Indian Digital Library in Engineering Science and Technology (INDEST) Consortium: Consortia-Based Subscription to Electronic Resources for Technical Education System in India: A Government of India Initiative

 

 

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ABSTRACT

 

The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has set-up a “Consortia-based Subscription to Electronic Resources for Technical Education System in India” on the recommendations made by the Expert Group appointed by the ministry. The consortium is named as the Indian National Digital Library in Science and Technology (INDEST) Consortium. The INDEST Consortium has commenced its operation since Dec., 2002 through its headquarters at the IIT Delhi. The Consortium subscribes to full-text electronic resources and bibliographic databases for 38 leading engineering and technological institutions in India including IITs (7), IISc (1), NITs / RECs (17), IIMs (6) and a few other institutions directly funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). While the expenditure on electronic resources proposed for subscription under the consortium for these 38 institutions are being met from the funds made available by the MHRD, the consortium being an open-ended proposition, welcomes all other institutions to join it on their own for sharing benefits it offers in terms of highly discounted subscription rates and better terms of agreement with the publishers. Moreover, beneficiary institutions may also subscribe to additional electronic resources through the consortium that are not being funded by the MHRD. This article introduces the INDEST Consortium, its activities and services. 

 

 

KEYWORDS: Electronic Resources, Consortia, Consortia-based Subscription, INDEST, Technical Education System, Pricing Models, License Agreement

 

 

0.         INTRODUCTION

 

Cooperation amongst institutions for sharing their library resources is being practiced for decades. Traditionally, primary purpose of establishing a library consortium is to share physical resources including books and periodicals, amongst members. However, the mode of cooperation has gone under a transformation with infusion of new information technology from print-based environment to digital environment.  The emergence of Internet, particularly, the World Wide Web (WWW) as a new media of information delivery triggered proliferation of Web-based full-text online resources. Increasing number of publishers are using the Internet as a global way to offer their publications to the international community of scientists and technologists. The technology provides an unparalleled media for delivery of information with greater speed and economy. The libraries and information centres, as heavy consumers of electronic journals and online databases, stand to benefit greatly from this technology-driven revolution. The availability of IT-based electronic information products are exerting ever-increasing pressure on libraries, which, in turn, are committing larger portions of their budgetary allocation for either procuring or accessing Web-based online full-text search services, CD ROM products and online databases. The libraries with their diminishing or at the best static financial allocations, have to consider new ways to consolidate global  resources amongst them in order to maximize their limited financial resources. The combination of these developments have resulted in development of “shared subscription” or “consortia-based subscription” to journals everywhere in the world.

 

Shared subscription or consortia-based subscription to electronic resources through consortia of libraries, on the one hand, permits successful deployment and desktop access to electronic resources at a highly discounted rates, on the other hand, it meets with the increasing pressures of diminishing budget, increased user’s demand and rising cost of journals. The library consortia, on the basis of sheer strength of number of institutions, offer healthy business growth opportunities to the electronic publishers and thus attract the best possible price and terms of agreement. With this welcome change, the libraries all over the world are forming consortia of all types and at all levels with an objective to take advantage of current global network to promote better, faster and more cost-effective ways of providing electronic information resources to the information seekers. GALILIO (Potter et al, 1996), OhioLINK (Kohl, 1997), TexShare (Martin, 1996), VIVA (Perry, 1995) and SUNYConnect (1999) are some of the well-known library consortia.

 

In view of the facts mentioned above, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Govt. of India appointed an expert group to discuss elaborately on the e-resources with the publishers and evolve a working model for execution of the INDEST Consortium. The Expert Group after contemplating facts and figures gathered by it on the subscription amount payable by the individual institutions and the consortium was convinced that consortia-based subscription is the only alternative to increase the access to electronic resources across Institutions at a lower cost. The Expert Group reiterated that the timings and environment for the consortia-based subscription to electronic resources was perfect. On the recommendation of the Expert Group, the Ministry has set-up the “Indian National Digital Library in Science and Technology (INDEST) Consortium”. The INDEST Consortium has commenced its operation from Dec. 2002 through its headquarters at the IIT, Delhi.

 

This article introduces the INDEST Consortium, its genesis, needs and benefits. It describes criteria used for selection of e-resources, and their evaluation. The article provides a detailed analysis of electronic resources being subscribed for various categories of institutions. It presents an analysis on expenditure according to category of institutions, type of resources, and ratio between list price vs consortium price. The article deliberates on important terms of license agreement for subscription to e-resources proposed by the consortium. Lastly, the article describes activities and services of Consortium and its future plans. 

 

1.         THE GENESIS

 

The proposal for consortia-based subscription to electronic resources was first discussed at length at the “National Seminar on Knowledge Networking in Engineering & Technology Education and Research” held at the IIT Delhi between December 1 and 2, 2000. On the recommendations of one of the work group of this Seminar, a preliminary proposal on consortia-based subscription to electronic resources was prepared and circulated to all IITs, IISc and RECs. On the basis of feedback obtained from these institutions, a revised draft proposal was prepared which encompassed other engineering colleges and institutions as beneficiary of this initiative. The Ministry, based on the last draft proposal, appointed an expert group in April, 2002 for “Consortia-based Subscription to Electronic Resources for Technical Education System in India” under the chairmanship of  Prof. N. Balakrishnan, IISc Bangalore to discuss elaborately on the e-resources with the publishers and aggregators and evolve a working model for execution of the consortium. The Expert Group submitted its report in Sept., 2002 (1).

 

2.         THE NEED FOR A CONSORTIUM

 

Access to resources is now considered more important than collection building especially, if the access is perpetual in nature. The consortium facilitates the libraries to get the benefit of wider access to electronic resources at affordable cost and at the best terms of licenses. A consortium, with the collective strength of resources of various institutions available to it, is in a better position to address and resolve the problems of managing, organizing and archiving the electronic resources. Moreover, the technology has changed expectations of researchers, their patience, and their willingness to accept services that are available on demand. The Web-based electronic resources is an apt answer to the expectations of researchers.

 

A very high degree of correlation has been observed between the number of journals available to researchers in a given scientific organization and  the scientific productivity of researchers and research organization in terms of number of research articles produced. Our country has witnessed a sharp and persistant decline in number of research journals subscribed by educational and research institutions across the country for past two decades due to increase in the cost of journals, devaluation of Rupees against major foreign currencies, static library budgets, etc. As a result, the total research productivity of the country, in terms of number of research articles produced by our researchers has declined by more than 2% in past one decade where as research productivity of other Asian countries like, China and South Korea has actually increased by 2 – 3% during the same period. It can be ascertained that these countries have increased their subscription base substantially in past two decades.

 

3.         THE BENEFITS

 

The electronic resources being susbcribed through the INDEST consortium would greatly benefit the member institutions in terms of increase in the number of electronic resources accessible to each institution. The consortium is also expected to trigger a new culture of inter-institutional cooperation leading to remarkable increase in sharing of library resources amongst participating institutions. Some of the important benefits of the proposed library consortium are as follows:

 

·         Consortia-based subscription to electronic resources provides access to wider number of electronic resources at substantially lower cost;

 

·         The consortium, with its collective strength of participating institutions, has attracted highly discounted rates of subscription with most favourable terms of agreement. Most e-publishers responded positively to the call of the INDEST consortium. The rates offered to the consortium are lower by 50% to 90% depending upon the category of institutions. It may be noted that full-text resources and databases proposed for subscription for various categories on institutions in the consortium would have costed Rs. 164 crores as per their list price, while through the consortium, the total cost comes to Rs. 18.60 crores for all institutions being considered under the consortium, a total overall saving of Rs.145.60 crores;

 

·         The research productivity of all institutions is expected to improve with increased access to international databases and full-text resources;

 

·         The consortium is expected to trigger remarkable increase in sharing of both print and electronic resources amongst participating library through J-GATE Custom Contents for Consortia (JCCC) proposed for subscription for all IITs (7) and IISc Bangalore with access to NITs / RECs;

 

·         The consortium is proposed to be an open-ended proposition wherein other institutions can join and get the benefit of not only highly discounted subscription rates but also the favourable terms of licenses

 

·         Members of the consortium will also have the benefit of cap on the annual increase in the rates of subscription. While the usual increase in price of e-resources vary from 10 to 15%, the consortium would enjoy the cap on increase in price ranging from 5% to 9%;

 

·         The consortium have been offered better terms of licenses for use, archival  access and preservation of subscribed electronic resources, which would not have been possible for any single institution; and

 

·         Since the subscribed resources would be accessible online in electronic format, the beneficiary institutions would have less pressure on space requirement for storing and managing print-based library resources. Moreover, all problems associated with print media such as their wear and tear, location, shelving, binding, organizing, etc. would not be an issue for electronic resources.

 

4.         METHODOLOGY

 

Soon after the appointment of the expert group by the Ministry, the members of the group started interacting amongst themselves under the Chairmanship of Prof. N. Balakrishnan, to zero down on the electronic resources that the consortium may consider for subscription in its first phase of activity. The expert group established the criteria for selection of resources based on inputs and feedback from members, present practices and international trends. Once the electronic resources proposed for subscription were zeroed-down, proposals were invited from the electronic publishers / their authorized representatives for these resources. Electronic publishers / their representatives were invited for preliminary discussions on their products and services in July, 2002 in a meeting held at the MHRD, Shastri Bhavan, wherein they were informed about the expectations and terms of references for subscription to electronic resources in the consortia mode. The electronic publishers / their representatives were requested to work upon the technical and financial details of their proposal and submit their proposals to provide their best terms of references to the consortium in the meeting that was held in August, 2002 at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

 

In the mean time, members of the experts group were asked to evaluate each electronic resources selected for consortia-based subscription for i) its qualitative and quantitative contents; ii) coverage; iii) their availability on different platforms and their comparative advantages / disadvantages; and iv) rates applicable for the resources to other consortia.

 

These evaluation reports were presented at the meeting of the expert group members held at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore followed by elaborate discussions with electronic publishers on technical and financial details of their respective proposals. The publishers, aggregators / their representatives were asked to submit their revised proposals based on discussions that took place in the meeting. The revised proposals were discussed at length before the expert group made their recommendations.

 

5.         CRITERIA FOR SELECTION OF RESOURCES

 

The electronic resources proposed for consortia-based subscription were selected based on the following criteria:

 

• Well-established multi-disciplinary resources with broad coverage were preferred over highly specialized sources targeted for specialists;

 

• The electronic resources already on subscription in the beneficiary institutions were preferred over those which are not being used in any of the beneficiary institutions;

 

• Resources that are ‘electronic-only’ were preferred over those that are print-based unless completely unavoidable;

 

• Resources that are very important but highly cost-intensive were preferred over those which are less important or less-used but low cost;

 

• Resources where electronic versions are made available free on subscription to their print versions were avoided as far as possible; and

 

• Selections were made on their usage / suitability to their respective institutions, e.g. Applied Science & Technology Plus (ASTP) is selected for category I & II institutions while Web of Science was selected for category I institutions.

 

6.         RESOURCES SUBSCRIBED BY THE CONSORTIUM

 

The consortium negotiated with the publishers for subscription to the electronic resources mentioned below. The expert group appointed by the Ministry recommended to provide differential access to electronic resources based on their usability and suitability to various beneficiary institutions:

 

 

7.         MEMBERS OF CORE GROUP, THEIR CATEGORIES AND RESOURCES SUBSCRIBED FOR THEM

 

Categorization of institutions recommended by the Task Force on Human Resource Development in Information Technology was followed to provide differential access to electronic resources to various institutions depending on their education and research activities. As such, all IITs and IISc (eight institutions) are considered as Category I institutions, RECs / NITs (17), ISM, Dhanbad, SLIET and NERIST fall under category II institutions, and IIIT (Allahabad), IIITM (Gwalior) and NIFFT are considered category III institutions. IIMs are considered as a category in themselves, and NITIE and IIITM (Gwalior) are also included with IIMs for electronic resources to be provided to the IIMs. The category of institutions are basically used to denote the level of usage of electronic resources, conceived to be highest amongst institutions in Category I, modest for institutions in Category II and lowest amongst the institutions under category III. Further, usage of electronic resources proposed for subscription requires ICT infrastructure, while all category I institutions have well-developed ICT infrastructure, most category II and III institutions have atleast modest ICT infrastructure. The rates of subscription, number of simultaneous users and number of resources offered to various categories of institutions are worked out based on their usage / suitability to the respective categories of institutions.

 

The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has allocated funds required for providing differential access to selected electronic resources for a core group of institutions directly funded by the Ministry. These institutions are:

 

7.1       Institutions in Categories I

 

Indian Institutes of Technology at Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkee and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The resources subscribed for these institutions include:

 

 

7.2       Institutions in Categories II

 

All Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) / NITs (17), Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology, Itanagar and Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering & Technology,  Chandigarh. The resources subscribed for these institutions include:

 

 

 

7.3       Institutions in Categories III

 

Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIITM), Allahabad and National Institute of Foundry and Forge Technology (NIFFT), Ranchi. The resources subscribed for these institutions include:

 

7.4       Indian Institutes of Managements, NITIE & IIITM

 

Indian Institutes of Management Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Indore, Kozhikode and Lucknow, National Institute of Training in Industrial Engineering, Bombay and Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management (IIITM), Gwalior. The resources subscribed for these institutions include:

 

 

8.         EXPENDITURE ON CONSORTIA-BASED SUBSCRIPTION TO ELECTRONIC RESOURCES