1. National Convention of MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, 7-9 Nov. 2005 Sukhdev Singh and Naina Pandita. Bibliographic Informatics Division, National Informatics Centre, A - Block, CGO Complex, Lodhi Road, New Delhi-110003. Phone: 91-11-24362359 E-mail: {sukhi, naina}@nic.in Building the Open Access Self-Archiving repository for the Bio-Medical Sciences at National Informatics Centre.

2. National Convention of MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, 7-9 Nov. 2005 2 Introduction Scientists do not write research articles for monetary benefits. Appreciation of Peers and Impact on Research is the main motive. Traditional business models of journals publishing has “ price barriers ” and “ permission barriers ” that contradicts with authors interests.

3. National Convention of MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, 7-9 Nov. 2005 3 Open Access Open Access holds promise to remove both price and permission barriers to the scientific communication ‘ Open access' (OA) is a step ahead of “ Free Access ” Removes the permission barrier as well. Open Access is manifested in two forms – OA Publishing and OA Self- Archiving.

4. National Convention of MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, 7-9 Nov. 2005 4 Open Access Repository at NIC National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been communicating medical research information through the use of Information Technology since 1988. It has three major products that are available for free over Internet:  i. UNcat (http://uncat.nic.in) - union catalogue of journal holdings of medical libraries of India;  ii. IndMED (http://indmed.nic.in) - A bibliographic database of Indian biomedical journals and  iii. medIND (http://medind.nic.in) - full texts of Indian biomedical journals being indexed in IndMED and PubMed.

5. National Convention of MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, 7-9 Nov. 2005 5 OpenMED@NIC Very few discipline based self-archiving repositories in the area of bio-medical and allied sciences that provide in-depth subject classification Discipline based International Self-Archive “ OpenMED@NIC ” was planned, developed and deployed at NIC through website http://openmed.nic.in in May 2005. OpenMED@NIC Scope includes Medical and Allied Sciences including Bio-Medical, Medical Informatics, Dental, Nursing and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

6. National Convention of MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, 7-9 Nov. 2005 6 Key Design Considerations Interoperability: OAI-PMH Subject Browsing: Based on Medical Subject Headings [MeSH ® ] of US National Library of Medicine Trust of Users: Self-arching repositories are based on premise that authors will deposit their research papers. Application Software: EPrints was selected. It is comparatively mature and easier to install, customize and maintain. User Interface: Intuitive and user-friendly web interface.

7. National Convention of MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, 7-9 Nov. 2005 7 Prototype Development Prototype of the OpenMED@NIC archive was developed before the final system.OpenMED@NIC An old unused P-II was selected for developing the prototype. RedHat Linux 7.3 was installed along with Other major softwares like Apache 1.3.31, Mod_Perl 1.25 and MySQL 3.23.49. Finally EPrints 2.3.4 was installed PERL script to extract representative categories scheme from MeSH

8. National Convention of MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, 7-9 Nov. 2005 8 Deployment of OpenMED@NIC Prototype tested with depositing dummy documents. Changes were made in the look and feel. Separate independent server procured to minimize security risk as EPrints takes total control of Apache Web Server. Loaded with RedHat Advanced Server (AS 3). SMTP gateway, Cron procedures and DNS Entry made to make site public.

9. National Convention of MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, 7-9 Nov. 2005 9 Populating OpenMED@NIC Populating a repository is challenging Authors are reluctant to deposit their documents in Open Access repositories. Prime reasons are: --Confusion, Uncertainty and Fear on Copyright Issues. --Doubts regarding who and how the material would be used. --Doubts on getting attribution, impact and scholarly credit. --Myth of low quality material in institutional repositories. --Unfriendly submission procedures. --Lack of mandatory provisions to deposit. --Lack of Internet Access facilities.

10. National Convention of MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, 7-9 Nov. 2005 10 Role of Librarians Indian librarians of medical and allied sciences institutes / organizations have to play an important role in populating the OpenMED@NIC repository.OpenMED@NIC Can conduct training / seminars in their institutes for awareness about OpenMED@NIC. Can train and help their library users in self-archiving. OpenMED@NIC Can Build their institutional repository over OpenMED@NIC.OpenMED@NIC

11. National Convention of MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, 7-9 Nov. 2005 11 If required, NIC can train librarians wanting to play an active role in submissions to the archive

12. National Convention of MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, 7-9 Nov. 2005 12 Conclusion Building up a self-archiving repository is a challenging task. It requires dedicated hardware, software and competent human resources. Internet connectivity should be of high bandwidth and available around the clock. Winning trust of content owners and end users is the major challenge. Collaborative efforts are needed to promote and populate OpenMED@NIC. Librarians should take a lead and collaborate in this effort.OpenMED@NIC

13. National Convention of MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, 7-9 Nov. 2005 13 Thanks Thank You All Discussions about OpenMED@NIC are covered in various E-Groups including:OpenMED@NIC  http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/medlib/ http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/medlib/  http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/indmedtraining http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/indmedtraining Paper / Slides Archived at http://openmed.nic.in