International and national agricultural research systems have a responsibility to ensure their research reaches ultimate users like farmers. However, much agricultural research is published in journals with financial barriers, making the information largely inaccessible. Open access to primary agricultural research is key to fuel innovations in ICT for agriculture. Open access through institutional repositories is simple, effective, and certain to enhance the visibility and impact of research. It is also inexpensive, as evidenced by ICRISAT spending only $60 per month to maintain its repository. Open access to information and data will ignite crowd-sourced knowledge and help credible agro-advisory systems to evolve.

1. Agro-advisory Services: Open
access is a precondition
Madhan
ICRISAT

2. International and National Agricultural
Research Systems have an immediate
responsibility to see that their research
reaches the ultimate users, viz.
farmers, food processors, fishermen,
and so on, in an easily understandable
format.

3. But, agricultural scientists publish their
research output in journals
…in thousands of professional peer-reviewed journals
…in journals that have set financial-firewalls to provide
access
Hence, the primary research information,
from which “contents” have to be derived and
tailored for the key stakeholders, is largely
inaccessible and highly scattered

4. No. Country
Publication
year 2004
% share of
world
output
in 2004
Publication
year 2008
% share of
world
output
in 2008
% change
from
2004 to
2008
World 2,06,490 3,27,759 58.00
1 USA 35,925 17.40 52,980 16.16 -1.23
2 China 15,193 7.36 39,173 11.95 4.59
3 India 14,543 7.04 22,331 6.81 -0.23
4 Japan 9,897 4.79 11,953 3.65 -1.15
5 United Kingdom 9,702 4.70 13,195 4.03 -0.67
6 Brazil 9,598 4.65 16,084 4.91 0.26
7 Germany 7,668 3.71 10,199 3.11 -0.60
8 Italy 6,345 3.07 8,911 2.72 -0.35
9 Canada 6,009 2.91 8,758 2.67 -0.24
10 France 5,835 2.83 8,530 2.60 -0.22
11 Australia 5,483 2.66 8,016 2.45 -0.21
12 South Korea 3,338 1.62 4,876 1.49 -0.13
13 Mexico 2,212 1.07 3,023 0.92 -0.15
14 Taiwan 1,825 0.88 3,279 1.00 0.12
15 New Zealand 1,625 0.79 2,047 0.63 -0.16
16 South Africa 1,545 0.75 2,238 0.68 -0.07
17 Pakistan 1,401 0.68 1,979 0.60 -0.08
18 Israel 1,147 0.56 1,513 0.46 -0.09
19 Thailand 851 0.41 2,355 0.72 0.31

5. Publishing country
No. of
journals
(CAB
Abs)
No. of
journ
als
(WoS)
No. of papers
(CAB Abs)
No. of
papers
(WoS)
No. of
cited
pape
rs
Sum of
citati
ons
Cites/ paper*
India 254 19 10104 1425 718 3387 2.38
United Kingdom 270 231 1064 955 920 14576 15.26
United States of
America
209 174 661 563 533 7888 14.01
Netherlands 124 112 556 513 484 6023 11.74
Germany 65 62 273 260 248 3260 12.54
Malaysia 11 1 82 29 8 16 0.55
Belgium 3 0 78 0 0 0 0.00
Korea Republic 9 2 76 46 39 204 4.43
Italy 18 8 73 17 10 46 2.70
Pakistan 15 1 68 1 1 2 2.00
Japan 26 16 66 25 24 393 15.72
France 19 15 63 31 29 340 10.97
Thailand 6 0 46 0 0 0 0.00
Czech Republic 6 5 42 41 37 313 7.63
Hungary 8 2 41 5 3 4 1.25
Philippines 2 1 40 1 1 2 0.50
36 other countries 156 81 388 193 164 1432 7.42
Total 1201 730 13721 4105 3219 37886 9.23

6. India's citation impact by field
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Clinical
Psychology
Neuroscience
Immunology
Pharmacology
Genetics
Bio/BioChem
Microbiology
Plant/Animal
Agriculture
Environment
Geosciences
Chemistry
Physics
Space
Materials
Mathematics
Computing
Engineering
Economics
Social Sciences
Humanities
1996-2000
2001-2005
2006-2010
Data & analysis: Evidence , Thomson
Reuters

7. • Open Access to the primary agricultural
information is key for ICT innovations in
agriculture
• “I” is the backbone of ICTs for development
• Open Access is the only solution

8. http://oar.icrisat.org
• From May 2011 – Oct 2012 the
repository witnessed More than
1,30,000 downloads from more
than 60 countries
• About 6,000 unique visitors every
month
OA to research output through
interoperable institutional repository
is simple, effective and certain to
enhance visibility and impact of our
work.
It is inexpensive. ICRISAT spends
only $60 every month to maintain
this repository.

10. http://dataverse.icrisat.org/dvn

12. • Open access to information and data is
key and that will ignite crowd-sourced
knowledge snippets
• Agropedia will see more wikis –
repurposed from open research
information and data available on the web
• Credible agro-advisory systems will evolve
• Selective dissemination will be very easy
with the gamut of gadgets…