Subbiah Arunachalam

= Indian Open Access and Global Villages advocate

Bio

"Currently, I am active in two areas, in both of which my flair for information work comes in handy. For more than ten years I have been a full-time volunteer at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), in Chennai. There I am part of the Information Village Research Project, which uses new ICTs to empower rural communities, and an adviser to the National Virtual Academy.

I also continue to look at how we can improve access to information in developing countries, and how the literature can be used to quantify and assess science. So part of my work addresses the needs of scientists, and the other part — ICT-enabled development — addresses the needs of the poor.

As part of the latter work I am on the Executive Committee of the Global Knowledge Partnership, and on the International Advisory Board of The International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD). I am also one of the three Secretaries of Mission 2007, which aims to bring the knowledge revolution to all 637,000 villages in India, and a member of the Working Group on Libraries set up by the National Knowledge Commission." (http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/05/why-india-needs-open-access.html)