Search

Indian science funding agencies have taken several policy measures to expedite access to scholarly knowledge. The proposed "one nation, one subscription" plan is one such initiative. The main aim of this initiative is to facilitate the availability and accessibility of research articles for all higher educational institutions (HEI). This paper reflects upon the suitability and aptness of this suggested policy through an analysis of Open Access (OA) publication trends. Using Scopus and other web sources, this article tracks how the OA publishing scenario (STEM fields) is changing in India and other top publishing countries. Based on the findings, we argue that a national subscription contract is limiting its scope by considering only the option of subscription and disregarding OA publishing options. However, subscription and open access publishing deals are short-term gains and will ultimately increase the dependency on commercial publishers. In the long term, encouraging research that helps solve local context-specific problems can only be addressed by strengthening the publishing infrastructure by national research funding agencies or respective higher educational institutions through publishing and promoting open access content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual messaging is a cornerstone of campaign strategies of political parties and candidates that can complement and amplify the effects of the written/spoken word. Through a thematic analysis of the Facebook ads of the two main political parties during the 2021 West Bengal assembly elections in India, this paper shows the interplay of identity, ideology, and gender in the visual communication strategies of political parties on Facebook as they tried to mobilize voters in an intensely polarized context. Both the incumbent and the opposition parties framed issues in their visual campaigns that were culturally situated; these issues centered around identity and ideology while simultaneously emphasizing strong leadership with gendered rhetoric. Our findings contribute to the advancement of theoretical understanding of political personalization, highlighting the intricate interplay between gender, ideological inclinations, and cultural identity, all of which profoundly influence the personalization process in the context of an intensely polarized election campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of 40,000 tweets that trended after the Tarun Tejpal acquittal in India showed that the nature of the debate around issues of molestation and rape exhibited attributes of deliberation and demonstrated that Twitter in India, in certain cases, has strong potential to emerge as a space for deliberative feminist activism. Discussions gave impetus to advocacy around sexual molestation. While the word "victim" was used in more instances rather than the human rights–based term "survivor," Twitter debates were supportive toward survivors of assault. There was minimum trolling and patriarchy was called out as was a legal system that sided with the influential man of power. Although city-bred English-speaking voices dominated, conversations were intersectional in nature acknowledging how the horror of physical assault was perceived by different women belonging to disparate socio-economic strata and how legal systems exacerbated gender related crimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to analyse the research domains, gender gap, and labour market perspectives of doctoral research in LIS in India. Sodhganga, a digital repository of Indian thesis and dissertations, was used for extracting doctoral thesis information and Jarvelin & Vakkari classification system was used for categorising the doctoral research topics. A total of 808 doctoral dissertations awarded between 2016 and 2020 were analysed using IBM SPSS and Tableau. The study's findings revealed that the growth of doctoral research in LIS is on rising trends with 150 PhD awarded in LIS every year. Information seeking (33.8%), library and information service activities (30.7%), and scientific & professional communication (16.5%) were found to be the preferred research themes among doctoral students during the study period. Furthermore, it is revealed that there is a gender gap in the number of PhDs conferred, with more men than women receiving these degrees. LIS professionals with a doctorate have the highest employment rate, at 96.2%, and most are in government jobs. Besides, only 40 percent of doctoral candidates reported receiving an incentive after the doctoral degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore the role of screenwriters and dialogue writers within the more extensive filmmaking process of New Bollywood. Drawing on ethnographic data, I foreground the creative tools, research and negotiations that prompt screenwriters to conceptualise and pitch character arcs that feature disability while positioning the writer as central to diversify film genres. By building on scholarship on production cultures, scripting and disability studies, I draw upon factors that navigate the writer's gaze from non-hereditary filmmaking networks to foreground disabilities in scripts and character arcs in efforts to strategise that they do not classify as reductive pathologisations and supercripping cultures. This article pays close attention to the conditions, identity politics, biases and situated vulnerabilities of writers that shape the assemblages of scripting disability rhetorics. The data from semi-structured interviews, with an explicit focus on three films and their script ideation and production pedagogies, illustrate these interlinkages and insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]