Open Access to Knowledge and Information: Scholarly Literature and Digital Library Initiatives – the South Asian Scenario

The South Asia sub‐region is now in the forefront of the Open Access movement within developing countries in the world, with India being the most prominent partner in terms of its successful Open Access and Digital Library initiatives. Institutional and policy frameworks in India also facilitate innovative solutions for increasing international visibility and accessibility of scholarly literature and documentary heritage in this country.

This publication has its genesis in the recommendations and proceedings of UNESCO‐supported international conferences and workshops including the 4th International Conference of Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL2001, Bangalore); the International Conferences on Digital Libraries (ICDL2004 & ICDL2006, New Delhi); and the International Workshop on Greenstone Digital Library Software (2006, Kozhikode), where many information professionals of this sub‐region demonstrated their Digital Library and Open Access initiatives. This book describes successful digital library and open access initiatives in the South Asia sub‐region that are available in the forms of open courseware, open access journals, metadata harvesting services, national‐level open access repositories and institutional repositories. This book may be considered an authoritative Source‐book on Open Access development in this sub‐region.