Open Research Data in the Global South: Issues and Anomalies in the Indian Context

Globally, open science movement is gaining momentum ever since the launching of the preprint repository Arxiv.org in 1991 and the signing of the global declaration Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2002. Free online scholarships have been getting support from the research funding agencies while they are committed to disseminating public-funded research studies to the common citizens. Following extensive global consultation, UNESCO submitted a draft Recommendation on Open Science to its 193 Member States in September 2020. The Global South is taking an interest in the global open science movement. Notably, the BRICS nations are leading the developing nations in producing open-access scholarship. In India, many universities and research institutions have established their respective open knowledge and research data repositories. At the same time, scholarly periodicals published by many of the public institutions have also been made accessible online freely. In the open science ecosystem, open research data is also an essential element. Globally, FAIR Data Principles have been adopted by the scientific community to make research data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). The FAIR Data Principles were published in 2016, while the term was coined in 2014. The present chapter discusses the salient features of FAIR Data Principles. The chapter also highlights the issues and challenges in India's open research data ecosystem as a member of the developing nations in the Global South. The chapter also highlights the availability of open research data in India vis-à-vis in the Global South, highlighting a few success stories.