Open Access India recently released a statement to promote openness in science and research communities. CIS contributed to the text and introduced it to the participants of OpenCon 2018, Delhi.
Published by Open Access India on February 14, 2018. Read the original post here.

This declaration was drafted by a group comprising of researchers and professionals working for opening up access to research outputs for public good in India. The declaration is aimed at scientific communities, scholarly societies, publishers, funders, universities and research institutions to promote openness in science and research communications.
Preamble
The South Asian region, home to 24% of the world’s population faces major challenges such as hunger, poverty and inequality. These challenges become the collective responsibility of scholars and experts in research universities across the country. Consequently, it becomes imperative that  research institutes share scientific research outputs and accelerate  scientific research. The Open Access movement which aims for making all  ‘publicly funded research outcomes publicly available for the public good’ is gaining momentum.
“Open means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share for any purpose(subject, at most, to requirements that preserve provenance and openness)” –Open Definition.
As per the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), ‘Open Access’ (to scholarly literature) is “free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself”.
Since the launch of the BOAI on 14th Feb. 2002, efforts are being made by various scholarly societies, academic communities and governments to make scholarly content Open. However, due to various reasons, the full potential of Open Access is not realised by the producers (scholars), publishers and readers (scholars and society at large) of this knowledge and the world is still disconnected in terms of sharing the scholarly content openly.
As per the Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR), India ranks 9th in the year 2016 producing about 13 lakhs articles. However, 82% of them are not Open Access and the Institutional Repositories in India are sparsely populated in spite of having Open Access mandates in place. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists only 200 out of the 20,000+ journals being published from India.
The historical BOAI is now 16 years old, but still there is a need for all of us to be educated and empowered to realize the power of Open Access to scholarly content and harness it for public good in India. With burgeoning commercial scholarly publications and increasing diversity in terms of availability of & accessibility to the information, we need to create a necessary framework for making Open Access the default by 2025 in India.
To ensure the wide availability and encourage the use of of research data and information for the purpose of addressing multifaceted  challenges, Open Access to publicly funded research and scholarly outputs are to be made available under Open Licenses (e.g. Creative Commons) while duly acknowledging  the intellectual property (work/rights of the creators/producers/authors).
Declaration
We, the contributors and signatories of this declaration, members of the Open Access India,  Open Access communities of practice in India and the attendees of the OpenCon 2018 New Delhi held on 3rd Feb., 2018 at Acharya Narendra Dev College, Kalkaji, New Delhi (University of Delhi) agree to issue this declaration:

1. We advocate for the practice of Open Science (sharing  research methods and results openly which will avoid “reinventing the wheel”) and adoption of open technologies for the development of models for sharing science and scholarship (Open Scholarship) to accelerate the progress of research and to address the real societal challenges
2. We will strive to publish our interim research outputs as preprints or postprints (e.g. Institutional Repositories) and encourage our peers and supervisors to do the same to make our research open and actionable in a timely manner.
3. We will practice and encourage researchers and scientists to implement openness in peer-reviewing and other editorial services, influence the scholarly societies to flip their journals into Open Access and will contribute for the development of whitelist of Open Access journals in India adhering to the “Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing”.
4. We will garner support of the relevant stakeholders (scholars, journal editorial teams, university libraries, research funders, authorities’ in-charge of dissemination of scholarship in higher education) for spearheading the Open Access movement.
5. We will take forward the concept of Open Access to further bring all the publicly funded research outputs (not limited to journal literature alone) to be freely available under open licenses to the public to use, reuse and share in any media in open formats.
6. We will impress upon policy makers to adopt an open evaluation system for research and an institutional reward system for practicing openness in science ,scientific communications and academic research across disciplines including Humanities and Social Sciences
7. We will support and work for an alternate reward system in recognition and promotion not in terms of the ‘Impact Factor’ of the journals, but the ‘Impact’ of the articles/scholarship in science and the society and impress upon all the scientists/scholars, research funders, research institutes, universities, academies and scholarly societies to sign the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
8. We strongly agree with the Joint COAR-UNESCO Statement on Open Access ,  Jussieu Call and Dakar Declaration. And will also follow the international initiative Open Access 2020, to develop roadmaps to support sustainable Open Access scholarly communication models which are free of charge for the authors and free of charge availability to the readers.
9. While learning from South South cooperation on Open Access,  will work for developing a framework for Open Access in India and South Asia: National Policies for Open Access and country-specific action plans will be formulated aimed at making Open Access as the default in India and South Asia, by 2025.
10. For creating more awareness on Open Access, infrastructure, capacity building, funding and policy mechanisms, as well as incentivizing for the Open Access, we come forward to share success stories, studies and discussions during the Open Access Week.

Adopted on 14th February 2018
Signatories (along with their affiliation):
Anasua Mukherjee, BRICSLICSAnubha Sinha, CIS IndiaAnup Kumar Das, Open Access India; CSSP, JNUArul George Scaria, NLU DelhiBarnali Roy Choudhury, Open Access IndiaBhakti R Gole, Open Access IndiaGirija Goyal, ReFigure.orgJaved Azmi, Jamia HamdardKavya Manohar, Open Access IndiaNeha SharmaNirmala Menon IIT IndoreSailesh Patnaik, Access to Knowledge, CISSavithri Singh, Creative Commons IndiaSridhar Gutam, Open Access IndiaSubhashish Panigrahi, Internet Society, O FoundationVijay Bhasker Lode, Open Access IndiaVirendra Kamalvanshi, Banaras Hindu UniversityTanveer Hasan A K, Access to Knowledge,  BangaloreWaseem A Malla
Ahsan Ullah, BangladeshAnila Sulochana, Central University of Tamil NaduAnoh Kouao Antoine, Ecole Supérieure Africaine des TIC, Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)Antonio Solís Lima,MéxicoAtarino Helieisar, FSM Supreme Court Law Library, Federated States of MicronesiaBidyarthi Dutta, Vidyasagar UniversityBinoy Mathew, INELIBoye Komla Dogbe, Ministère De La Communication, De La Culture, TogoSrikanth Reddy, CBITCajetan Onyeneke, Imo State University, NigeriaChantal Moukoko Kamole, Universitty of Douala, CamerounD Puthira Prathap, Extension Education SocietyDaniel Bossikponnon, Ministère du plan et du Développement, BéninDare Adeleke, the Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, NigeriaDilip Man Sthapit, TU Central Library/LIMISEC, NepalEmmy Medard Muhumuza, Busitema University Library, UgandaFabian Yelsang, Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Consultancy Services, GhanaFayaz Loan, University of KashmirGJP Dixit, Central Library, Central University of KarnatakaGurpreet Singh Sohal, GGDSD CollegeHarinder Pal Singh Kalra, Punjabi UniversityHue Bui, Thainguyen University of Sciences, VietnamJacinto Dávila, Universidad de Los Andes, VenezuelaJaishankar K, International Journal of Cyber CriminologyJancy Gupta, National Dairy Research InstituteJK VijayakumarJonathan Tennant, Open Science MOOC, GermanyJulián Vaquerizo-Madrid, Unidad de Neurología Clínica Evolutiva, SpainKamal Hossain, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), BangladeshKasongo Ilunga Felix, Democratic Republic of CongoKavita ChaddhaKojo Ahiakpa, Research Desk Consulting Ltd., GhanaKrishna Chaitanya, Velaga, the Wikipedia LibraryKumaresan Chidambaranathan, New ZealandKunwar Singh, Banaras Hindu UniversityLuis Saravia, PERUMahendra Sahu, Gandhi Institution of Engineering & Technology,GunupurMaidhili S., Meenakshi College for WomenManika Lamba, University of DelhiMd. Nasir Uddin, BRAC University, BangladeshMd. Nazim Uddin, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, BangladeshMd. Nurul Islam, International Islamic University Chittagong, BangladeshMd. Shahajada Masud Anowarul Haque, BRAC University, BangladeshMir Sakhawat Hossain, Kabi Nazrul Government College, BangladeshMunusamy Natarajan, CSIR-NISCAIRMurtoza Kh Ali, BangladeshSubash Pillai, ICAR-Indian Institute of Farming Systems ResearchNasar Ahmed Shah, Aligarh Muslim UniversityNimesh Oza, Sardar Patel UniversityNiraj Chaudhary, United StatesPoonam BhartiPrerna Singh, Central University of JammuRabia Bashir, Law and Parliamentary Affairs, PakistanRajendran Murugan, Department of Education, University of DelhiRama Kant Shukla, Delhi Technological UniversityRaman Nair R, Centre for Informatics Research and DevelopmentRebat Kumar Dhakal, KUSOED Integrity Alliance, NepalRevocatus Kuluchumila, AMUCTA, TanzaniaM. Humayun Kabir, Tutul, National Health Library & Documentation Centre, BangladeshSabuj Kumar, Chaudhuri, University of CalcuttaSandipan BanerjeeSatwinder BangarShahana Jahan, BangladeshShamnad Basheer, SpicyIPShivendra SinghShreyashi Ray, NLU, DelhiSivakrishna SivakotiSoumen Kayal, Maharaja Manindra chandra CollegeSrinivasarao Muppidi, Sanketika Vidya Parishad Engineering CollegeStephanie Gross, MSLIS from Pratt Institute, USASujata Tetali, MACS-Agharkar Research InstituteSurjodeb Lulu Hono BasuSusmita Das, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council, BangladeshSusmita Chakraborty, University of CalcuttaThilagavathi, Thillai Natarajan, Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for WomenUmesh KumarUmme Habiba, Noakhali Science and Technology University, BangladeshVinita, Jain, M D College of Arts, Science and CommerceVirginia Inés Simón, Red Iberoamericana de Expertos sobre la Convención de los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad, ArgentinaVrushali Dandawate, AISSMS College of Engineering/DOAJWaqar Khan, Dhaka Shishu Hospital, BangladeshWilbert Zvakafa, Chinhoyi University of Technology, ZimbabweYasser Ahmed, South Valley University, EgyptYohann Thomas, Wikimedia IndiaZakir Hossain, International Association of School Librarianship, International Schools Region, SwitzerlandDahmane Madjid, CERIST, AlgeriaNagarjuna G, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFRSulyman Sodeeq Abdulakeem, Federal Polytechnic Offa, NigeriaLeena Shah, DOAJHamady Issaga Sy, SénégalSanket Oswal, Wikimedia IndiaChitralekha, University of DelhiChris Zielinski, University of Winchester, United KingdomMourya Biswas, Prateek Media

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/delhi-declaration-on-open-access