Open Access Publishing in Scientific Institutions in India: Evolving Role of Librarians

This paper aims to analyze the research productivity with a special focus on open-access publishing at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISERs) and how the librarians play a crucial role in supporting openaccess publishing.This study analysed the number of research publications, citation count, and average citations per publication.Scopus -an abstract and citation database, was used to collect the data and analyze it to know the trend of openaccess publications and their research impact.The paper quantitatively reveals the total research productivity of the group of institutions in terms of the number of publications, citations, etc.The open access publications account for 46% of the total publications, which received 62% of the total citations.Similarly, non-open access publications account for 54% of the total publications and 38% of the total citations.The average number of citations received per open-access publication for all IISERs is 30.73,whereas 16.70 for non-open-access publications.Findings also indicate the publication patterns.The data reports a rise in OA journal usage, driven by benefits, funding mandates, institutional policies, and librarians' role in promoting OA publication, leading to higher citations.This led not only to research more accessible to the public, which raised the institute's prestige, but to positioning to a good rank in the NIRF Ranking system -a ranking methodology adopted by the Ministry of Education, Government of India, to rank higher education institutions.