Resource sharing through consortia: A case of

National Knowledge Resource Consortia

(NKRC)

by

M. Manjunath

Monthly presentation: September 5, 2011

Introduction

Journals are a vital source of information for the scientific

research and development. The number of periodicals at

present is estimated to be 250,000. Of these, 25,000 are

scientific, technical and medical (STM) journals, 15,000

are refereed scholarly periodicals and 12,000 are

refereed scholarly periodicals which are available online.

Journal titles are growing three folds every 15 years and

their cost, 2.5 times every 10 years. Obviously, no single

library can afford to procure all journals even in a single

discipline. With the emergence of IT applications,

Introduction ..

particularly Internet, there has been a major shift

from traditional print journals to electronic journals

(e-journals) in view of many advantages of the latter,

i.e. fast, easy, ‘anywhere-anytime’ accessibility,

sharability, hyperlink facility to related texts, cost

effectiveness and obviation of the storage problem

encountered in the case of print journals. As a result,

the number of e-journals is fast growing and at

present 15,000 are available in S&T areas alone.

DST CONSORTIUM

An exercise by DST in forming the consortium was initiated during2006

DST decided to join the CSIR E-Journals Consortium

Action was initiated and DST Working Group was formed – 25th June2008

DST Representatives joined CSIR Representatives for negotiationsin various meetings with publishers – 25th June and 27th Aug, 2008,NISCAIR, CSIR, New Delhi

DST Working Group had its first meeting on 25th August 2008 at RRI,Bangalore and looked into various modalities, terms and conditionsfor joining the CSIR Consortium.

DST CONSORTIUM …

On DST’s decision to join CSIR Consortium, the Working

Group started working on collecting information on Serials

Subscription details from each DST Institution;

A complete list of journals and databases holdings was compiled

including journals subscribed in 2008;

About 22 major publishers were identified from whom 678 (with

multiple copies – 1468 nos.) titles were subscribed by DST

institutes libraries;

DST CONSORTIUM …

With other publishers, journals subscribed were 277 nos. (with multiple tiles – 386)

The total journals subscribed – 955 with multiple copies – 1422

The total cost for DST Libraries spending for foreign journals was ofthe order of Rs. 18.00 crores;

24 databases were subscribed costing 3.58 crores from 17publishers, notable among them are: ACS journal Archive, CeramicAbstracts Delphion, JSTOR, PROLA, SciFinder, Science Direct,SCOPUS, Scientific American Online, Web of Science, etc.

TABLE 1 : Publishers-wise Journals details

Name of publisher No of journals subscribed /no of copies No of Institutions Approximate paid in Rs

American Chemical Society 28;68 9 6525018

Americna Geophysics Union 15;26 5 2398970

AIP/APS 24;94 12 12909693

American Soc for Microbiology 16;19 7 1219528

Annual Reviews Inc. 12;15 7 153782

Black Well Publishers 62;78 14 8740480

Cambridge University Press 12;13 11 580938

Elsevier 185;232 16 32455368

I O P 46;83 11 9831830

John Wiley 33;37 13 6495928

Lipincot 18;18 2 1571237

Nature Publishing 27;61 16 6436379

Optical Society of America 5;12 4 1300027

Oxford University Press 41;46 9 2064875

Royal Society Chemistry 15;24 6 2480559

Sage Publishers 7;8 6 440525

Springer 71;96 19 15788692

Taylor and Francis 28;39 18 16133081

Univ of Chicago Press 6;10 7 495640

World Scientific 9;13 6 976185

Databases 24;44 14 35656213

Other Publishers 277;386 19 14769179

Table 2 : Major Databases SubscribedSl.

No.Name of Journal Publisher

No. of

InstitutesSubscribed

1 ACS Journal Archives ACS 4

2 PROLA AIP 4

3 SciFinder ScholarChemical Abstracts

Services2

4 Scientific American Archive Online EBSCO 2

5Science Direct - Materials Sci Jou

CollectionsElesevier 2

6 Science Direct Elsevier 3

7Science Direct - Earth & Planetary Sci

CollectionElsevier 2

8 SCOPUS Elsevier 2

9 Web of Science ISI 5

10 JSTOR-Gen Science Collection JSTOR 3

11 Ceramic Abstracts ProQuest 3

12 Delphion (Patent Database) 2

Table 3: Institutional Subscription

Name of Institution

No of Journals

subscribed

No of databases

subscribed

Total amont paid in

rupees

Ranking

Ascending Order

Indian Assocation for Cultivatin Science 141 3 39481866 1

Bose Institute 270 6 29326688 2

JNCASR Library 109 3 18022111 3

S N Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences 124 3 15077572 4

Raman Research Institute 139 5 12032000 5

Agharkar Research Institute 44 3 8324002 6

ARCI 20 3 7495878 7

Indian Institute of Astrophysics 137 7 7179896 8Sree Chitra Tirunal Inst for Medical Sci &Tech. 130

nil

5589277 9

Indian Institute of Geomagnetism 64 2 4550953 10

Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleobotany 77 nil 4488120 11

Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology 75 nil 4344796 12

ARIES 8 nil 3814703 13

D S T Library 61 nil 2911875 14

Techn Inf Forecasting & Assessment (Tifac) 38 961613 15

Indian National Science Academy 42 nil 918835 16

Centre for Liquid Crystal Research 11 nil 909207 17

Indian Science Congress Assocation 25 nil 414694 18

National Academy of Science, India 8 nil 201686 19

Vigyan Prasar 4 nil 21138 20

Table 4:

Number of Journals Subscribed by DST Institutes

1 – 20 4 ARIES, CLCR, NASI, Vigyan Prasar,

21-50 5 ARCI, ARI, INSA ISCA, TIFAC

51-100 4 BSIP, DST, IIGM, WIHG

101-150 6 IACS, IIAP, JNCASR RRI,

SCTIMST, SNBNCBS

150-300 1 BI

Table 5: No. of Publishers with whom negotiations are being done Publisher Product CSIR DST

Wiley-Blackwell Print + Online To be negotiated To be negotiated

Springer " negotiated "

AIP Online only negotiated "

ASCE Online only negotiated same pricing

ASME Online only negotiated same pricing

ACS Print + Online negotiated To be negotiated

CUP Print + Online negotiated same pricing

OUP Print + Online negotiated same pricing

RSC Print + Online negotiated To be negotiated

Taylor & Francis Print + Online negotiated To be negotiated

Emereald Print + Online negotiated To be negotiated

IEEE Online only negotiated To be negotiated

ACM Online only negotiated same pricing

Nature Online only negotiated To be negotiated

Elsevier Print + Online negotiated To be negotiated

Web of Science Online only negotiated same pricing

Derwent Innovation Index Online only negotiated same pricing

Delphion Online only negotiated same pricing

ASTM Standards _ per site same pricing

Indian Standards _ per site same pricing

National Knowledge Resource Consortium:

Financial resource is a great cause of concern in these days of shrinking budget, cost escalation and information explosion for any given library. Consortia are a boon to librarians in the digital environment enhancing the power of online access to a variety of information resources. CSIR e-journal consortium started in the year 2002.

DST funded autonomous organizations joined this consortia in April 2009. This CSIR-DST consortium was renamed as "National Knowledge Resource Consortium (NKRC)". Since RRI is a DST funded autonomous organization, RRI library has become a major player in this consortium activity.

National Knowledge Resource Consortium…

Participants - 39 CSIR labs and 27 DST funded institutes

Publishers – products of 17 publishers are shared amongthe consortium participants.

Online access to 4000 journals are available since 1997.

Databases like SciFinder Scholar and Web of

Science are made accessible through this consortium.

NKRC …

Legal structure

Government-supported

Primary functions

Electronic content licensing

Electronic content loading/presentation

Interlibrary loan/document delivery

Training

Union lists/shared online catalogs

Number and type of member libraries: 56 Public, 6 Academies

CSIR Labs

1. Biological Sciences

• Centre For Biochemical Technology (CBT), Delhi • Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad• Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI), Lucknow• Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), Mysore • Central Institute of Medicinal & Aromatic Plants (CIMAP), Lucknow• Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (IICB), Calcutta • Institute of Microbial Technology (IMT), Chandigarh • Industrial Toxicology Research Centre (ITRC), Lucknow - 226001 • National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI), Lucknow -226001 • Regional Research Laboratory (RRL,JM), Jammu Tawi – 180001 • Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technolonogy (IHBT), Palampur

CSIR Labs ..

2. Chemical Sciences • Central Electrochemical Research (CECRI), Karaikudi• Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI), Madras • Central Salt & Marine Chemicals Research Institute(CSMCRI),

Bhavnagar • Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), Hyderabad • Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), Dehradun• National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune• Regional Research Laboratory (RRL,JOR), P.O. Jorhat• National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune• Regional Research Laboratory (RRL,JOR), P.O. Jorhat

CSIR Labs …

3. Engineering Sciences

• Central Mining Research Institute (CMRI), Dhanbad

• Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), New Delhi

• National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), Bangalore

• National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur

• National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML), Jamshedpur

• Regional Research Laboratory (RRL,BHO), Bhopal

• Regional Research Laboratory (RRL,BHU), Bhubaneshwar

• Regional Research Laboratory (RRL,TVM), Triuvananthapuram

• Structural Engineering Research Centre (SERC-G), Ghaziabad

• Structural Engineering Research Centre (SERC-C), Madras

• Central Building Research Institute (CBRI), Roorkee

• Central Fuel Research Institute (CFRI), Dhanbad

• Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute (CGCRI), Calcutta

• Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI), Durgapur

CSIR Labs …

4. Information Sciences

• National Institute of Science Communication & Information Resources (NISCAIR), New Delhi

• National Institute of Science Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS)

5. Physical Sciences

• Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute (CEERI) Pilani

• Central Scientific Instruments Organisation (CSIO), Chandigarh

• National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI), Hyderabad

• National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Goa

• National Physical Laboratory (NPL), New Delhi

DST Labs

Agharkar Research Institute, Pune

Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational-Sciences (ARIES), Nainital

Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, Lucknow

Bose Institute, Kolkata

Centre for Liquid Crystal Research, Jalahalli, Bangalore

Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata

Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore

Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, Mumbai

Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune

International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials, Hyderabad

The Institute of Advanced Study in Science & Technology, Assam

Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore

DST Labs …

National Accreditation Board for Testing & Calibration Laboratories, New Delhi

Raman Research Institute, Bangalore

S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata

Sreechitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Technology, Thiruvananthapuram

Technology Information, Forecasting & Assessment Council (TIFAC), New Delhi

Vigyan Prasar, New Delhi

Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun

Professional Bodies

Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore

Indian National Academy of Engineering, New Delhi

The National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad

The Indian Science Congress Association, Kolkata

Accessible resources at RRI

AAAS

American Chemical Society

American Institute of Physics

Annual Reviews

Emerald

IEEE

Indian journals.com

Institute of Physics

Nature Publishing Group

Accessible resources at RRI

Optical Society of America

Oxford University Press

Royal Society of Chemistry

Sci-Finder

Springer

Taylor and Francis

Web of Science & DII

Wiley-Blackwell

World Scientific Publishing

NKRC advantages

Have access to more number of journals

NISCAIR makes payment directly to the publisher or vendor on behalf of all participating libraries.

Negotiations and bargaining will be easier.

License and agreements will be handled by NISCAIR.

Will have person to person contact with librarians of all the participating libraries during coordinators / nodal officers meet and through e-mails and thus enhances resource sharing among libraries.

NKRC disadvantages

Payments are not made in time and have online access problems for participating libraries.

All available resources may not be useful to all the participating libraries due to heterogeneous group.

Librarian’s of participating libraries may have

difficulties in attending the meetings.

Usage statistics all the publishers are not still available on the NKRC site.

Conclusion

RRI library was subscribing to around 170 journals and 5

databases (PROLA; ACS archives etc.)

RRI is a member of FORSA consortia and had access to

journals of Springer; Taylor & Francis; UCP IOP Science

etc.

We were not able to provide access to many of the

journals which were requested by our users.

NKRC came into picture and we were able to get access

to around 4000 journals from April 2009 onwards through

this consortia.

Conclusion…

It has been observed that out of 4000 journals

available through NKRC 500 journals are useful to

RRI Library.

The usefulness is not decided by usage statistics of

the journal but on the basis of subject.

It is too early to say anything on the benefits of

NKRC as it barely three years old.

NKRC E-journals accessible at RRI

NKRC Homepage