DOCSLIB.ORG

Democratizing Potential of Open Access: Perspectives from the Developing World

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Democratizing Potential of Open Access: Perspectives from the Developing World Africa Study Centre Leiden, 6-8 September 2006 Democratizing potential of Open Access: Perspectives from the Developing World Subbiah Arunachalam [email protected] , [email protected] M S Swaminathan Research Foundation Chennai 600 113, India This talk is about knowledge and development and bridging the divide between the elite and the marginalized. I am going to discuss two questions: Does global exchange of information enable ubiquitous access to knowledge? How do information and communication technologies (ICTs) contribute to the solution or intensify global and local problems? I want to show that only through sharing knowledge and building partnerships we can hope to make this world a harmonious place to live. We can use knowledge sharing to leverage development only by harnessing technology in innovative ways . I would also like to show the link between knowledge production in the sciences on the one hand and development through use of knowledge at the grassroots on the other. How am I qualified to speak on these issues? I have felt the impact of ICTs on the developing world and I have been working for over ten years to overcome the deleterious consequences of ICTs in the context of the developing world, both at the level of scientists and scholars and at the level of the rural poor. Indeed I am fortunate to have had experience in both these areas. I want to share this experiential knowledge with all of you. Let me begin with a real life situation that we in India were witness to. We had the general election in India two years ago and most Indians were especially happy about the election for two reasons. One, contrary to what is happening in many parts of the developing world, democracy in India is vibrant and we have been holding free and fair elections consistently for the past six decades. Two, despite outstanding achievements in the areas of ICTs and high tech, the ruling parties in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh (where the capital city of Hyderabad is called Cyberabad) and Karnataka (whose capital city Bangalore is referred to as the Silicon Valley of India) failed to return to power, largely because the rural poor who felt that the benefits of these technologies did not reach them voted against them. The Sensex – the index of the Indian Stock Exchange – has crossed 12,000 from a paltry 7,000 only two years ago; the software industry and business process outsourcing sector are booming and young men and women with computing skills are getting salaries unheard of in India a few years ago; a very large 1 number of Indian students are going to USA, UK, Australia, and elsewhere for higher studies and it is estimated that with the foreign exchange these students invest in overseas education annually India can build 30-40 Indian Institutes of Technology, those famous engineering colleges McKinsey’s Rajat Gupta considers to be the best in the world. While the knowledge-centric part of India is really making waves taking full advantage of ICTs, the large majority of the rural folks remain in the 19 th century hardly touched by technology. They registered their protest in the ballot box. What can information and communication technologies do to help the poor? Can they do anything at all? As Muhammad Yunus has said, “we should not allow the future of mankind to be decided by the random needs, whims, and pleasures of individual users of ICT. Let there be a global vision, and a global commitment to translate this vision into reality through the use of ICT in the most creative ways. We must put the full power of ICT to use to accomplish the fond dreams of all ages: ending poverty and hunger, ensuring equality of all human beings, human rights for all, good governance, peace among nations, and so on.” Many other world leaders – such as Kofi Annan, Mankombu Swaminathan, James Wolfensohn and Mark Malloch Brown – have spoken in glorious terms about the tremendous potential of these new technologies for transforming the lives of the poor. The last few years have seen many initiatives that deploy ICTs in rural communities in many developing countries. Development agencies such as IDRC, IICD, GKP and Hivos support many ICT-enabled development programmes in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Poverty is much more than absence of money in one’s pocket. The poor have hardly any access to resources and services. Often generations in poverty lead people to a sense of utter hopelessness and deprive them of their sense of self-respect and dignity. They become increasingly marginalized and excluded. They lose their voice; they have virtually no say in what affects their lives. We have always lived in an unequal world, but now the inequalities are widening far more rapidly than ever before. Virtually every new technology tends to exacerbate the inequalities that separate the rich from the poor. It is mastery over technology that enabled the early adopters of industrial revolution technologies to colonize and exploit the rest of the world, in particular Africa and Asia. If you want technology to work for the poor you must make special efforts. It is like taking water uphill – it would not happen by itself; one needs to pump. In this talk I will describe from my own personal experience what may appear to be two widely different programmes where we are attempting to bridge the gulf dividing the rich from the poor through innovative use of information and communication technologies, and try to show how these two programmes are interconnected. In the first part of my talk we will look at how we at MSSRF are trying to harness ICTs as part of a holistic strategy for alleviating poverty in rural India. I will show why the emphasis should be on people and the public commons approach rather than on technology. In the second part, we will look at how the advent of new technologies has 2 opened up the possibility for making knowledge distribution in the sciences a level- playing field so that researchers in Africa and Asia need no longer be denied access to information and swim against the current to make their own research results disseminated to researchers elsewhere. We have seen in Pondicherry on the eastern coast of southern India rural families are ready to subscribe to a cable TV service and even to invest in a community antenna – which would cost a lot of money up front but would be cheaper in the long run than paying subscription to a cable TV service provider - even though they are poor and cannot afford three meals a day. People are ready to adopt technologies if they see some value in it. [Figure 1]. For the past eight years [since 1998] MSSRF has been working in many villages in Pondicherry where we have set up rural knowledge centres [with the support of International Development Research Center, Canada]. These knowledge centers are connected through a hybrid wired and wireless network and they provide information on agriculture, health, employment, weather, education, government entitlements, micro- enterprises training, etc. Although we use a variety of technologies, our focus is on the people, their context and their needs. Today we are taking this programme to cover all of rural India – 637,000 villages – under a programme called Mission 2007 – Every Village a Knowledge Centre. Village knowledge centres are based on these principles – o Community Ownership o A Development Tool o Inclusive in nature o A win-win situation for all One may use both new and old technologies. Horses for courses, as they say. Information gathered using high-tech may be delivered through low-tech. For example, we download forecasts of wave heights in the Bay of Bengal from a US Navy website [http://www.nemoc.navy.mil/Library/Metoc/Indian+Ocean/Bay+of+Bengal/Models/ Swaps/Sig+Wav+Ht+and+Dir+Series/index.html] 36 and 48 hours in advance and transmit the picture in colour along with a written statement and a voice recording as a multimedia file to knowledge centres in coastal villages where the pictures and the written statements are displayed on a notice board and the voice recording is broadcast over a public address system. Loud speakers are placed in different streets of the village and everyone in the village can hear the announcements. The message is broadcast several times during the day. [Figure 2]. The fishermen (and their families) are thus forewarned of any impending rough weather and they can decide if it would be safe to venture into the sea on a given day. Ever since this service was started in 1999 not a single fisherman died in mid-sea. 3 In partnership with the Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) we provide information on Potential Fishing Zones – latitude, longitude, depth, direction, etc. INCOIS obtains the information from satellite pictures (based on colour variations). [Figure 3]. Bridging the Digital Divide is used as a powerful tool for bridging the gender divide. Many of our village volunteers – called knowledge workers – are women. In partnership with the District Rural Development Agency, banks, District Information Centre, agricultural university and veterinary college, we provide assistance and training to women in several livelihood opportunities. These include training in software, mushroom growing, animal husbandry and production of biopesticides. In collaboration with a major eye hospital we have trained village volunteers to check eyes at the village knowledge centres. Pictures of eyes taken with a web camera are sent as email attachments (along with the results of the vision test finding) to the Aravind Eye Hospital where doctors examine them and decide which of the patients need to come to the hospital.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • From Coalition to Commons: Plan S and the Future of Scholarly Communication
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc. Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln 2019 From Coalition to Commons: Plan S and the Future of Scholarly Communication Rob Johnson Research Consulting Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom Part of the Intellectual Property Law Commons, Scholarly Communication Commons, and the Scholarly Publishing Commons Johnson, Rob, "From Coalition to Commons: Plan S and the Future of Scholarly Communication" (2019). Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.. 157. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/157 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc. by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Insights – 32, 2019 Plan S and the future of scholarly communication | Rob Johnson From coalition to commons: Plan S and the future of scholarly communication The announcement of Plan S in September 2018 triggered a wide-ranging debate over how best to accelerate the shift to open access. The Plan’s ten principles represent a call for the creation of an intellectual commons, to be brought into being through collective action by funders and managed through regulated market mechanisms. As it gathers both momentum and critics, the coalition must grapple with questions of equity, efficiency and sustainability. The work of Elinor Ostrom has shown that successful management of the commons frequently relies on polycentricity and adaptive governance. The Plan S principles must therefore function as an overarching framework within which local actors retain some autonomy, and should remain open to amendment as the scholarly communication landscape evolves.
    [Show full text]
  • Mapping the Future of Scholarly Publishing
    THE OPEN SCIENCE INITIATIVE WORKING GROUP Mapping the Future of Scholarly Publishing The Open Science Initiative (OSI) is a working group convened by the National Science Communi- cation Institute (nSCI) in October 2014 to discuss the issues regarding improving open access for the betterment of science and to recommend possible solutions. The following document summa- rizes the wide range of issues, perspectives and recommendations from this group’s online conver- sation during November and December 2014 and January 2015. The 112 participants who signed up to participate in this conversation were drawn mostly from the academic, research, and library communities. Most of these 112 were not active in this conversa- tion, but a healthy diversity of key perspectives was still represented. Individual participants may not agree with all of the viewpoints described herein, but participants agree that this document reflects the spirit and content of the conversation. This main body of this document was written by Glenn Hampson and edited by Joyce Ogburn and Laura Ada Emmett. Additional editorial input was provided by many members of the OSI working group. Kathleen Shearer is the author of Annex 5, with editing by Dominque Bambini and Richard Poynder. CC-BY 2015 National Science Communication Institute (nSCI) www.nationalscience.org [email protected] nSCI is a US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization First edition, January 2015 Final version, April 2015 Recommended citation: Open Science Initiative Working Group, Mapping the Future of Scholarly
    [Show full text]
  • India's March Towards Open Access Subbiah Arunachalam 5 March 2004 Source: Scidev.Net
    SciDev.Net 28 June 2005 print India's march towards open access Subbiah Arunachalam 5 March 2004 Source: SciDev.Net Subbiah Arunachalam argues that the best way to make scientific research more available worldwide is to encourage scientists to self-archive their research. The author is a distinguished fellow at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, India. In December 2003, the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) held a one-day conference on access to scientific data and information as part of its annual meeting in Pune. The conference was held to address two key problems faced by Indian scientists — poor access to international journals and the low visibility of papers published by Indian scientists — and the possible solutions offered by electronic publishing and open archives. Inaugurating the conference, Raghunath A. Mashelkar, director-general of India's Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, spoke of how international organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) were helping developing countries improve electronic access to expensive journals through the HINARI and AGORA programmes, respectively. Unfortunately, however, India has not benefited from either of these programmes. Although journal publishers are willing to provide toll-free electronic access to researchers in countries where relatively few scientists read their journals, they are not prepared to do so in larger developing countries such as India, where they already have a considerable number of subscribers. Yet India's average gross domestic product (GDP) is, per capita, less than half the threshold agreed upon by the WHO and FAO when they set up the HINARI and AGORA programmes.
    [Show full text]
  • Comment Communication for Development. an Indian Experience
    SISSA – International School for Advanced Studies Journal of Science Communication ISSN 1824 – 2049 http://jcom.sissa.it/ Comment Communication for development. An Indian experience Subbiah Arunachalam “Knowledge and information are essential for people to respond successfully to the opportunities and challenges of social, economic and technological changes (…). But to be useful, knowledge and information must be effectively communicated to people”, says the Food and Agricultural Organization. India is home to a number of ICT-enabled development initiatives, and we will look at one of them to learn how an effective communication strategy is used. ICT makes a difference to a fishing village Veerampattinam is a fishing village ten kilometers south of Pondicherry on the eastern coast of southern India. It is a fairly clean village with rectangular roads and a wide beach and has a population of about 6,200 people, most of whom belong to the fishing community. At the centre of the village is the temple, surrounded by the water tank, the village school, a few shops, the marketplace, and the office of the local Panchayat (the traditional village government). Apart from the annual temple car festival, when the deity is taken round the main streets of the village on the decorated car pulled by hundreds of devotees, which attracts a few thousand pilgrims from far off places, nothing is noteworthy about this village. But that changed seven years ago when the villagers requested a non-governmental organization called the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) to set up a knowledge centre and provided space in one half of a rectangular room that serves as the Panchayat office.
    [Show full text]
  • Chemistry Research in India in a Global Perspective – a Scientometrics Profile
    Preprint submitted to arXiv on 8 February 2020 Chemistry research in India in a global perspective – A scientometrics profile Muthu Madhan,ac Subbiah Gunasekaran,b Rani M T,c Subbiah Arunachalamc* and T A Abinandananc aAzim Premji University, Bengaluru, India, 560100 bCentral Electrochemical Research Institute, Karaikudi, India, 630006 cDST-Centre for Policy Research, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India, 560012. Muthu Madhan [[email protected]]; Subbiah Gunasekaran [[email protected]]; Rani M T [[email protected]]; Subbiah Arunachalam [[email protected]]; T A Abinandanan [[email protected]] *Author for correspondence Abstract We measure India’s contribution to chemistry research in a global perspective. In the five years 2011-2015 Indian researchers have published 62,448 papers in 557 journals. In terms of % share, India (with 6.9% of the world’s publications) is behind only China (25%) and USA (17%). But only 0.86% of papers from India are among the top 1% of the most highly cited papers of the world, compared to 4.86% of papers from Singapore, 2.65% of papers from USA, 2.09% of papers from China, 1.87% of papers from the UK, 1.71% of papers from South Korea and 1.6% of papers from Germany. Papers from India are cited 14.68 times on average compared to cites per paper of 45.34 for Singapore, 30.47 for USA, 23.12 for China, 26.51 for the UK, 21.77 for South Korea and 24.77 for Germany. Less than 39% of papers from India are found in quartile 1 (high impact factor) journals, compared to 53.6% for China and 53.8% for South Korea.
    [Show full text]
  • Open Access in India: Hopes and Frustrations
    Open Access in India: Hopes and Frustrations Subbiah Arunachalam <[email protected]> Subbiah Arunachalam 19 September 2007 Berlin 5, Padua, Italy India has a large S&T research community and Indian researchers perform research in a wide variety of areas. India trains a very large number of scientists and engineers and a large percent of the best graduates migrate to the West. One would think that everything is fine with science and technology in India. Far from it. In terms of the number of papers published in refereed journals, in terms of the number of citations to these papers, in terms of citations per paper, and in terms of international awards and recognitions won, India’s record is not all that encouraging. Subbiah Arunachalam 19 September 2007 Berlin 5, Padua, Italy Data from WoS for India Year No. of papers 2004 24659 2005 27340 2006 30641 India, after near stagnation, is now on the growth path. Subbiah Arunachalam 19 September 2007 Berlin 5, Padua, Italy Scientists do research and communicate results to other scientists. They build on what is already known, on what others have done – the ‘shoulders of giants’ as Newton said. Indian scientists face two problems common to scientists everywhere, but acutely felt by scientists in poorer countries : Access and Visibility 1. They are unable to access what other scientists have done, because of the high costs of access. With an annual per capita GDP well below US $1,000, most Indian libraries cannot afford to subscribe to key journals needed by their users. Most scientists in India are forced to work in a situation of information poverty.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Justice in Scholarly Publishing: Open Access Is the Only Way
    Post-print Published in American Journal of Bioethics http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2017.1366194 Social Justice in Scholarly Publishing: Open Access is the Only Way Subbiah Arunachalam DST Centre for Policy Research Indian Institute of Science Bengaluru 560 012 India [email protected] http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4398-4658 http://www.researcherid.com/rid/B-9925-2009 We live in an unequal world. There are tremendous differences between countries and between regions in a country in whatever characteristics we want to compare, be it the per capita income, educational opportunities, access to healthcare facilities or capacity to generate new knowledge. The difference is very pronounced in scientific and technical research, in terms of both volume and impact.1 Writing about the distribution of science among countries some three decades ago, Frame et al had shown that the distribution of land area, national population and GDP, as bad as they are, are not so poor as the distribution of mainstream scientific research as reflected by Science Citation Index.2 Back then just ten countries accounted for more than 83% of the world’s scientific literature. Added to these differences are the prejudices inherent to human beings. It is against this backdrop, I would like to view what Chattopadhyay et al have said on the happenings in global bioethics research.3 Chattopadhyay et al. describe the difficulty faced by Low and Middle Income Country (LMIC) researchers in accessing research literature produced/published in the West essential for them to be equal partners in research and getting their own published in journals published from the West.
    [Show full text]
  • The Changing Landscape and Future of Open Access in India
    ICDL(International Conference on Digital Libraries) 2016: Smart Future: Knowledge Trends that will Change the World. 13-16 Dec. 2016. IHC, New Delhi The Changing Landscape and Future of Open Access in India Leena Shah1, Vrushali Dandawate2 and Sridhar Gutam3 1Formerly, Nanyang Technological University; DOAJ Ambassador (South India) <[email protected]> 2AISSMS College of Engineering College Pune; DOAJ Ambassador (West India) <[email protected]> 3ICAR RCER Research Centre Ranchi; DOAJ Ambassador (East India) <[email protected]> Abstract The past few years has seen a tremendous change in information production and growth with new knowledge disciplines added into academics. With journal subscription costs increasing at 8-10% annually(Miller 2015), libraries worldwide are finding it difficult to sustain subscription costs to scholarly material. On the other hand making information and data available in interoperable electronic formats freely is a concept that is gaining momentum and OA (Open Access) holds promise to remove both price and permission barriers to scientific communication with the help of the internet. Scientists, policy makers, NGOs, government agencies and librarians are also collaborating together for OA implementation and making knowledge affordable to all. OA journals play a key role in making scholarly material immediately available on the internet. Keywords: open access, open access movement India, scholarly publishing, predatory publishers Introduction The OA movement in India started by advocates like Subbiah Arunachalam is more than a decade old. It is now gaining momentum with various organizations and departments under Government of India such as the DBT (Department of Biotechnology) and DST (Department of Science and Technology) adopting OA policies in 2014.
    [Show full text]
  • Mainstream” and “Peripheral” Science1
    Open Access and the divide between “mainstream” and “peripheral” science1 Jean-Claude Guédon Université de Montréal 1 Introduction: scientific “fields” and scientific forms of power The discussions that have accompanied the development of Open Access have involved many different, actors, each with a particular point of view. As a result, the ensuing debates have been marked by the complex criss-crossing of various forms of discourse that often fly past each other without meeting. A fair degree of opacity has resulted from this situation, with the consequence that some of the concerns that should have been placed at the heart of the Open Access strategies have largely been neglected. For example, the stratified, competitive nature of science is largely admitted by most, but its evolution into what increasingly appears as an oligarchic power structure is less present in discussions and left unquestioned. Clearly, the structure of scientific power is affected by Open Access, and, as result, that structure should be kept in mind while framing strategies aimed at fostering Open Access. It is difficult to imagine, except rhetorically, how advocating for Open Access can be divorced from working for a different structuring of power in science. This issue is particularly important for developing and emerging countries. A theoretical detour will help set up the issue of power in science more sharply. Since the 1970's, Pierre Bourdieu, the well-known French sociologist, has argued that all cultural and intellectual activities should be analyzed in specific terms. The quest for success in literature may structurally be analyzed in terms that are structurally similar to those used to approach science, but the particulars are altogether different.
    [Show full text]
  • Should Indian Researchers Pay to Get Their Work Published?
    GENERAL ARTICLES Should Indian researchers pay to get their work published? Muthu Madhan*, Siva Shankar Kimidi, Subbiah Gunasekaran and Subbiah Arunachalam Paying to publish is an ethical issue. During 2010–14, Indian researchers have used 488 open access (OA) journals levying article processing charge (APC), ranging from US$ 7.5 to 5,000, to publish about 15,400 papers. Use of OA journals levying APC has increased from 242 journals and 2,557 papers in 2010 to 328 journals and 3,634 papers in 2014. We estimate that India is poten- tially spending about US$ 2.4 million annually on APCs paid to OA journals and the amount would be much more if we add APCs paid to make papers published in hybrid journals open access. It would be prudent for Indian authors to make their work freely available through interoperable re- positories, a trend that is growing in Latin America and China, especially when funding is scarce. Scientists are ready to pay APC as long as institutions pay for it and funding agencies are not ready to insist that grants provided for research should not be used for paying APC. Keywords: Article processing charge, hybrid OA journals, institutional repositories, OA policy, open access journals. MORE than two decades ago, Harnad posted his subver- used by Indian researchers is in the range INR 500 (~US$ sive proposal to a mailing list in which he called on re- 8)–US$ 5000. searchers ‘to make copies of all the papers they published OA journal publishing, particularly by commercial in scholarly journals freely available on the internet’1,2.
    [Show full text]
  • Open Access to Legal Scholarship: Dropping the Barriers to Discourse and Dialogue
    JICLT Journal of International Commercial Law and Technology Vol. 7, Issue 1 (2012) Open Access to Legal Scholarship: Dropping the Barriers to Discourse and Dialogue Richard A. Danner Ruffy Research Professor of Law Senior Associate Dean for Information Services Duke Law School, Durham, N.C. Abstract: This article focuses on the importance of free and open access to legal scholarship and commentary on the law. It argues that full understanding of authoritative legal texts requires access to informed commentary as well as to the texts of the law themselves, and that free and open access to legal commentary will facilitate cross-border dialogue and foster international discourse in law. The paper discusses the obligations of scholars and publishers of legal commentary to make their work as widely accessible as possible. Examples of institutional and disciplinary repositories for legal scholarship are presented, as are the possible impacts of such initiatives as the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship. 1. The Free Access to Law Movement The Declaration on Free Access to Law states that: Public legal information from all countries and international institutions is part of the common heritage of humanity. Maximising access to this information promotes justice and the rule of law; Public legal information is digital common property and should be accessible to all on a non- profit basis and free of charge; Organisations such as legal information institutes have the right to publish public legal information and the government bodies that create or control that information should provide access to it so that it can be published by other parties.
    [Show full text]
  • A Dissenting Note on Article Processing Charges
    A dissenting note on Article Processing Charges Madhan Muthu and Arul George Scaria This note is intended to convey our disagreement (and the reasons for our disagreement) with Sec. 4A(4) of the draft recommendations made by TG-1 on Access to Knowledge and Resources. Current draft of Sec. 4A(4) reads as follows: Article Processing Charges: (a) (ST) APC payments by authors via grants is discouraged, but permitted for reputable journals only when there is no option. Green OA is preferred. The Government may negotiate with reputable Open Access publishers who charge APCs to remove the burden of APCs from researchers, either via a system where APCs are invoiced directly to the government, or via a subscription-like mechanism, so that Indian researchers can submit to such journals without being concerned about APCs. Predatory publishers must be strictly excluded. (b) (MT) The central payment system for APCs should be functional for all reputable APC-based journals, and payment of APCs directly by authors via grants should be discontinued, as payment by authors is not an acceptable policy. Sec. 4A(4) is referring to publication models wherein an author pays the article processing charges (“APC”) for publishing her manuscript and for making the manuscript open access through the publishers’ websites. There are different versions of this business model and this includes the gold open access model (wherein the journal follows this business model for all articles published in the journal) and the hybrid open access model (wherein a traditional subscription based journal makes certain articles open access in return for payment of APC).
    [Show full text]