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National Support Helps Nurture Knowledge Creation and Communication
V. K. Gupta
Western nations mostly are developed and relatively have better economies, infrastructure and purchasing power which allow them access to a wider global knowledgebase. Emerging nations are economies in transition with limited infrastructure which restricts access to wider global knowledge. Countries like India, China and South Korea are now emphasizing access to and creation of knowledge and thus contributing strongly to knowledge economies and their nations’ further development.
NISCAIR Provides National Encouragement
As the NISCAIR director since 2000, I’m able to help nurture India’s contributions to science and technology research and watch the nation’s S&T scholarly output grow. The mission of NISCAIR is to become the prime custodian of all S&T information resources in India and promote communication in science to diverse constituents at all levels.
Our institute operates the National Science Library, which is open to all without charge, and publishes Indian research journals — in English and Hindi — freely available online. To encourage development of scholarly research and output in India, NISCAIR doesn’t just provide access to information resources; we also help institutes gain access to specific e-resources in an organized way and gain budgetary and infrastructure efficiencies. One of our main achievements has been creating a consortium for CSIR laboratories, so they can access a greater range of e-journals.
CSIR Consortium Serves Researchers Nationwide
In India there are 12 publicly funded S&T departments including the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, which supports 15,000 researchers nationwide. CSIR has 38 national laboratories and institutes across India and ranks high among India’s approximately 3,000 R&D organizations spanning the government and private domains.
For research and development organizations, journals are essential for pursuing world-class activities. Here it is pertinent to mention that during the last 20 years the cost of scholarly journals overall increased 226%, whereas library budgets have not maintained the pace¹.
The 38 CSIR national labs are located across India.
Due to this challenge, e-journal subscriptions at CSIR laboratories/institutes declined significantly from 1993 onwards. The CSIR consortium has helped arrest this decline and is providing CSIR scientists with the same level of access to knowledge as available at world-leading institutes. The consortium provides on an equitable basis to all its users access to 4,000+ licensed R&D journals and about 2,000 open-access STM journals.
Gauging Value of Consortial Access to E-journals
To evaluate benefits of scholarly e-access the consortium provides, we look at the journal usage per dollars spent as well as at researchers’ publication output. Current usage of e-journals at CSIR is quite satisfactory, with full-text downloads at about 0.26 million articles per month.
In 2002, CSIR signed its first e-license and gained access to ScienceDirect. Since then its usage has constantly increased amongst all CSIR laboratories/institutions. E-access has also made a positive impact on CSIR’s research publications. In 2002 the number of articles by CSIR researchers published in Elsevier journals was 786, and by 2005 that number had risen to 1,338. One may conclude therefore that e-access has made an impact on the R&D output of CSIR scientists.
Challenges of Moving into the Future
The consortium faces challenges relating to users and publishers. As far as assessing whether our users are being served in accordance with their needs, we have introduced an online feedback form to help us retrieve information on user behavior and future needs. The main challenge in dealing with vendors is creating agreements resulting in win-win situations for all. At present CSIR has agreements with 13 international publishers to access their STM journals.
What’s in the future for the CSIR consortium? Continued interaction and networking, to make sure this project keeps doing well. So far we’re seeing that national leadership and infrastructure can go a long way towards helping researchers working across our country, as they create knowledge warranting international dissemination. 
¹Association of Research Libraries. (2001, October). Monograph and serial costs in ARL libraries, 1986-2000. ARL Bimonthly Report 218.
www.arl.org/newsltr/218/costimpact.html
Mr. Gupta is an engineer by profession and has an advanced degree in business administration. He can be reached at vkg@niscair.res.in.
www.niscair.res.in
