国产乱伦

Author: Nicole Jackson

Senior Marketing Manager

What impact does an open access (OA) agreement have on the daily tasks of librarians? This blog series introduces you to librarians and those in charge of implementing 国产乱伦 OA agreements from various research institutions. They share their experiences and offer insights into how they integrate OA agreements into their workflows and the agreements’ benefit to the researchers they support.

For the fourth blog in the series, Dr Deepali Kuberkar, Head of the Department of Library Science at Tata Memorial Hospital, part of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) transformative agreement (TA) in India, reflects on her experience.

Tell us about yourself, your role in the library, and its OA agreement.

Tata Memorial Hospital is a super-speciality hospital focusing on Oncology. My role as Head of the Digital Library at Tata Memorial Hospital – a grant-in-aid institute of the DAE – is to provide relevant library services to our clinicians who work hard for cancer patients in the hospital.  

My team and I make sure the clinicians have accurate and relevant medical information available. We are also responsible for curating and sourcing relevant and up-to-date books in print and digital, and support medical professionals in their educational needs by organising valuable and insightful courses at our institution.?In addition, we assist with literature reviews for clinical trials that are undertaken at our institution, and have been acknowledged as co-authors in many papers for our contributions.? 

As part of the One DAE One Subscription project and the subsequent One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) policy announced by the Government of India in 2024, we provide our researchers with access to an expansive collection of high-quality scientific publications across journals and publishers.? 

Outside of my role as a librarian, I like to work out in the gym and I also run (I have a dream of running in a marathon). I enjoy dance, and have recently started learning the classical Indian dance Kathak with my daughter.?

“Previously, we had a very small number of resources. Now my users have access to all the required resources at their fingertips.”

What would you say is the most significant impact of the 国产乱伦 OA agreement on your daily routine?

One central impact on my routine is that requests for access to inaccessible academic and research resources have reduced. Previously, we had a very small number of resources and when our users required a particular article or resource, we needed to approach the publishers to request access.?This is no longer necessary, because now my users have access to all the required resources at their fingertips.

On the publishing side, my responsibilities as an approval manager have increased and require prompt attention to support our users with approvals for their OA publications. We receive a lot of approval requests, for which we check with our human resources databases for author affiliations to the different institutions under the DAE Consortium. The approval process is new to us as well because we are probably the first publicly funded institution in India to sign a TA and are still in the learning phase.?

Training and educating users about eligibility criteria for publishing under the agreement is another important responsibility. Since the opportunity to publish OA through the agreements has become available, I also find myself receiving visits from authors who drop by my office to inform me that their article is accepted to a journal, asking me to approve it. Obviously, they do not need to come by since there is an approval process at the publisher's end, but as the approval manager, I explain the process. 

What topics do you address when educating your researchers and librarians about the OA agreement? 

I educate the users from our institution about the agreements and the criteria, for instance, that they need to be corresponding authors to be eligible for OA publishing under the agreements.?I try to communicate these criteria through formal and informal communications, such as emails and push messages from the library mobile applications.

As this agreement covers multiple units of the DAE, I also need to inform different librarians from various units and institutions about the article approval process. Many times, authors get restless, so I convey to librarians the need to carry out all the proper checks in a timely manner.

There are some issues we’ve had to specifically address to clarify the process and our role in it. For instance, we’ve noticed that libraries refer to the library committees to get article approvals, so we explained that our role comes only once the manuscript has been accepted and the peer review process completed. We also had to clarify that we do not need to check article quality, our role is only to see whether the author is an eligible and bona fide member of the institution. 

“We are seeing a lot of publications happening from our institutions. It gives me great pleasure to see these rising numbers on my approval manager dashboard.”

What part of your role as approval manager do you enjoy the most?

We are seeing a lot of publications happening from our institutions. It gives me great pleasure to see these rising numbers on my approval manager dashboard. There are at least four to five articles each day on my dashboard awaiting approval.

It gives a sense of satisfaction to be able to play a part in the publication of such important articles. And we receive a lot of positive feedback from our users. They say they are glad that the OA agreement has been signed, and this assures us that our efforts are worthwhile.

“One can never know from which part of the globe collaborations will happen, and out of these collaborations some novel and unique research could be published.” 

What tips or advice would you have for other institutions or consortia looking to transition to OA, and in particular, become part of an OA agreement?

I believe that the future is open, and we should support the publication of more OA research so that it is accessible without boundaries and available across the globe. Rather than focusing on the subscription model, more funding should be transferred towards TAs. The focus should be more on entering into TAs or at least specific budget allocations for OA. We can always have certain criteria for publications like quartiles and indexing for journals, but supporting authors to publish OA is necessary.?

Transitioning to OA and thus enabling OA publishing increases visibility not only of the authors and researchers, but also the institutions themselves. This will further have a positive impact on collaborations. One can never know from which part of the globe collaborations will happen, and out of these collaborations some novel and unique research could be published. To enable such discoveries, I strongly think that articles should be published OA, and TAs are one way to help our users achieve this.

Check out the previous blogs in the OA agreement stories series:

• OA agreement stories: University of Miami
• OA agreement stories: Mark Robison, University of Notre Dame
• OA agreement stories: Jeff Carroll, Rutgers University

Look out for more blogs in this series, to get to know OA librarians from different institutions, and learn about their work, challenges, and success. Meanwhile, visit the OA agreements website, where you can find more information and resources.

About the Author

Dr Deepali Kuberkar, BSC, BLISc, MLISc, M.Phil, PhD, holds more than 20 years of experience in library and information science. She is Head of the Digital Library at Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, and coordinator of its satellite centers.   

Dr Kuberkar was awarded the Dr B S Kademani Young Librarian Award 2021 by Bombay Science Library Association (BOSLA), and received the Cunnigham Memorial International Fellowship 2019 by the Medical Library Association, Chicago.

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