Thursday, April 8, 2010

Institutional Repositories

In the recent years much discussions and initiatives are taken in the area of open access. Open
access, a philosophy facilitates availability and distribution of scholarly communication freely,
as a means to solve the problem of inaccessibility primarily due to financial constraint
particularly in the context of developing countries. Many scholarly literature are freely
accessible now without any hindrance. Open access endeavours to reduce barriers to scholarly
communication. The open access literature available in various forms like open access archives,
institutional repositories, open access journals and off late open courseware. The availability of
open source software has accelerated this development. In India, various open access initiatives
have been undertaken and are operational. Some more are in developmental stage.