutional repositories using DSpace software.
TopLiterature Review
Review of related literature has made us understood about the fast growing trends of research in OAI at global level and India as well.
Key Terms in this Chapter
OER: Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. OER form part of ‘Open Solutions’, alongside Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), Open Access (OA), Open Data (OD) and crowdsourcing platforms. (UNESCO).
Open Access Advocacy: An act to promote open access movement through building awareness on the benefits of open access and supporting open access publications in scholarly communication channels.
North East India: Residing in the easternmost part of India, has international border with, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Nepal and Myanmar. It comprises of eight states namely Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura, Known for its rich biodiversity and famous for origin of polo, rainiest place in the world, floating national park in the world, and many more.
VIDWAN: Developed by Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET), a premier expert database of research profiles of scientist/researchers and faculty members working in leading academic institutions and research & Development organisations involved in teaching and research across India.
Open Access Initiatives (OAI): An initiative or an approach towards the availability of scholarly literatures to the public domain without any access, licence or geographical barrier through the internet.
IRINS: Indian Research Information Network System is web-based Research Information Management (RIM) service provided by the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) Centre, An Inter-University Centre of University Grants Commission, Gandhinagar, Gujarat. IRINS has provided the unique features: import data from CSV and Bibtex formats; Import publications from academic Identities i.e. SCOPUS ID, Researcher ID, ORCID ID, Google Scholar ID and Microsoft Academic Search ID; Increased visibility of research output in terms of publications, citations and H-Index at individual, department, institutions and organisations level.; Data analytics such as productivity graph for the department, faculty and co-author network based on contributors; Automated ingestion to citation from SCOPUS, Crossref and Social media metrics from Altmetrics; Automated imbedding of metrics from google scholar; and Categorization of publications according to their publishing venue, Closed access, Green Open Access, Bronze OA and Gold Open Access.
Open Access Publishing: Publishing model in open access environment either in green, gold or diamond mode of publication as an alternative to subscription model with the aim to delivered scientific literature without any delayed to the public for the betterment of science and ultimately to the society.
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses): It is a model for delivering learning content in a large scale to any person who wants to take a course through the online mode.
SWAYAM: stands for Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds, is a Government of India sponsored initiative aimed at achieving the three cardinal objectives of education policy: access, equity, and excellence. The goal of this initiative is to make the best teaching and learning tools available to everyone, especially the most disadvantaged. SWAYAM aims to close the digital divide for students who have been left behind by the digital revolution and are unable to participate fully in the knowledge economy.
Institutional Repositories: An institutional repository is a digital storage services provided by an organisation or institution to its community members for the administration and dissemination of digital assets developed by the institution and its community members. It is mostly used as a commitment of the organisation to the long-term stewardship of these digital materials.