Description

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” – George Bernard Shaw

The above saying of George Bernard Shaw implies the significance of free environment of scholarly communication as it enriches teaching, learning and research at the institutes of higher educations. With the advent of new technologies, the nature of scholarship and scholarly communication has expanded beyond traditional print formats to include other means of dissemination: email, pre-print servers, e-journals, e-books, e-reserves, distance learning, etc. In an online environment, issues of copyright, intellectual property rights, and the long-term preservation of digital assets are posing new challenges to faculty, administrators, and librarians. Scholarly communication is the process of academics, scholars and researchers sharing and publishing their research findings so that they are available to the wider academic community (such as university academics) and beyond.

It creates knowledge capital as public good to facilitate inquiry and knowledge. Scholarly communication is publicly supported, either directly through funded research projects or indirectly through higher-education institutions. In addition, the vast majority of scholars develop and disseminate their research with no expectation of direct financial reward. In the higher education arena, research is one of the most crucial activities wherein research scholars take up the task of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) apart from other research activities like Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.). One of the major problems which the individual scholars have been facing since long was to know the whereabouts of earlier works. Also, there was no research census in terms of number of Ph.D.s being carried out by Indian universities.

This book is a timely attempt to portray the emerging scenario which intent to capture the research capital in the form of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). The book starts with the basics of scholarly communication, open access, grey literature management (GLM) followed by in-depth analysis of Indian ETD scenario by undertaking the statistical analysis of Shodhganga and Shodhgangotri portals.