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Should Indian Researchers Pay to Get their Work Published?


Affiliations
1 DST Centre for Policy Research, Archives and Publication Cell, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru 560 012, India
2 Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Kandi, Sangareddy 502 285, India
3 Knowledge Resources Centre, Central Elecrochemical Research Institute, Karaikudi 630 003, India
 

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 potentially 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 repositories, 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.
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  • Should Indian Researchers Pay to Get their Work Published?

Abstract Views: 384  |  PDF Views: 132

Authors

Muthu Madhan
DST Centre for Policy Research, Archives and Publication Cell, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru 560 012, India
Siva Shankar Kimidi
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Kandi, Sangareddy 502 285, India
Subbiah Gunasekaran
Knowledge Resources Centre, Central Elecrochemical Research Institute, Karaikudi 630 003, India
Subbiah Arunachalam
DST Centre for Policy Research, Archives and Publication Cell, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru 560 012, India

Abstract


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 potentially 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 repositories, 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.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv112%2Fi04%2F703-713