Open Access Journal Publishing in India: A study with OJS Software

Abstract

India, the second most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Economic reforms have transformed it into the second fastest growing large economy. It has one of the largest English speaking populations in the world. India offers one of the largest higher education systems in the world. It has around 300 universities with 15000 Colleges of Engineering, Medical, Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Commerce, Science and Management Education out of which nearly 10000 Ph.Ds are being awarded every year. Scholarly journals are considered to be the main carrier of quality scholarly knowledge. In majority of the cases public money is utilized in research projects. Scientists and scholars working on these projects produce articles containing research results. These are sent to scholarly journals for publication. These articles carrying nascent information are expected to generate new cycles of knowledge. However the traditional process of publishing system of print-only journals prevent easy and quick access to these articles. Providing open access to the research work will help the researchers, especially in the developing world, to have access to the research literature from across the world. The paper outlines the features of one of most popular open source software Open Journal Systems (OJS) for Open access journal publishing. More and more number of open access journals in India will bring a significant increase in the productivity and visibility of Indian scientific research.