Open Access Movement and Open Access Initiatives in India

Abstract

Open access is a new trend in scholarly communication which aims at providing free access to scholarly literature over the internet and has gained enormous momentum in the recent years. Although OA started and has grown from the pockets of regional initiatives in the developing countries, it is appealing to developing countries and is spreading throughout the world quickly facilitated by common technical standards and open source software. OA endeavors to reduce the price and permission barriers to scholarly communication and the scholarly literature are freely accessible now without any hindrance. This paper outlines the OA concept and specific Indian initiatives are mentioned and described. In addition this paper also evaluates the OA movement in India and concludes with suggestions and recommendations for improving the OA scenario in India.