News And Events (1st July 2006)
Seminar on:
“E-Publishing & Global Promotion of Indian Publications”
on
1st July, 2006, Auditorium, National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Vihar Lake, Mumbai
Speech by Ms. Chitra P. Rao,
National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE)
I had joined the library 15 years ago. I always worked in IT Industry, so it made me active to do on job both my regular and IT-related job. The IT industry has given so many Brain Powers throughout but I strongly believe Brain Powers are not only in the IT Industry. We too have resources to compete in a perfect way. One of the reasons why quality is not good can be the Peers do not get time to review the text. Indianjournals.com should have the visibility to move towards the quality instead.
When a reader emails to the author, author knows what the opinion on his writing is and hence the drawbacks. So role of the Intermediate is betterment of quality.
About 6-8 months ago, I posted a question on LIS Forum by which I basically wished to know whether there is such kind of platform in India or not. Only Indianjournals.com responded that they have it. They have journals of different subjects online. Hence, linking the other journals website to Indianjournals.com would be an added advantage.
Asking people to tell me about online Indian Journals, I got at least 35 web addresses having their own journals. But very few people are aware of that they being on different location. We can be individually great but we have to be collectively great. That is why linking to the common platform is logical.
Authors should also be given a platform to submit their articles.
Let’s come to Print. The cost of publishing 100-200 copies of print copies is four times than that of Online Publishing. So monetarily you are not going to lose if you shift to Online Publishing. The reach will be more and there will be advertisements also.
How does an author benefit by allowing himself for critics? He will be exposed to national and international boundaries. Every one knows the author and put comments. Why online publishing makes sense to reach the audiences - because the cost of Print is very high.
Now, who is the aggregator? Indianjournals.com, Institutes and collected journal – hosting platform like Indianjournals.com are the aggregators. Now the aggregators are the ones who provide only the platform for multi usage and hence they automatically give us a lot of facility. If we logon to Indianjournals.com, the user will have 24-hrs visibility. Searching becomes easy. Journals presented in great manner. These are various kinds of features available on indianjournals.com. We need to reach out many users in easier and non-costlier manner.
After Dr. Ranade’s views, I wish to request Indianjournals.com team to make the fonts available in Devanagri also, i.e., translate English into Devanagari.
We know there are near about 10000 Indian Journals, but none can name even 25!
Do you know how many books are published? Similarly, how many are there in India. Also, what is the status of Publication Industry? Do you have this data? So, a common forum is very important. A small search query should reply to them, which is essential. The same will be important for Readers and Authors. Why delay? We can make Journal online first and can talk money later. I would rather emotionally support this cause because we never used to get information. If we can co-exist electronically, we will be able to deliver better services.
Thank you
Chitra P. Rao
Sr. librarian & Head – Library & Information Centre
National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE)
Vihar Lake, Mumbai – 400087
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