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This paper evaluates the different digital libraries (DLs) in India developed in the past two decades. These DLs help advance scholarship and facilitate the reading habits of their users. Many of these DLs have a rich collection of vernacular literature depicting India’s diverse cultural heritages and traditions. DLs in India also help in outreaching global researchers and knowledge seekers. Many diaspora communities use these DLs frequently and other stakeholders such as the international scholars interested in Indic civilization. This paper finally suggests a way forward to make operational DL initiatives discoverable to humans and machines with the adaptation of FAIR principles that make e-resources findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable for their discovery beyond respective DL portals.

This study used a desk survey of DL initiatives in India. Their salient features are obtained from their respective Web portals and social media profiles.

This study identified twelve operational DL initiatives in India. Out of them, the newest five DL initiatives are described in this paper.

This study reflects original findings on the newest five DL initiatives of India. These findings were not earlier reported in a journal article.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the present situation in the development of indigenous digital libraries in India. The study aims to evaluate different retrieval features of Indian digital libraries, especially those provide access to multilingual and multimedia documents.

For this study, eight digital libraries originated in India, which are available in 24×7 timeframe and accessible worldwide through the internet, have been identified and selected. The retrieval features and other information on these digital libraries have been collected mostly from their respective websites and from other published literature, annual reports, etc.

The paper finds that Indian digital libraries provide universal access to informative and culturally rich digital content related to South Asian region. The digitisation efforts in Indian institutions make these digital libraries operational.

The institutional repositories and open access archives of Indian institutions that give access to the current research literature are not included in this study, because their retrieval features are mostly similar to each other as they use either DSpace or GNU EPrints open source software.

Indigenous digital libraries in India provide universal access to information and knowledge related to culture and heritage of people of South Asian counties. This study gives an insight on how diverse contents are integrated and disseminated to the end‐users in a user‐friendly manner. This study also indicates research initiatives on different aspects of multilingual contents in this region.

No such evaluation on Indian digital libraries has been done from the perspective of information retrieval features. This study will generate new knowledge in area of indigenous digital libraries in a developing country like India. This study is also an attempt to popularise Indian indigenous digital libraries among the world community.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the evolution of open educational resources OER initiatives in India – how OER movement emerges from the open access movement in the backdrop of an emerging knowledge‐based economy. This paper also illustrates how OER help in democratizing lifelong learning spaces that eventually help in skills development.

This paper primarily uses baseline surveys and recommendations of different working groups of Indian National Knowledge Commission. Relevant policy instruments of the Ministry of Human Resources Development, UNESCO, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions and other national and international bodies are also critically examined to understand India's stand on OER in comparison with other promising developing countries. This paper analyses impact of OER on Indian systems of education, ranging from lifelong learning, technical and vocational education and training to higher education systems. This paper also illustrates various models of innovations which are shaping up multi‐dimensional lifelong learning pathways to cater to career aspirations of young Indians.

This paper finds out that Indian OER initiatives make use of textual platforms as well as audio‐visual platforms embracing YouTube, Metacafe and other web‐based streaming video channels. This paper also illustrates the collaboration patterns in OER initiatives in order to attain sustainability, optimum usage and integration with formal curriculum of skills development programmes.

Although this paper identifies external as well as internal factors that are shaping up OER movement in this emerging knowledge economy, this paper mainly focuses on country‐level initiatives. The challenges faced at the institutional level as well as users level can be traced through advanced research studies.

This paper suggests some sustainable models for OER deployment, lessons learned and challenges faced by practitioners and users communities.

OER development has become a social movement. Proper deployment and utilization of OER resources will lead to social empowerment of young adults. This paper helps in understanding how Indian society embraces OER in order to attain social justice and empowerment through sustainable educational development.

This paper is a unique attempt to produce a state‐of‐the‐art report on the emergence of the OER movement in a transitional emerging economy.

With a sustainable knowledge economy in the backdrop, India has seen an exponential growth of academic and sponsored research programmes across all major disciplines. There has been an exponential proliferation of Indian research journals to disseminate results of research carried out in India, by Indian researchers, from collaborative global research programmes. This paper aims to briefly describe a new initiative, the Indian Citation Index (ICI), which is a web‐based citation database of India‐based or India‐focused research journals.

This paper gives a glimpse of the new ICI initiative. It briefly describes its promises and coverage. This paper is based on data available in the ICI portal and its information brochure.

The ICI has made an attempt to create a web‐based citation database covering a whole range of disciplines, i.e. sciences, technologies, social sciences and humanities. This paper also identifies similar initiatives in the past, which failed due to the absence of web technologies and web‐based business models.

This paper informs the availability of a web‐based ICI to a worldwide audience. Many in‐depth studies can now be undertaken to measure productivity of Indian research journals vis‐à‐vis Indian researchers using datasets of this citation database. Some studies can also be made to measure popularity of Indian journals amongst foreign researchers and foreign research collaborators.

If this initiative is successful, other countries will be inspired to have their own country‐specific citation database to measure performance of home‐grown research periodicals.

This is an informative news article to keep abreast of latest development of a country‐specific citation database.

This paper examines the technical efficiency (TE) of Indian commercial banks during 1998–2015.

This study uses mathematical programming-based data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology to measure technical efficiency of Indian banks. Further, Simar and Wilson (2007) double bootstrap procedure is applied to examine the determinants of efficiency of the Indian banks, by examining the effects of various bank specific and other contextual variables.

The results indicate substantial upward bias in the conventional efficiency estimates of the Indian commercial banks. Needless to note, such upward bias is consistent with the theoretical postulates. The bootstrapped regression results show that increasing capital adequacy ratio is positively associated with bank efficiency. The popular belief that non-performing assets have a dampening effect on performance of banks is validated. Among others, ownership category is observed to be an important determining factor of bank efficiency. Specifically, state-owned banks (SOBs) are relatively lagging behind the foreign banks. Moreover, larger banks are observed to have a significantly higher level of efficiency, therefore, recent official policy initiatives toward consolidation of SOBs are validated.

As this study uses Simar and Wilson (2007) bootstrap approach, it enables the authors to have an estimate of the extent of bias in the traditional DEA TE scores. It also helps us drawing consistent inferences by rectifying the problem of serial correlation in the conventional second stage regression in this regard.

The purpose of this paper is to analytically examine the viability of using blockchain technology (BT) in a public distribution system (PDS) supply chain to overcome issues of shrinkage, misplacement and ghost demand.

The authors use a standard news vendor model with two objectives, the first of which includes a reduction of the total cost of stock, while the second includes minimization of the negative impact of human suffering due to the nonavailability of subsidized food supplies to the needy people.

The authors applied the model to a real-life case to draw meaningful insights. The authors also analyzed the cost/benefit tradeoff of adopting BT in a PDS supply chain. The results show that the adoption of BT in a charitable supply chain can reduce pilferage and ghost demand significantly.

The paper is positioned for utilizing inventory visibility via consistent and tamper-resistant data stream flow capability of BT to enhance the overall efficiency of PDS. Notably, Indian PDS faces three major challenges in terms of its supply chain efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to capture the dynamic variations in sales of a product based upon the dynamic estimation of the time series data and propose a model that imitates the price discounting and promotion strategy for a product category in a retail organization.

Time series data relating to sales has been used to model the sales estimates using moving average and proportional and derivative control; thereafter a sales forecast is generated to estimate the sales of a particular product category. This provides valuable inputs for taking lot sizing decisions regarding procurement of the products and selection of suppliers. A hybrid model has been proposed and explained with a hypothetical case, which considerably impacts the sales promotion and intelligent pricing decisions.

A conceptual framework is developed for modeling the dynamic price discounting strategy in retail using fuzzy logic. The model imitates sales promotion and price discounting strategy. This has helped minimize the inventory cost thereby keeping the profitability of the retail organization intact.

There is no appropriate empirical data to verify the models. In light of the research approach (modeling based upon historical time series data of a particular product category) that was undertaken, there is a possibility that the research results may be valid for the product category that was selected. Therefore, the researchers are advised to test the proposed propositions further for other product categories.

The study provides valuable insight on how to use the real-time sales data for designing a dynamic automated model for product sales promotion and price discounting strategy using fuzzy logic for a retail organization.