The International Centre for FOSS (ICFOSS) launched its Open Access Journal, "Journal of Free Software and Free Knowledge" (JFSFK)
ICFOSS launches the Open Access Journal on FOSS inorder to build a freely-accessible corpus of scholarly work in FOSS-based domains. An eminent interdisciplinary Editorial Panel consisting of 15 members from ten countries (including three from India), has been assembled for the Journal.
- (1888PressRelease) September 21, 2011 - Dr. Ramachandran Thekkedath, Vice Chancellor, Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), who launched the journal, explored the trajectory of free and open knowledge that was enabled by the explosive growth of Internet technologies in the last two decades. He explained that it was true that there was perhaps a credibility gap vis-a-vis the content in the initial part of the growth of the Internet, with most readers not having means of validating the information available online. This, however, was rectified in the years that followed. The current situation, especially where it concerned the a transparent and self-validating model of knowledge creation--as is found in Wikipedia, for instance--is one of relatively high credibility and validity of most the information available.
He further said that that it was natural that this model of knowledge creation was extended to the scientific and scholarly knowledge in the form of Open Access Publications and Open Access Journals (OAJs). While congratulating ICFOSS for the launch of JFSFK he pointed out that it is very important to enlarge the current international panel eminent editors so as to be able to ensure effective peer review for the initial gestation period in order to build a reputation for the journal.
Dr. C. Rammanohar Reddy, Editor, Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai, presented the keynote address at the session. Dr. Reddy pointed out that the scientific publishing industry, which was the most important medium of dissemination of research work, was dominated by 3-4 very large publishers. While there was a significant rise of costs of journal subscriptions in the 1990s--leading to many libraries cutting down on the number of subscribed journals due to budget constraints--these large publishers continued to grow in terms of profitability.
Faced with this contradiction, the key stakeholders--researchers, academics, libraries, governments and funding agencies--responded with several creative measures, the most dominant model out of which was Open Access Publishing (OAP), which included Open Access Journals and Open Access Repositories. OAP has grown significantly in the last decade, is projected to be over a third of all current publications.
Dr. Reddy said that while almost all steps were made more transparent by OAJs, the only remaining opaque step, peer reviews, were also being transformed by new technologies. He added that, in order to move into OAJs significantly, a cultural change was needed within the academia and research communities to break out of the current lethargy and comfort zones.
Satish Babu, Director, welcomed the gathering and explained that besides providing the local and international FOSS communities with a mouthpiece to share their research findings, ICFOSS also wanted to support--in terms of technology and expertise--any other research and academic community which wanted to start similar journals. He said that in the Indian context, it was necessary to consider OAJs to fill up the current gap.
Prof. Sunil Mani, CDS and Mr. K.P. Sadasivan, President, Kerala Library Association, offered felicitations on the occasion. Dr. MD Baby, Chair of the technical support team from CUSAT proposed a vote of thanks. The launch was attended by over 50 participants from academia, research community, students, NGOS, and representatives the IT Industry.
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