Open Science and Science, Technology, and Innovation Ecosystem: Exploring from “Policies” to “Practices” Within India

Compared to investments in R&D, the economic effect of innovation has recently been on the decline. This situation is exacerbated by a number of factors, including resource-intensive complex research, research assessment and incentive structure, and inequality in access to scientific knowledge in the research ecosystem. Along with such constraints, growing scientific crises such as reproducibility crises, research fraud, and exploitation of intellectual property rights (IPR) have resulted in a less effective scientific ecosystem and created a barrier between science and society. Through an open, accessible flow of scientific knowledge, open science (OS) seeks to dismantle these barriers and enhances the efficiency and reproducibility of research. In the scientific community, there is an increasing emphasis on measures aimed at making research more “open.” Recognizing the societal implications, UNESCO issued an OS recommendation in 2021 for the nations to support and implement OS. In India, Open Access (OA) and OS initiatives also have garnered a lot of attention. The first substantial OA mandate guideline was released in 2014 as a consequence of collaborative DST-DBT initiative. Recently, India has announced plans to implement an OS framework in the “2020 draft of the 5th Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (STIP).” With the articulation of key policies, including the “Open Access Policy (2014),” the “SHRIMAN Guideline (2022) for sharing research infrastructure,” and the proposed “Biological Data Storage, Sharing and Access Policy (2019)” for easing access to data from publicly funded biological science research, the endeavors of open science have already begun in India. This chapter provides an analysis of the relevance of open science in building a robust, effective, and responsible research ecosystem. It also illustrates existing open science initiatives and policies in India’s STI ecosystem that might provide a base for the country’s implementation of an open science framework.