Friends:n 2 and 3 November, an international workshop on open access was held at the IISc faculty hall. It was jointly organised by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian Institute of Science and the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation with support from the Open Society Institute. There were 16 overseas experts and a dozen from India.

Please see the workshop website for the presentations and the policy statement that emerged from the
workshop:
<www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/OAworkshop2006/>.

The Hindu carried an article on promoting open access to research by Prof. Stevan Harnad on its oped page on
1 November 2006. Eve Gray wrote about the workshop in her blog Gray Areas. Barbara Kirsop was interviewed by Richard Poynder (see his blog 'Open and Shut') and she has also written a report for Current Science. Fred Noronha, the Free and Open Source Software champion, has written a report for SciDev.net.

I would like you to read in particular the policy recommendation that emerged from the workshop and act on it. You may initiate action to set up an institutional archive in your own institution (if you are working in a university or a research laboratory) or enact policy to mandate open access for all papers resulting from publicly funded projects (if you are working in a government funding agency).

Thanks and regards.

Arun
[Subbiah Arunachalam]

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