Formation and Open Access of Institutional Electronic Research Corners for Promotion of Communication Facilities and Quality Research

Abstract

Indian higher education institutions (HEIs) are struggling hard to get a berth among top-rated HEIs in the world. One of the important parameters that restrict our HEIs from the list of top-notch global HEIs is ‘contribution to research’. It does not mean that Indian HEIs don’t have quality researchers to produce world class research output. Had that been the case, Indian researchers doing research abroad would not have done miracles with their unique research output in varied domains. The hindrance for researchers in India could be owing to improper communication facility that fails to exchange ideas and outcomes of research among peers. Thus, the urge for formation of sound institutional electronic repositories, i.e., electronic research corners (e-research corners) has crop up. Mere formation of e-research corners won’t suffice to address the issue. Besides formation, e-research corners need to be open accessed. University Grants Commission (UGC) of India has established an Inter-University Center called Information and Library Network Center (Inflibnet), which is the best example of open access institutional repositories. While some HEIs of India do have their research corners that are accessed by only the internal stakeholders, some other HEIs don’t have any such repositories as such. On the backdrop of the necessity of formation and open access of institutional electronic repositories, this paper focuses on unfolding how open access to sound e-research corners promote quality education. Besides, it will also design a framework that will assist the HEIs to build sound e-research centers. For the purpose, in-depth interviews will be conducted with 50 researchers working in reputed HEIs in Bhubaneswar to ascertain how open access e-research centers facilitate quality research. Focus Group Discussion will also be conducted among experts in the field like research heads of selected HEIs, Chief Librarians of established Libraries and reputed educationists of the State for designing the framework to form e-research centers. The findings of this research will help in communicating ideas and findings of researchers to all the corners that matter for quality research.