Recipient Institution:
National Centre for Science Information, Indian Institute of Science

Malleswaram
Bangalore 560 012 India

Tel/Fax: 91-80-2360 0271, 2360 1427/ 91-80-2360 01426, 2360 0683

Email: raja@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in

Project Leader:
Dr. T.B. Rajashekar

Amount and Duration: US$ 28,000 / 18 months

Commencement Date:
April 2004

Project Proposal
Implementing Organization:
National Centre for Science Information (NCSI)
Indian Institute of Science
BANGALORE 560 012 (INDIA)

Partner Organization:
Public Knowledge Project,
Dept of Language and Literacy
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4

Project background and justification: state concisely, what development networking problem is being addressed by the project

Access to research and scholarship is one of the critical development issues in overcoming the often-noted "knowledge gap." While the digital divide is being addressed at a number of levels with the spread of infrastructure, there needs to follow with no less concern the development of systems that increase the global circulation of knowledge, and that contribute to the development of local and national research capacities. Critical to the development of those capacities is the accessibility of research and scholarship.

This proposal is to initiate, assess, and refine an online indexing system that will improve the accessibility of scientific literature published in Indian journals. This collaboration builds on the development of the Public Knowledge Project of Open Journals Systems (OJS) which manages and publishes peer-reviewed journals. One feature of OJS is its ability to generate metadata for each article, with assistance from the author at the point of submitting the article for review. This metadata is stored in OJS in a form that is compliant with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Metadata Harvesting Protocol, which is the emerging standard for indexing or searching online research databases such as journals and eprint archives. This means that each article's metadata can be harvested by a OAI search engine, which then acts as an index for the journal.

Given that many of India's journals are already online, and more are moving in this direction, there is a need for an effective and an inexpensive indexing system that is freely accessible by users in India and around the world. This project would seek to demonstrate to editors and others involved in scholarly publishing a variety of ways of adapting OJS and related systems to indexing Indian scholarly journals (as well as conference papers, eprint archives, theses, etc). As OJS is a currently a complete publishing system work, we would need to demonstrate its workings as a complete system. Here we are looking at implementing a demonstration version with the Journal of Indian Institute of Science (http://journal.library.iisc.ernet.in).

Work would also need to be done to create an indexing module for those journals that do not require, or wish to develop their own, online management and publishing system. This module would need to be able to be adapted to the standards and formats of the different disciplines while retaining its value as an OAI compliant generator of metadata. By working with editors of various journals, with a particular focus on the Indian Academy of Science online journals, the system would be refined to improve its ease of use, its low maintenance, and its accuracy and granularity of indexing. The technical team of the Public Knowledge Project would consult with the researchers at NCSI to ensure the design improvements contribute to OJS and related systems, such as PKP's Open Conference Systems.

The metadata generated by the demonstration journals would be harvested, in the first instance, with an OAI harvester installed at NCSI based on the Public Knowledge Project's open source PKP Harvester. This would establish an indexing portal for Indian online scholarly publications to complement NCSI's well-established SciGate - The IISc Science Information Portal (http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/). The NCSI Harvester would be registered and harvested, in turn, by the global engines, such as OAIster. This will also enable exploration of establishing linkages with other international efforts like the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) of the Open Society Institute and contribution to global efforts in open access to research literature.

Further to this, this indexing and improved accessibility project is to also explore the potential value to Indian publishing of utilizing PKP's Research Support Tool, which uses a research article's indexing information to link the reader to relevant materials in related databases. This tool goes a step further in bringing coherence and critical engagement among a wide range of related research and public resources, which would also extend the value of India's existing online resources, adding, in this way, to its research capacity. The Research Support Tool would need to be scripted to access Indian and global resources, again in consultation with a wide range of researchers in a variety of fields.

The funding for this project would serve as seed support for the development, assessment, refinement and demonstration of systems that once put in place would be self-sustaining under existing infrastructure support for Indian scientific journals and academic publishing. The Public Knowledge Project is committed to continuing to produce upgrades for OJS that would support publishing efforts in India and would continue to work with NCSI to ensure that indexing modules and other components of this systems developed collaboratively continue to benefit from the emerging international community contributing to the Public Knowledge Project's open source projects. The results would, in this way, contribute not only to the research capacities of India, but to other nations in the process of utilizing new technologies to improve their knowledge infrastructure.

2. Project objectives: state precisely, what the project will aim to achieve and what specific outcomes will be reached

2.2 General Objective:
This proposed project is intended is to initiate, assess, and refine an online indexing system that will improve the accessibility of scientific literature published in Indian journals. This project would seek to demonstrate to editors and others involved in Indian scholarly publishing a variety of ways of adapting OJS and related systems to indexing Indian scholarly journals (as well as conference papers, eprint archives, theses, etc). It would offer an add-on indexing module for existing systems, as well as a complete journal management system.

2.2 Specific Objectives:
The indexing module would be demonstrated with Indian Academy of Sciences journals (http://www.ias.ac.in/), while the complete management system would be implemented with the Journal of Indian Institute of Science (http://journal.library.iisc.ernet.in). By consulting with a number of editors from a wide variety of journals, efforts would be made to refine the indexing and management system to improve its ease of use, its low maintenance, and its accuracy and granularity of indexing. The technical team of the Public Knowledge Project would consult with the researchers at NCSI to ensure the design improvements contribute to OJS and related systems, such as PKP's Open Conference Systems, and thus benefits users of the open source OJS and OCS around the world. The metadata generated by the demonstration journals would be harvested at the National Centre for Science Information using the Public Knowledge Project's open source PKP Harvester. This would establish an indexing portal for Indian online scholarly publications that would complement NCSI's well-established "SciGate: The IISc Science Information Portal" (http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/) and the "IISc e-prints archive" (http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/). The metadata collected by NCSI's PKP Harvester would be harvested, in turn, by the global engines, such as OAIster, creating a global presence for Indian research journals. This will also enable exploration of establishing linkages with other international efforts like the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) of the Open Society Institute and contribution to global efforts in open access to research literature.

3. Project beneficiaries: state clearly which segments of the population will benefit from the research.

• Researchers in India and abroad: Easy access to Indian research publications
• Indian researchers:
  • Improved visibility and hence impact of their research work
  • Opportunities for expanding research contacts and collaborative research
• Indian journal publishers
  • Improved visibility and impact of their journals
  • Opportunities for launching new online journals in topical research areas (e.g. Agriculture and Medicine)
• Overall impact:
  • Wider reach of Indian research
  • Global presence for Indian journals
  • Improved research capacity

4. Project sustainability: state how continuity is to be sustained if your proposal is for developing a system that will exist after the project funding.

The funding for this project would serve as seed support for the development, assessment, refinement and demonstration of systems that once put in place would be self-sustaining under existing infrastructure support for Indian scientific journals and academic publishing. The Public Knowledge Project is committed to continuing to produce upgrades for OJS that would support publishing efforts in India and would continue to work with NCSI to ensure that indexing modules and other components of this systems developed collaboratively continue to benefit from the emerging international community contributing to the Public Knowledge Project's open source projects. The results would, in this way, contribute not only to the research capacities of India, but to other nations in the process of utilizing new technologies to improve their knowledge infrastructure.

5. Project methodology: state clearly, in the methodology how the general and specific project objectives will be achieved.

1. PKP's OJS system will be used for indexing selective content from the 11 journals of the Indian Academy of Science, to demonstrate a more powerful metadata-driven (field-based) search interface compared to the current system which has a very simple TOC page indexing system
2. PKP's OAI harvester will be used for harvesting and setting up a cross-journal search system for the 11 IAS journals and demonstrate single interface search system for content of all 11 journals
3. PKP's OJS system will be used for managing journal publishing workflow for the Journal of Indian Institute of Science and also for indexing papers submitted to this journal
4. PKP's OAI harvester will also be used for demonstrating an 'Indian Indexing Portal' by harvesting and indexing content from selective OAI-compliant repositories like e-print archives and theses, operational in India
5. A national workshop will be conducted towards the end of the project period on Open Access Journal Publishing and Indexing to demonstrate the outcome of the project and its relevance for improving access to Indian research

In implementing this methodology we will be consulting with the editors of these journals and efforts would be made to refine the indexing and management system to improve its ease of use, its low maintenance, and its accuracy and granularity of indexing.

Furthermore, the technical teams of the Public Knowledge Project and NCSI will consult each other to ensure the design improvements contribute to OJS and related systems, such as PKP's Open Conference Systems, and thus benefits users of the open source OJS and OCS around the world.

6. Project time-line: include a time-table/schedule of key activities.

1. 1-6 months:
a. Set up OJS server
b. Recruit project staff
c. Set up the IT infrastructure (2 PCs and OJS server for indexing, workflow management and harvesting)
d. Define metadata and indexing specifications for IAS journals.
e. Configure OJS indexing system for 11 journals
f. Analyze and define publishing workflow management system for Journal of the Indian Institute of Science
g. Configure OJS publishing system for Journals of the Indian Institute of Science (JIISC)
2. 6-8 months:
a. Index sample content from IAS journals
b. Index sample content from JIISC
c. Put in operation the publishing workflow for JIISC
3. 9-12 months
a. Demonstrate online indexing and searching for IAS journals
b. Set up PKP OAI harvester system
c. Test harvesting services
d. Put online 1 or 2 issues of JIISC
4. 13-15 months
a. Demonstrate cross-journal search system (Indexing portal)
b. Demonstrate cross-archive search system
5. 16-18 months
a. Project outcome analysis
b. National level workshop on Open Access Journal Publishing and Indexing

7. Project outputs: state what the project will produce and in what form it will be delivered and disseminated

1. Web accessible indexing and search system for IAS journals
2. Web accessible Indexing portal for OAI compliant Indian journals
3. Online journal publishing system for JIISC and Web accessible JIISC
4. Enhancements to PKP OJS and Harvester systems (software)
5. National level workshop on open access journal publishing and indexing

8. Project monitoring: state what monitoring and/or evaluation processes are being proposed
Project evaluation forms part of the budget (5% of the total) and will be devoted to contracting an constructive evaluation of the project in its final months by an arm's-length reviewer, qualifies to assess this work (e.g., from School of Information Science) who will report directly to IDRC.
10. Project applicant: provide full details of the applicant, including organisational contact details, a document or certificate of incorporation of the organisation, if the applicant is not a government body, and background information (as an annex)

Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is a premier academic research institute in India, funded by the Ministry of Human Resources Department (MHRD), Government of India. NCSI is a department in IISc.