Students worried about renewal of subscriptions

Union minister of state for tourism and culture Mahesh Sharma presents the Dalal Street Investment Journal Award 2015 for the most efficient Maharatna PSU to Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd chairman and managing director Atul Sobti.

Students and research scholars at DU are facing a serious crisis because of delay in the renewal of e-journal subscriptions in the university library.

The university’s library, which provides free access to approximately 45,000 e-journals, spends Rs 5 crore on the subscriptions. And since the renewal amount for this year has not been paid, the access to these e-journals has stopped.

“Purchasing an e-journal individually is not easy, especially for those who are not entitled to fellowships. They are highly dependent on the university to access these articles. JSTOR, a very important e-journal for sociology scholars, remains non-accessible at the university,” said Kasturi Datta, a research scholar in the po-litical science department and an associate professor in a DU college.

“Not just scholars, even teachers need to refer to e-journals. E-journals provide us with the information worldwide. Since at times you don’t get a complete information in a book, you can get it on e-journals.” she added. However, to look into the matter, DU V-C Yog-esh Tyagi constituted a committee which incl-udes librarians from Jamia Milia Islamia and professors from other universities like JNU. The committee would also look into the other long-pending matters related to the university.

However, the students who are suffering the most belong to the sciences who need to refer to e-journals for their research and thesis. Niharika Rai, a Ph.D. student who is writing her thesis, said, “While lack of access to e-journals is hampering work, DU subscribes to only a part of the Taylor & Francis Group journal.”