34 Library Consortium: INDEST-AICTE

Bibhuti Sahu

 

I.   Objectives

 

 

To study major functions, activities, and services of the INDEST-AICTE Consortium. It describes its genesis, membership, resources and services offered with future plans.

 

 

II.    Learning Outcomes 

 

After completion of this lesson, learners would attain knowledge about INDEST–AICTE Consortium that provides access to selected scholarly electronic journals and databases in different disciplines to centrally funded technical institutions. They would also study major functions, activities, and services of the INDEST-AICTE Consortium. They would also study genesis, membership, resources and services offered by the consortium and its future plan.

 

 

III.    Module Structure 

 

1.   Introduction

2.   INDEST-AICTE Consortium

3.   Objectives

4.     Administrative Structure of INDEST-AICTE Consortium

5.     Membership

5.1   Core mMembers

5.2   AICTE Supported Members

5.3   Self-supported Member

6.   Services and Activities

6.1   Selection of Electronic Resources

6.2.   Resource Sharing

6.3.   Promoting Use of e-Resources

6.4   Training of Users

6.5   NLIST: The Joint Project of INDEST-AICTE Consortium and UGC- INFONET Digital Library Consortium (2010-2012)

7.   License Agreement and Fair Use

7.1   License Agreements and Guidelines for Fair Use

7.2   Print-independent Subscription

7.3   Governing Laws and Jurisdiction

8.   Usage Analysis

8.2   Usage of E-Resources for AICTE Supported Institutions

8.3   Usage of E-Resources for Self-Supported Institutes

9.   Economics of INDEST-AICTE Consortium

9.1.  Annual  Increase  in  Rates  of  Subscription:  Print  Journals  vs  e- Journals

9.2   Average Cost of an Article/Record

9.3   Cost Avoidance and Cost Recovery

11.   Archival Access/Back-up of e-Resources

12.   Summary and Future Endeavours

13.   References

 

 

 

1.   Introduction 

 

Due to  the exponential  growth  of  literature and  the financial  crunch,  it  is difficult for a single library to acquire everything to satisfy the core interests of the institution to which the library belongs. The peripheral interest was being satisfied by using Inter library loan/document delivery. Therefore in a collective development situation, it is logical for a library to look up the other institutions for meeting its peripheral interest. Even in this situation a library can drop an item  from  the  core  item  to  the  same  ensured  by  another  library  in  the neighborhood. To achieve aforesaid objectives, various library and information networks emerged. A number of resource sharing networks that have evolved in India include Metropolitan Library network (MAN) like CALIBNET (1986), DELNET (1988), BONET, MALIBNET (1993), Country wide Network like INFLIBNET  (1991  –  For  University  libraries)  and  sectoral  networks  like BTISNET, ENVIS etc in 1980’s(Sahoo, 2002). The most successful networks of India are DELNET and INFLIBNET. The concept of Library consortia is not new. It was in the name of Library cooperation in America has existed for over a century. Library consortia first began to purchase electronic journals from publishers in the mid-nineties in USA. In India the library consortia became operational after 2000 with the availability of e-resources. The Library consortia play  an  active  role  in  the  collection  development.  The  accessibility  to international  journals  in  Indian  universities  and  technical  institutions  has improved  many  folds  with  setting-up  of  a  few  Government-funded  library consortia. Prior to setting up of these consortia, the access to e-journals was restricted  to  a  premier  institutions  like  IISc,  IITs,  IIMs  and  a  few  central universities who were subscribing to several e-resources including bibliographic databases on CD ROM, a few e-journals accessible free with subscription to their print versions and a negligible fraction of journals on subscription. In India more  than  half  a  dozen  Library  consortia  were  established  by  various government bodies as given in Table 1.

Table.1 – Library Consortia in India
Name of Consortium Branch Sponsoring body Year of Establishment
INDEST-AICTE Engineering Science and Technology Ministry of HRD 2003
UGC-INFONET DL Higher Education UGC, MHRD 2004
National Library and Information Services Infrastructure for Scholarly Content (N- LIST) Higher Education MHRD 2010
National Knowledge Resource Consortium (NKRC) Science and Technology CSIR and DST 2001 ( CSIR

Consortium) 2009 (NKRC)
DBT e-Library Consortium (DelCon) Biotechnology Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology (DBT) 2009
MCIT Consortium Communication and Information Technology Ministry of Communication and Information Technology 2005
Electronic Resources in Medicine (ERMED) Consortium Medicine Director General of Health Services (DGHS) 2008
Consortium for e- Resources in Agriculture (CeRA) Agriculture ICAR 2007
DRDO E-JLS Consortium Defence DRDO 2009

 

2.   INDEST-AICTE Consortium 

 

The library consortium may be defined as an association or group of libraries who come together to achieve a common goal of optimum users’ satisfaction with the participation in a common activities and sharing of resources. A library consortium is a group of libraries who partner to coordinate activities, share resources, and combine expertise. Library consortia offer significant advantages to institutions in terms of lower rates, higher number of journals, document delivery etc. The sharing of resources, and collaboration on shared goals often enable libraries to deliver higher quality services than they would be able to deliver on their own.

 

The idea of the creation of the library consortia, took shape at the “National Seminar on Knowledge Networking in Engineering & Technology Education and Research” held at IIT Delhi in December 2000 under the aegis of Ministry of Human Resource Development. The seminar was coordinated by Dr. Jagdish Arora and it was attended by more than 150 participants from engineering and technological institutions from all over the country. Based on the feedback, Ministry decided to set-up the expert group in April 2002 for the consortia – based subscription to electronic resources for Technical Education System in India under the chairmanship of Prof. N. Balakrishnan from IISc, Bangalore. The “Indian National Digital Library in Engineering Sciences and Technology (INDEST) Consortium” was set up in 2003 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) on the recommendation of an Expert Group appointed by the Ministry. The IIT Delhi was designated as the Consortium Headquarters to coordinate its activities (India, MHRD, 2002) The Consortium was re-named as INDEST-AICTE Consortium in December 2005 with the AICTE playing a pivotal role in enrolling its approved engineering colleges and institutions as members of the Consortium for selected e-resources at much lower rates of subscription. The Consortium enrolls engineering and technological institutions as its members and subscribe to electronic resources for them at discounted rates of subscription and favorable terms and conditions.

 

The Consortium website at http://paniit.iitd.ac.in/indest hosts searchable databases of journals and member institutions to locate journals subscribed by the Consortium, their URLs and details of member institutions.

 

3.   Objectives 

 

The INDEST-AICTE Consortium has the following objectives:

 

i.     To provide electronic resources for the centrally funded and other academic institutions in Engineering, Science and Technology of India at highly discounted rates.

ii.   To support and impart training to the users and librarians in the member institutions on subscribed electronic resources with an aim to maximize the usage of subscribed electronic resources.

iii.  To improve scientific productivity of member institutions in terms of quality and quantity of publications.

 

4.     Administrative Structure of INDEST-AICTE Consortium 

 

The Consortium operates through its headquarters set up at IIT Delhi under a National Steering Committee (NSC) notified by the Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD). It consists of Director, IIT Delhi as its ex-officio Chairman and Chairman, AICTE as its Co-Chair. Members are drawn from its beneficiary core and self-supported institutions. Other members are Director (Technical Education), MHRD; representatives from the National Knowledge Resource Consortium (CSIR and DST) and DESIDOC e-journal Consortium; and Member Secretary, AICTE. The committee is responsible for taking all major policy decision as well as their execution.

 

In the year 2009, National Advisory Committee (NAC) was established by the National Steering Committee to advice the NSC about various issues faced by the consortium. It plays a key role in the decision making of the NSC. NAC also helps in selection of e-resources, review of e-resources, and subscription of e- resources for engineering colleges. In order to promote a participatory culture, consortium invites participating institutions from time to time to discuss various issues being faced by the consortium for individual institutions. The feedbacks of individual institutions play a key role in decision making and helps in negotiating the terms with the publishers.

 

A negotiation committee was also established by the National Steering Committee (NSC), to negotiate the terms, conditions and price of e-resources. The consortium involved the coordinators of all other major national consortia for the negotiation as well as the NSC meeting to have a common understanding of terms, conditions and price of e-resources.

 

A National Review Committee was set up under the Chairmanship of Joint Secretary (Technical Education) with an overall responsibility for making policies, monitoring the progress, coordinating with UGC and AICTE for promoting the activities of the Consortium.

 

The National Coordinator for the consortium was appointed by the Technical Bureau of MHRD in the year 2003. He is responsible for all the operation of the consortium. The National coordinator is member’s secretary of the National Steering Committee, National Advisory Committee and the Negotiation Committee. Since the inception of the consortium, Dr. Jagdish Arora was the National Coordinator and continued in this role up to August 2007. Prof. G.P. Agarwal took charge as National Coordinator of the consortium from Dr. Arora and served this post for five years beginning September 2007 to end of August 2012. Since September 1, 2012 Prof. B.D. Gupta has taken charge as  the National Coordinator.

 

5.     Membership 

 

The INDEST-AICTE Consortium has three types of members based on funding, namely (i) core members supported by MHRD, (ii) AICTE, members supported by the AICTE and (iii) self-supported members. However, some of the core and AICTE supported members can join as self-supported members. The consortium did not charge membership fees from the MHRD supported academic institutions.

 

5.1     Core Members 

 

All centrally funded technical institutions including IITs, IISc, ISM, IISERs, NITs, SLIET, NERIST, IIMs, NITIE, NITTTRs, IIITs and NIFFT are the core members  of  the  Consortium.  The  Ministry  provides  funds  for  providing differential access to electronic resources for its core members through the Consortium Headquarters at IIT Delhi. In 2003, the number of core members was 37. In 2009, the number increased to 42 with addition of IISERs. In 2013 the total number of members increased to 65 with addition of new IITs, new NITs, and new IIMs. The consortium has always made continuous effort to include all the centrally funded technical institutions in the INDEST-AICTE consortium.

 

Each core member had varied teaching programmes, therefore, core members were grouped in different categories to extend differential access to e-resources based on their requirements and specializations. Initially the category of institutions were basically used to denote the level of usage of e-resources, conceived to be highest amongst institutions in Category I, modest in Category II and lowest amongst the Category III. The rates of subscription, number of simultaneous users and number of resources offered to various categories of institutions were worked out based on their usage/suitability to the respective categories of institutions. With the establishment of IISERs, new IITs, new NITs and new IIMs, the number of categories were increased to V.

 

5.2   AICTE Supported Members 

 

Since March 2003, AICTE provided financial support to the Government/Government aided institutions and technical  universities/ university departments having programmes in engineering and technology. The Consortium provided IEL, ASCE, ASME and/or ASTP to 60 institutions with AICTE support based on the courses they offer. These included 37 engineering and    technology    colleges    and    23    universities    having    engineering departments/faculty. All 60 Institutions offer postgraduate course in engineering and technology.

 

5.3   Self-supported Member 

 

The Consortium also helps the technical institution of the country by offering the e-resources on self-support mode. It invites AICTE approved and UGC- affiliated institutions of India to share the benefits of the Consortium. It offers low subscription rates and attractive terms of agreement with the publishers. Prior to the consortium it was very difficult to afford such high quality e- resources through their own negotiation. The consortium brought a sea change in whole technical education. The small engineering colleges could afford e- resources which ultimately helped their education and research. The self- supported membership started with 18 members in 2003. In 2005 AICTE joined hand with ‘INDEST Consortium and got renamed as ‘INDEST-AICTE Consortium’. AICTE played a pivotal role in enrolling its approved engineering colleges and institutes as members of the Consortium with 6 e-resources (IEL Online, ASCE, ASME, Springer Link, DEL, and ESDU).

 

There was a huge jump in the membership from 2006 onwards. AICTE promoted the provision of e-resources with their existing rule for subscription of print journals for individual institutions. In 2007 over 23 e-resources were negotiated by INDEST-AICTE Consortium for the self-supported institutes. The rates of subscription each year are posted at INDEST-AICTE Consortium web site for subscription renewal. There was a constant increase in the number of institutions after 2007.

 

6.   Services and Activities 

 

The INDEST-AICTE Consortium, not only helps in purchase of electronic resources, there are several other activities that the Consortium performs to achieve optimal utilization of electronic resources. Some of the important services and activities of the Consortium include the followings:

 

6.1   Selection of Electronic Resources 

 

The Expert Group appointed by the Ministry initially selected and evaluated the e-resources being subscribed by the Consortium. The National Advisory Committee constituted by NSC in 2009, regularly met and reviewed the e- resource subscription of all member of the Consortium. Some new electronic resources were added and some other removed based on the demands from the member institutes after due evaluation and approval by the National Steering Committee.

 

6.2   Resource Sharing 

 

As INDEST-AICTE Consortium did not subscribe to all resources for all its members, the document delivery and inter-library loan was, therefore, crucial to the success of the Consortium. The J-Gate Custom Content for Consortium (JCCC), designed especially for the Consortium, provided content-level access to all the electronic journals subscribed by all IITs, IISc and IIMs (14 institutions) by the Consortium or by these institutions individually beginning 2003 up to the year 2011. Besides IITs, IISc and IIMs, the JCCC was made accessible to all other core members of the Consortium including new IITs, IISERs, NITs, SLIET, ISM, NERIST, IIITs and NITIE. The service facilitated generation of automated inter-library loan requests directly by a user to one of the IITs, IISc and IIMs. While all requests for articles subscribed by the INDEST-AICTE Consortium were routed to IIT Delhi (Consortium Headquarters), requests for e-resources subscribed by individual IITs, IISc and IIMs were routed to the respective institute(s).

 

6.3   Promoting Use of e-Resources 

 

The Consortium took several steps to ensure utilization of e-resources in all member institutes to justify the amount of money spent for the e-resources. The Consortium continuously monitored the usage of e-resources. Each year various committees of the Consortium studied the usage statistics before taking any decision. The Consortium maintained a comprehensive Website on its activities, services and resources. A template webpage was developed and distributed to all members institutions. The soft copies of the tutorials were made available through the Consortium Website. The Website also provides links to web based online tutorials available for these resources. The consortium informed the members to utilize the e-resources in case, there was poor usage of any e- resources.

 

6.4   Training of Users 

 

Training programmes were a crucial requirement that the Consortium had to fulfil to facilitate optimum use of subscribed e-resources. Training programmes acted as a bridge to facilitate better communication amongst members of the Consortium and to find answers to common problems. Such programmes made users competent to conduct their own searches effectively. Proper training made library staff competent enabling them to provide quality services. “On the job” training programmes were preferable not only because they benefited large number of users but also solved localized technological problems by the experts available at the time of imparting training.

 

Training to members of the INDEST-AICTE Consortium was a decentralized activity. All IITs, NITs and IIMs conducted training programmes in their respective regions with financial support from the Consortium. Moreover, all member of Consortium were also required to conduct training programmes in their respective institutes for the benefit of their users. The Consortium signed a tripartite agreement with the publishers of e-resources with a local vendor as third party responsible for providing training on resources at campuses of various member institutes. All institutes were requested to take benefit of this arrangement and organize training programmes on various resources within their institutes.

 

The INDEST-AICTE Consortium kept a close liaison with all its members. All technical and administrative contacts of each member institutes are regularly updated on the consortium website. Besides, the Consortium has held Annual Meeting and Workshops since 2003 for the benefit of its members.

 

6.5   NLIST 

 

The Joint Project of INDEST-AICTE Consortium and UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium (2010-2012)

 

The Programme of subscription of e-resources through Centrally Sponsored Scheme of National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NME-ICT) of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) was being jointly executed by the INDEST-AICTE Consortium, IIT Delhi and UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, INFLIBNET Centre (NME-ICT/N-LIST) and provided for:

 

i)    Cross subscription to e-resources subscribed by the two Consortia, i.e. subscription to INDEST-AICTE Consortium resources for universities and UGC-INFONET resources for INDEST-AICTE institutes, and

ii)  Access to selected e-resources to colleges.

 

Under this programme (i) above, INDEST-AICTE Consortium subscribed the e- resources to selected centrally funded technical institutions and universities.

 

7.   License Agreement and Fair Use 

 

All electronic resources available through the Consortium are governed by license agreements. All the terms and conditions for subscribing these resources are spelled out in license agreements that are signed with each publisher by the Consortium on behalf of its member institutes. The Consortium takes utmost care to protect the rights of the users as well as the member institutes before signing an agreement. It is observed that the terms and conditions of  e- resources varies amongst various publishers. Some of the publishers initially were asking the members and the Consortium to sign on a contract, which was not agreeable to the Consortium. In fact, some of e-resources were not considered because of unfavourable license agreement.

 

7.1   License Agreements and Guidelines for Fair Use 

 

The INDEST-AICTE Consortium website provides information on “Licenses and Fair Use” to sensitize users as well as librarians on issues of licenses and agreements that the Consortium signs with the publishers. The website provides details on what authorized users can do and what they cannot do. While most of the publishers allow inter library loan, electronic delivery of articles are not allowed. The consortium website put the sample license agreement of individual publisher in order to educate its users as well as the library administrators.

 

7.2   Print-independent Subscription 

 

Subscription to e-resources were print-independent in most of the cases except Elsevier’s Science Direct, AIP/APS, Taylor and Francis, Springer and Emerald Xtra. In the year 2010, advisory committee devised a usage based model for Elsevier’s Science Direct to rationalize the notional subscription amount among old IITs and IISc Bangalore (8 institutes). Under this agreement the print subscription was replaced by a flexible e-subscription. As per the decision, the subscription amount of  Elsevier  for  all core  category  I  institutes remained constant and the subscription amount was distributed among the participating institutions based on the usage statistics. Each institute could swap title to make the subscriptions amongst the category members as unique. By changing from print to e-resources only, each institute also got appreciable discount.

 

7.3. Governing Laws and Jurisdiction 

 

The consortium made concerted effort that all the contract agreement with publishers was governed by the laws of India. The consortium also made effort to get the following arbitration clause signed by each publisher:

 

“Any dispute or difference whatsoever arising between the parties out of or relating to the construction, meaning, scope, operation or effect of this contract or the validity or the breach thereof shall be settled by arbitration in accordance with the Rules of Arbitration of the Indian Council of Arbitration/or any other Indian organisation and the award made in pursuance thereof shall be binding on the parties.” The place of the arbitration shall be in New Delhi (India) and carried out in the English Language.

 

8.  Usage Analysis 

 

Librarians are using statistics to meet user needs and make every rupee count. Usage statistics are valuable tool to know the use of an e-resource. In the print world, it was difficult to know the usage of the printed journals. Due to the advent of computer network technology and various protocols, now it is easy for a library to know the extent of use of the e-resources and its journals. Since the Consortium invests its budget in the acquisition of electronic resources for the individual institute, it is necessary to know the utility of e-resources. The Consortium is responsible for analyzing and demonstrating their cost- effectiveness. Usage statistics also play an important role in decision making for selection/continuation of e-resources. Most publishers maintain detailed usage statistics compliant to an international standard called “COUNTER” or “SUSHI” for resources offered by them to the Consortium. The usage statistics for member institutes are regularly obtained from the publishers and are made accessible amongst its member on the Consortium Web Site through an interface called e-RAMS (Electronic Resource Access Management System). Institutions with low usage are requested to optimize their usage. Based on the usage statistics, the committee reviews the continuation/discontinuation of e- resources. In last few years consortium has discontinued few resources due to their poor usage among members. The usage statistics were also used in the negotiation of e-resources. The consortium is now planning to harvest the usage statistics from the publisher website directly to the E-RAMS to remove the human intervention of data manipulation if any. The usage statistics of e- resources by member institute has generally shown an increasing trend for most of the e-resources.

 

It is observed that the number of downloads is based on the number of users. The institutions having maximum users have maximum usage of e-resources.

 

The lower usage for many institutions is because of their lower number of users. In case of IIMs, the usage was very high because of the usage of factual databases like Capitaline, Euromonitors, CRIS INFAC, etc. It is also clear that the usage of various core institutes varied widely though these institutes have similar teaching and research programmes. The usage of e-resource for old core members is getting saturated. The usage of bibliographic data, for example, Compendex and INSPEC in i.e. villages were gradually decreasing. As a result the Consortium removed the Compendex and replaced it by Scopus. Due to the poor usage some of the e-resources were discontinued. The Consortium used the usage statistics to decrease the price of some e-resources during negotiations. The usage of e-resources for IISERS and new IITs are increasing rapidly.

 

The Science Direct, IEL Online and Springer link are highly used e-resources in compared to other resources like ASCE and ASME. The usage of Capitaline was highest for the Management e-resources as it is news like database. The e- resources like ABI INFORM Complete, EBSCO and Emerald are highly used in IIMs. The usage for Bibliographic databases were increasing except the Ei village. The usage of specialised bibliographic databases like Mathscinet and Scifinders are increasing over period of time.

 

8.2   Usage of E-Resources for AICTE Supported Institutions 

 

The AICTE institutions have registered an increase in usage of most of the e- resources subscribed for them in terms of number of research articles downloaded since its inception. There is a comparative decrease in usage of ASCE and ASME as compared to IEL Online.

 

8.3   Usage of E-Resources for Self-Supported Institutes 

 

The usage of self-supported institutes for the sample year 2011 were analyzed and presented in Table 2. It is evident from the Table 2 that the maximum number of downloads were for IEL Online followed by Science Direct. But the average number of downloads per institution of Science Direct were more than the IEL Online. Number of downloads are for Springer link, Emerald and ACM Digital Library were 2304, 1085 and 1362 respectively. Other journals were downloaded less than 1000 per year.

Table 2: Usage of E-Resources for Self-Supported Institutes for 2011
E-resources No of Downloads No of journals No of downloads per Institute
Science Direct 2131188 240 10986
IEL Online 6495932 241 10230
Springer link 352443 580 2304
Emerald 29299 150 1085
ACM DL 113021 46 1362
ASCE 89397 30 771
ASME 109711 22 490
ABI Inform Complete 7269 5503 727
Access Engineering 7400 articles  from 150

book

 322
Infotrac Engineering Collection 18017 2285 212
IET Digital Library 1354 24 123

 

9.   Economics of INDEST-AICTE Consortium 

 

The factors that determine economic viability and cost effectiveness of consortia based subscription to e-resources are: its membership, intensity of usage, successful migration from print to electronic version (with discontinuation of print) and cost avoidance. These factors are discussed below in detail.

 

9.1   Annual Increase in Rates of Subscription: Print Journals vs e-Journals 

 

Members of the Consortium have the benefit of price cap for the print as well as the e-journals on the annual increase in the rates of subscription from 3% to 5%. While the usual increase in price of e-resources vary from 10 to 15% for an institute but the increase for the Consortium ranges from 3-5%. Due to Global Economic Crisis, some of the publishers like ASTM and AMS froze their price for the year 2010 and 2012. Members of the Consortium have enjoyed the cap on increase in print journal price from 5% to 6% from various publishers, namely, Elsevier Science, Emerald group Publishing, etc. As per the agreement with the publishers, some publishers refund the extra amount above the specified percentage (5-6% price cap) to the member institutes. Since now most of the institutions were going for the e-subscription, the price cap remained constant.

 

9.2   Average Cost of an Article/Record 

 

The Consortium has analysed the cost of an article /download or record since its inception as an economic parameter. This parameter has been used to take decision in reviewing the continuation/ discontinuation/ negotiation of pricing of existing e-resources. The detailed analysis publish in the Annual Report every year. Using the usage parameters some of the e-resources were discontinued from the Consortium. The average cost of a download varied among different types of institutes. It also varied from types of e-resources (i.e. full text, factual and bibliographic databases). The Category I institutes (IITs and IISc) were getting access to bibliographic database from 2003 onwards. In 2005 the average cost per downloads for INSPEC and COMPENDEX was Rs. 2.71, where it reached Rs.20.90 in 2009. Based on this information, Compendex was replaced by Scopus in 2010. Some of other bibliographic databases are subject specific like MatSciNet and Scifinder Scholar where cost increased from Rs.7.30 to Rs.67.75 in last 5 years. The trend clearly showed that bibliographic databases were less cost effective since full-text databases were preferred over bibliographic databases and were used more extensively in comparison to bibliographic databases. It may be noted that the bibliographic databases never give the full text articles. It only gives the number hits and number of sessions etc. It was also observed that the per download cost was encouraging for the level I institutes due to its higher usage across the e-resources subscribed for them.The average per download cost for Group II (NITs/NERIST/SLIET/ISM) was Rs. 58.79 in 2005 where in 2011 it was Rs.40.87. It showed that there was increase in downloads in the group II institutes. The IISERs started with few resources in 2009 with average cost per download Rs. 344.64. In 2012 it was about Rs.36.52. Since these Institutes were growing in its faculty strengths and research scholars, there was a positive increase in usage of e-resources. The IIMs have the lowest average per download cost. In 2005, it was Rs. 0.59. In 2012, the average per download cost was Rs.3.40.

 

The average per download cost for AICTE supported institutions for 2005 was Rs. 23.93, where in 2012, it was Rs.26.67. The cost per download for various e- resources for self-supported institute was Rs.23.13 to Rs.408 for the year 2011.

 

9.3   Cost Avoidance and Cost Recovery 

 

Cost avoidance on account of lower rates of subscription for the members of the Consortium was calculated in terms of difference between cost paid by the Consortium for member institutions for e-resources and cost payable by individual institutions in case the resources were subscribed by them on their own. Figure 1 depicts that there was a notional saving of Rs. 1018.04 crore considering the fact that the same resources on list price would have cost Rs1045.3 crore as against Rs 27.25 crore paid by the INDEST-AICTE Consortium for 2011 for its core members.

 

The cost recovery is calculated on the presumption that if the electronic resources were not available through the Consortium, articles downloaded from these resources by the member institutes would have been sourced on inter- library loan / document delivery at a cost of US $ 15.00 per article (Average cost of article taken from a study conducted by the American Research Libraries (ARL)). The cost recovery by member Institutes with Rs. 2974.09 crores as cost of articles downloaded by them as against Rs. 27.25 crores spent for subscription to e-resources recording a gain of Rs. 2946.84 crores in terms of cost of research articles downloaded in excess.

 

The cost avoidance in case of AICTE supported institutions was Rs. 59.06 crores where consortium spent 3.47 crores and Rs.56.24 has been recovered as cost of an article downloaded. The cost recovery in case of AICTE supported institutions was Rs. 130.11 crores where consortium spent 3.47 crores and Rs.126.64 was recovered as cost of an article downloaded for the year 2011.

 

The cost recovery in case of Self-supported institutes was Rs. 785.82 crores, where consortium spent Rs.51.01 crores and Rs.734.80 was recovered as cost of an article downloaded for the self-supported Institutes for the year 2011.

 

 

10.   Research Output of Core members

 

Providing access to e-resources to the faculty and researchers was not a purpose in itself but it was only a means to trigger a stronger research and academic culture in institutions recipient of this benefit. Scopus was considered to be a filtering mechanism that indexes qualitative research output based on citations received by it. The source articles appeared in Scopus for all INDEST members in 2003 could serve as a yardstick to measure current research output of these institutes. The data collected for all the core member institution from 1996 to 2011. The whole period was distributed in two parts. One was before 2003 i.e. 1996 to 2002 and another after 2003 i.e. from 2003 to 2011. The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) was calculated for both periods. The comparative figure of CAGR for two periods is presented in the Table 3. It is evident from the Table that except IISc Bangalore and IIT Kanpur, the compounding rate of growth of publication was increasing more than 10% after the establishment of the consortium where it was about less than 10% for other institutes. The number of research publication for IISc in 2011 was 1957 where in 2003 it was 571. Though the number of publications has increased substantially, the CAGR remained  constant.  Other  institutes  were  greater  beneficiaries  of  INDEST-AICTE Consortium. The biggest beneficiaries were NITs. After the establishment   of   INDEST-AICTE   consortium,   the   number   of   research publications increased multifold. The growth rate after 2003 was as high as 59% in case of NIT Calicut and other institutes showed annual compounded growth more than 30%. However, the number of publications cannot be considered as sole criteria for measuring productivity of institutions. Other criteria that may also be considered include: number of faculties, number of research scholars, patents, research projects, research reports, honours and awards, etc.

 

 

11.   Archival Access/Back-up of e-Resources 

 

Unlike in print media, the electronic access is made available for the period of subscription. The electronic access generally gets terminated as soon as the subscription period is over even for the period for which subscription was paid. Most publishers have made offers for archival back-up or access to electronic resources if Consortium decides to discontinue subscription to their resources. The offers made by the publishers fall under one of the following categories:

 

i.   Perpetual Access to Resources for Subscribed Period: Publishers like Elsevier have a policy to provide perpetual access to their subscribed resources for the period of subscription. Some other publishers like Springer, Taylor and Francis, IEEE, Science Citation Index provide the perpetual access.

 

ii.  Back-up CD ROM made available during Subscription Period: Backup on CDROM is being supplied along with its web-based access for resources like ABI/Inform Complete and Proquest’s Science.

 

iii.  Back-up Data (raw) to be supplied on CD ROM on Termination of Subscription: Several publishers, like EI Village and Springer agreed to provide their data on CDROM on discontinuation of service.

 

All publishers have been requested to provide full-text data on CD/DVD in a standardized format on completion of every year with the search and browse capabilities in-built. They are also expected to help us install these CDs/DVDs on our servers so that the data could be used instantaneously as the need arises.

 

12.   Summary and Future Endeavours 

 

The INDEST-AICTE Consortium has been providing the e-resources since 2003 with its collective strength of participating member institutes and has negotiated highly discounted rates of subscription coupled with most favourable terms of license agreements. Consortium was offered very attractive prices from the vendors not only because of combined strength of its members, but also due to the eagerness of publishers to enter the Indian market. The rates offered to the Consortium were lower by 50 per cent to 90 per cent depending upon the category of institution. Moreover, the rates have come down further with increase in the number of AICTE approved engineering colleges. The INDEST- AICTE Consortium, initiated discussion with AICTE to make e-resources more popular for the private engineering college to increasing its negotiating power and to get further discount in the rates. Due to funding issue INDEST has discontinued some of the bibliographic databases for the year 2014. Ministry is planning to constitute a joint negotiation committee for the year 2015 onwards to have a common pricing for all the institutions.

 

Future plans of INDEST-AICTE Consortium include: (i) considering a discovery solution for the INDEST-AICTE Consortium members as well as for the other member institutions of other consortium of India, (ii) establishment of National coalition of all Library Consortia to have a common e-resource policy for India, (iii) frame an archival policy of the e-resources of consortia as well as the individual library of the country, (iv) negotiate the eBooks for the member Institutions through consortia, (v) setting-up mirror servers, local hosting and (vi) to obtain national licenses for important e-resources with access spread out to as many educational institutions as required. Some of the issues like budget management, catalogs – NextGens, catalogs – union, digital initiatives, licensing –   new licensing – renegotiations, interlibrary loan, open access, print collections –cooperative collection development, print collections– shared storage, research projects, training, e-book purchase and other priorities are under constant discussion among the member institutes and other consortia.

 

13.   References 

 

  1. Sahoo, Bibhuti Bhusan. “Need For A National Resource Sharing Network in India: Proposed Model”. in Workshop on Information Resource Management 13th-15th March, 2002 at DRTC, Bangalore
  2. India, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Bureau of Technical Education. Report of the Expert Group appointed by the Department of Secondary Education and Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, 2002.
  3. Perry, Katherine A. Where are library consortia going? : Results of a 2009 survey. Serials – 22(2), July 2009. pp.
  4. Arora, Jagdish & Trivedi, Kruti. INDEST-AICTE Consortium: Present Services and Future Endeavours.DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology, Vol. 30, No. 2, March 2010, pp. 79-91
  5. Arora, Jagdish & Agarwal, Pawan. In Indian National Digital Library in Engineering Sciences and Technology (INDEST) Consortium: Consortia- based subscription to electronic resources for technical education system in India, edited by S.M. Salgar, et al. In Proceedings of CALIBER 2003, Ahmedabad, 2003. pp. 271-90.
  6. Arora, Jagdish. Managing electronic resources through consortia: An overview. In Library and Information Networking: NACLIN 2005, edited by H.K. Kaul&Gayathri Sen. Proceedings of the National Convention on Library and Information Networking held at PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore, 2005, DELNET, New Delhi. pp. 144-71.
  7. INDEST-AICTE Consortium. INDEST Consortium Annual Report, April 2012 to March 2013. INDEST Consortium, New Delhi, 2012.

 

Websites Visited

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3. http://www.nmlermed.in/ (accessed on 13 February 2014)

4. http://delcon.gov.in/index.htm (accessed on 13February 2014)

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