This presentation onPreprint Repositories in India: A Case Study was delivered in the SLA Annual Conference 2022. It covers: Background Open Access in India Preprint Repositories (Servers) Scenario of Preprint Movement in India Scopus Covers the Preprints Modern Open Review and Commentary Platforms of Preprints Academic Visibility – How Indian Faculties Can Increase? Conclusion

1. Preprint Repositories in India: A Case Study
Nabi Hasan, PhD, PDF
Librarian & Head, Central Library
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
http://web.iitd.ac.in/~hasan nabihasan@gmail.com
(Ex. University Librarian – Aligarh Muslim University)
Coordinator – National Resource Centre in Library and Information
Sciences (ARPIT), Govt. of India

2. Coverage
• Background
• Open Access in India
• Preprint Repositories (Servers)
• Scenario of Preprint Movement in India
• Scopus Covers the Preprints
• Modern Open Review and Commentary Platforms of Preprints
• Academic Visibility – How Indian Faculties Can Increase?
• Conclusion

3. Background
• In Open Science and academic publishing, the preprint increasingly appears as
an important element in academic communication.
• An open-access research content is freely accessible over the internet.
• Public will have the right to access all research outputs generated from publicly
funded research.
• The major Indian institutional Repositories (IRs) get a very low proportion of
Indian full-text papers deposited.
• Need for promoting the use of global preprint repositories by the Indian
scientific community.
• Need to establish the trusted preprint archives in India.

4. Open Access in India
• OA movement has brought tremendous opportunities for easy access to scholarly content
across the world.
• Open access in India has evolved slowly since the early 2000s. However, India is still behind in
taking the OA movement forward.
• The contribution of India to open access journals in the world is 2.57% (DOAJ).
• ‘Open Access India,‘ a community of practice has formed advocating Open Access, Open Data
and Open Education in India.
• Open Access Week is being celebrated in India to create awareness among the researchers,
faculties, policymakers and research managers.
• The government is also looking at strengthening an existing OA policy and developing new OA
policies.
• There is a plan to Open Pay Walled Contents to the whole of India through One Nation One
Subscription (ONOS)

5. • https://openaccessindia.org/
https://openaccessindia.org

6. Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy –
2020 (STIP), India
• STIP – 2020 by the Government of India has a focus on
• National STI Observatory – a central repository
• Open science
• Open data policy
• Open Access (OA)
• One nation, One Subscription (ONOS)
• Open Educational Resources (OER)
• STIP wants to make scholarly knowledge openly accessible to all.

7. DBT and DST India Open Access Policy for funded
research
• Institutions that receive core funding from
DBT and DST will be required to have an IR.
• Such institutions that currently do not have
an IR will be required to create one as soon
as possible. There will be help available for
this purpose.
• For all other institutions, it is recommended
that they have an IR.

8. CSIR India Open Access Mandate

9. Open Access Repositories in India
• Open Access Repositories are responsible for collecting, organizing, preserving, and providing access
to, and promoting the dissemination of the scholarly output.
• The establishment of IR in developing countries like India ensures that national research becomes
mainstream and contributes on an equal footing to the global knowledge pool.
• Development of open access repositories is increasing among the higher education and research
institutions in India.
• UK-based Directory of Open Access Repositories (Open DOAR) lists 92 such repositories in India.
• Besides institute-level repositories, India has set up several national ones, including ShodhGanga,
National Virtual Library of India (NVLI), National Digital Library of India (NDLI), Science-Central, etc. to
promote open access.

10. Growth of Repositories in India
Source: OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories) is maintained by SHERPA services (12th June 2022)
2
12
19
24
28
34
45 47
60 62
71
76 79
89
95
101
105
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 2022 2024
Year-Wise Growth of Repositories
7
89
8 1
Types of Repositories
Aggregating Institutional Disciplinary Governmental

11. Documents in Scopus vs Open Access
Repositories in India
Only 12.45% of documents are made available
through open access repositories in India
27,72,833
3,45,221
0 5,00,000 10,00,000 15,00,000 20,00,000 25,00,000 30,00,000
No. of Documents by Indian Researcher in Scopus
Database (As on 12th June 2022)
No. of Documents in Indian Open Access Respositories
(As on 12th June 2022)

12. Preprint Repositories (Servers)
• Preprint server allows immediate sharing of research results and can provide quick
feedback to help in the revision and preparation of a manuscript. It facilitates wide and
free dissemination of research.
• Preprints are seldom considered as part of research assessment frameworks.
• A preprint is a scholarly manuscript posted by the author(s) to a repository or platform
to facilitate open review.
• It assists in improving researchers’ work through the feedback they get from their peers.
• Preprints are indexed in search engines like Google Scholar, Dimensions, Lens, OSF
preprints, etc.
• Preprint require that authors post their paper under a Creative Commons license which
allows reproduction and reuse of the material if attribution is given to the original
authors.

13. Preprints in the Publication Workflow
Source: Hettne, K. (2021, October 27): A Practical Guide to Preprints: Accelerating Scholarly Communication

14. Challenges of Preprints
Scooping Risks
Reliability and Credibility - Predatory
Public access and media coverage
Compatibility with journals
Intellectual property
Effectiveness of Feedback
Disparities in adoption

15. Preprint Repositories for Researchers
Source: Hettne, K. (2021, October 27). A Practical Guide to Preprints: Accelerating Scholarly Communication

16. Pre-Print / E-Print Repositories

17. Preprint Repositories in India
• Preprint servers in India are still at the nascent stage.
• Indian researchers are yet to get trusted by the general, disciplinary and
multidisciplinary preprint servers to deposit their research for public review.
• Currently over 100 repositories managed by individual Indian institutions found that
a maximum of them have not uploaded the full texts.
• IndiaRxiv and AgriRxiv have been started, but not found many submissions by the
researchers and support to convert these initiatives into benchmarks.
• National funding agencies have policies that recommend academics post early
versions of manuscripts to preprint repositories, still many Indian researchers are not
doing the submissions.

18. IndiaRxiv
• Preprints Repository Server for India hosted by
the Society for Promotion of Horticulture,
Bengaluru, India
• It was relaunched on 24 February 2022 after a
temporary run two years ago.
• It includes original research, case studies,
conference proceedings and data sets in
subject areas such as Arts, Applied Sciences,
Formal Science, Humanities, Natural Science
and Interdisciplinary studies
https://ops.iihr.res.in/index.php/IndiaRxiv/index

19. AgriRxiv
• AgriRxiv- free, open-access source of
unpublished preprints across the
agricultural sciences.
• Hosted and managed by CABI, an
international, inter-governmental, not-for-
profit organization.
• Authors retain copyright and choose the
option under which to make the article
available (CC BY, CC0). https://agrirxiv.org/about

20. ePrints@IISc
• Hosted and Maintained by:
Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru
https://eprints.iisc.ac.in/view/type/preprint.html

21. AIJR Preprints
• Hosted and Maintained
by: AIJR Publisher,
Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh,
India
https://preprints.aijr.org/index.php/ap/preprints

22. IIAS Preprint Server
• Hosted and Maintained by:
Indian Institute of Advanced
Study, Shimla, India
• Subject Areas: Humanities
and Social Sciences
http://14.139.58.200/ops/index.php/ips/

23. Indian Contribution to Global Preprint Repositories
• Significant contributions were found by the Indian researchers to global preprint
servers.
• Hundreds of Indian physicists and computational biologists have been depositing their
preprints in arXiv for years.
• Indian researchers have been depositing their research to arXiv.org, medRxiv, bioRxiv,
RePEc database, OSF Preprints, SSRN, Chemrxiv and viXra.org for the feedback.
• IISc, IITs and IISERs are the top-most contributing higher education institutions in India.
• Over 170 individual Indian institutions were found depositing their preprints in
preprint archives/repositories/servers, hosted globally, outside of India.
• Indian researchers have been using preprint servers as a powerful medium of
disseminating their research work in an open access mode.

24. Indian Authors’ Contribution to Global
Preprint Repositories
Indian Authors’ Contributions
(Approx.)
Total No. of Records
(Approx.)
% of Indian Author’s
Contributions (Approx.)
arXiv
(During 2018 - 2020)
95,976 7,36,163 13.04
medRxiv 4,599 32,843 14.00
bioRxiv 9,314 1,59,914 5.82
RePEc database 31,863 40,28,671 0.79
OSF Preprints 10,000 23,57,706 0.42
SSRN 1,23,722 11,27,800 10.97
Chemrxiv 888 13,187 6.73
viXra.org 6,110 39,024 15.66

25. Indian Authors’ Contribution to Global
Preprint Repositories
13.04
14.00
5.82
0.79
0.42
10.97
6.73
15.66
0.00
2.00
4.00
6.00
8.00
10.00
12.00
14.00
16.00
18.00
arXiv (3 Year, during
2018 - 2020)
medRxiv bioRxiv RePEc database OSF Preprints SSRN Chemrxiv viXra.org
Percentage (%) of Indian Author’s Contribution (Approx.)

26. Top Indian Institutional Contribution to Arxiv.org
Preprint Server (During 2018 - 2020)
1209
1313
1462
1485
1675
2168
2294
2420
2518
5088
5869
6544
7304
9233
11923
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000
indian institute of technology roorkee
indian institute of technology indore
indian institutes of technology
indian institute of technology gandhinagar
indian institute of astrophysics
indian institute of technology guwahati
indian institute of technology hyderabad
indian statistical institute
indian institute of technology delhi
indian institute of science education and research
indian institute of technology kharagpur
indian institute of technology kanpur
indian institute of technology madras
indian institute of technology bombay
indian institute of science
Source: Axiv.org

27. Why Preprints are still not popular in India?
• Lack of awareness on the impact of open access, preprint archives, and journal archival policies.
• Many Indian journals still do not accept submissions that have been archived in preprint repositories.
• Researchers prefer patent publications over peer-review article publications.
• Government not considering the preprints in the research assessment, researcher career development,
promotion.
• Copyright and IPR – issues, insecurity on novelty, if research is accessible to the public before it is published
in journals.
• Researchers prefer to submit theses to their institutional repositories but are not ready to submit either
preprints or post-print of their research articles.
• Not much initiatives have been taken on the development of centralized general, disciplinary and multi-
disciplinary preprint repositories in India.
• Still, there is no standard policy framework or SOP by the government or funding agencies for imposing on
the researchers to submit all kinds of research into preprint repositories.

28. Key Stakeholders - Improving Preprints in
India
• Authors should submit the research articles to preprint
servers and promote the open review.
• Readers and the public should have free access to
preprints.
• Many Indian journals still do not accept submissions that
have been archived.
• Publisher should allow authors to deposit preprints in
public repositories.
• Indian funding agencies should have policies that
recommend academics post early versions of manuscripts
to preprint repositories.
• Librarians need to do lots of training.

29. How can libraries play a role?
• Educating researchers about the range of preprint servers and how they differ from
published journals or institutional repositories.
• The libraries should provide clear guidance to authors on how to conduct, report,
share, and update their preprints.
• Helping researchers to navigate journal policies and the options journals provide
around preprint posting and SHERPA/RoMEO.
• Finding preprints to support researchers’ information needs by helping identify
relevant preprints.
• Promoting standards, practices, and technologies to link different manuscript versions,
e.g., preprint, post-print, and version of record.
• The libraries should work towards building up preprint services while inviting the
researchers with their valuable contributions.

30. Scopus Covers the Preprints
• Preprint content in Scopus author profiles continues to grow.
• The preprint servers selected for Scopus are the main preprint servers in the areas of
Physical Sciences (arXiv and ChemRxiv), Biomedical Sciences (bioRxiv and medRxiv)
and General Sciences including the Social Sciences (SSRN).
• Preprints are not integrated into any metrics in Scopus and do not influence
assessment, including citation counts.
• Scopus enriched 1 million author profiles with more than 900,000 preprints dating
back to 2017.
• Preprints in Scopus are only available in Author Profiles that already have a peer-
reviewed publication history.

31. https://www.scopus.com

32. Modern Open Review and Commentary
Platforms of Preprints
• Social media
• Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Wikipedia, Reddit
• Online Commentary Features
• arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv etc.
• Third-party commenting projects
• SAPbio’s ReimagineReview, PREreview
• Overlay journals
• OAIster, RePEc

33. Academic Visibility – How Indian Faculties
Can Increase?
• Key activities related to promoting research visibility should take place at all stages of the research
process.
• Extensive use of academic social networking sites for research dissemination.
• Adopt the open access publishing module for publications.
• Create and regularly update academic profiles i.e. IRINS faculty profile, Google Scholar, ResearchGate,
LinkedIn, ORCiD, Publons, Scopus, WoS, etc.
• Make sure your research works are indexed by a maximum of open scholarly search engines i.e. Google
Scholar, BASE, CORE, CiteSeerX, JURN, Semantic scholar, etc.
• Preprints are becoming a common part of the scholarly publishing process; therefore, faculties should
be familiar with the preprint servers for their discipline.
• Encourage to deposit preprints / postprint documents to the institutional level and national level
trusted repositories.

34. Important Sites for Increasing Visibility and
Public Perception

35. Conclusion
• Preprints are one of the elements within a broader open science ecosystem.
• The landscape of preprints in scholarly communication has changed dramatically over the
years.
• The establishment of preprint servers in India is at the nascent stage but growing.
• IndiaRxiv and agriRxiv will improve the quality of scientific research in the Country.
• Stakeholders will have to work together to establish the trusted preprint responsibilities in
India.
• Open Access India – community hopes will change in the future.
• Indian journals should encourage the submission of preprints.
• Indian Researchers have more submissions in the global Preprint repositories comparing
those hosted in India

36. References
➢ Barik, N., & Je, P. (2021). Does India move toward open access of publications? Journal of Archival Organization, 18(1-2), 51-62. doi:10.1080/15332748.2021.1992203
➢ Enago Academy. (2022, May 20). Why Researchers Should Use Pre- Print Repositories. Retrieved from Enago Academy: https://www.enago.com/academy/why-researchers-should-use-pre-
print-repositories
➢ Hettne, K. (2021, October 27). A Practical Guide to Preprints: Accelerating Scholarly Communication.
➢ Hoy, M. B. (2020). Rise of the Rxivs: How Preprint Servers are Changing the Publishing Process. Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 39(1), 84-89.
➢ Kristina Hettne, Ron Aardening, Dirk van Gorp, Chantal Hukkelhoven, Nicole Loorbach, Jeroen Sondervan, & Astrid van Wesenbeeck. (2021). A Practical Guide to Preprints: Accelerating
Scholarly Communication (1.0).
➢ Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India. (2020, December). Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy.
➢ Naika, M., & Pathak, S. K. (2020, August 19). India's open access future. Retrieved from Nature India: https://www.nature.com/articles/nindia.2020.125
➢ Puebla, I., Polka, J., & Rieger, O. Y. (2022, January 12). Preprints: Their Evolving Role in Science. Retrieved from ASAPbio, and Ithaka : https://sr.ithaka.org/blog/preprints-their-evolving-role-
in-science-communication/
➢ Singh, V. K., Srichandan, S. S., & Piryani, R. (2020). Preprint submissions by Indian scientists in arXiv. Current Science, 119.
➢ Tijdink, J. e. (2020, 09 23). Are preprints a problem? 5 ways to improve the qualityand credibility of preprints. Retrieved from London School of Economics and Political Science:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/09/23/are-preprints-a-problem-5-ways-to-improve-the-quality-and-credibility-of-preprints/
➢ Vishwanath, D. (2020, October 22). Preprints and biological research in India: togetherin sickness and in health? Retrieved from IndiaBioscience: https://indiabioscience.org/columns/indian-
scenario/preprints-and-biological-research-in-india-together-in-sickness-and-in-health

37. Thanks for Your Kind Attention
nabihasan@gmail.com
http://web.iitd.ac.in/~hasan