‘Open Access publishing is the way forward’

By Saket Suman

New Delhi, June 9 (IANS) India's first open access platform for academic authors to publish their works and make them available in over 100 countries has just been launched -- and the man behind the idea says that this concept is the future of publishing.

The basic idea behind open access publishing is to return scholarly publishing to its original purpose -- to spread knowledge and allow that knowledge to be built upon. Open Access publishing means providing content free online to readers while supporting operations by financial models that permit this free electronic distribution.

So far, most advances in Open Access publishing have been made in the area of journal publishing, but there are an increasing number of ventures into Open Access monograph publishing as well.

India's first Open Access academic publishing platform comes from Notion Press, which was launched in 2012 to offer various high-quality publishing, book printing and distribution options to both authors and publishers from around the world. The new platform, Scholarink.com, is dubbed as a launch pad for scholars, universities, researchers and research groups to publish their work, thereby providing them with an opportunity to reach wider audiences.

"It opens up research for a wider analysis. Open Access publishing is the way forward. World over, more and more publishers, authors and universities have realised the importance of OA and have already embraced it. Authors gain wide reach through OA publishing," Jana Pillay, Co- Founder and Director of Scholarink told IANS in an email.

"In the Indian context, OA is still in its infant stage. Owing to misconceptions, Indian publishers are still very apprehensive about letting their content online for free access. As a result, a lot good Indian academicians are favoring International publishers to have their content on Open Access," he added.

Pillay said that they understood the intricacies of academic publishing from their interactions with academic writers.Through them, they realised that academic publishing was nothing like regular publishing -- it is an entirely different turf.

"That is when we set out exploring this field. Initially, we started collaborating with colleges to fulfill their publishing needs and then slowly grew into a complete platform that specially caters to the publishing needs of the academic and scientific communities," he said.

The new platform is expected to serve as one-stop solution for all publishing needs. From running plagiarism checks and copy-editing to the overall creation of the book and worldwide distribution, said Pillay, adding that their 150-member team ensures that authors receive the best academic publishing services under one roof.

"From editing their works to creating their book and distributing to 100+ countries to indexing their work, Scholarink is a one-stop solution for any academician who is looking to publish and sell his/her work. Our authors receive 100 per cent profits from the sale of their works and this is credited to them on a monthly basis," he said.

Scholarink, he added, hopes to become the most preferred destination for academicians and scientists in India to publish and sell their works.

(Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in)

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