Open Access: The sorry state of Indian repositories

Science Chronicle

India may not have a national Open Access policy in place, but the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), The Department of Science & Technology (DST), the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), The University Grants Commission (UGC) have Open Access policies that clearly mandate researchers to deposit their papers in institutional repositories. National institutes such IITs and IISc too have repositories and similar mandates.

Yet, of the 69 Indian repositories listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (DOAR) and registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), only 12 repositories added “at least one item during a month” during the period July 2016 to June 2016. Seventeen repositories did not add even a single item during the course of the year of study, while 40 were “irregular” in adding items to the repositories, says a Correspondence published today (January 25) in Current Science.

Worse, some…

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India’s white list to curb researchers from publishing in predatory journals

Science Chronicle

The UGC’s white list should be adopted by CSIR, IMCR, ICAR, IITs, IISERs and NITs as well.

In a bid to tackle the growing menace of researchers publishing in predatory journals, the University Grants Commission notified on January 10 a list of journals in different disciplines where researcher scholars and teachers can publish their papers. Only papers published in the approved journals will be recognised at the time of recruitment and for granting points (under the Academic Performance Indicators (API) system) to teachers in colleges and universities at the time of assessment for promotion. “This is a dynamic list which may be reviewed from time to time,” says the notification.

The list was approved by the Standing Committee constituted by the UGC last year. The list contains 38,653 journals (list-1, list-2, list-3, list-4 and list-5). The list of journals in each subject was identified by…

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Upcoming webinar: “Scientists and communicators: Friends or Foes?”

What is the right quote to insert here?

Is it:

Nothing in science has any value to society if it is not communicated,
and scientists are beginning to learn their social obligations.

Anne Roe, The Making of a Scientist (1953)

Or should it be:

Do not share your inventions with many,
share them only with the few who understand and love the sciences.

Filippo Brunelleschi (15th century)

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IIT Gandhinagar develops irrigation maps of India

Science Chronicle

The maps showing estimates of irrigated areas have better accuracy than currently available ones, say Dr. Vimal Mishra (left) and Anukesh Krishnankutty Ambika.

For the first time, high-resolution maps of irrigated areas across India from 2000-2015 have been prepared using remote sensing data. The maps were validated with ground-based survey data. High-resolution irrigated water maps are essential for estimation of irrigation water demand and consumption on a spatial scale, crop productivity assessments and hydrologic modelling.

The maps were developed by a team led by Prof. Vimal Mishra from the Civil Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat. The results were published in Scientific Data, a journal from the Nature Group.

While the irrigation maps developed by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) are of low resolution, the high-resolution maps of International Water Management Institute (IWMI) are available for just one year and do not cover the entire country. “So we developed…

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Science communication: ‘There is a huge price to pay when scientists remain in a cocoon’

Science Chronicle

Dr. Somak Raychaudhury, Director of IUCAA, Pune explaining to journalists the significance of gravitational wave discovery.

Altmetric, a non-traditional alternative to impact-factor, measures the attention that research papers published in journals get from mainstream news outlets and social media. In 2016, Altmetric tracked over 17 million “mentions” in different platforms of 2.7 million different research outputs. Among the 100 “most-discussed” papers, three papers had 43 authors from India. This is much more than China and many European countries.

A February 11 paper on gravitational waves in the journal Physical Review Letters, with 41 authors from a few Indian institutions, has an Altmetric score of 4,694. The paper was covered by 92 news outlets (133 stories). A May 2 paper on Earth-sized planets transiting an ultracool dwarf star in the journal Nature had one Indian author. It has an Altmetric score of 2,064 and the paper was covered by 222…

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