The copyright trends in India, and the level of copyright awareness among academic Librarians

Academic librarians often need to deal with copyright issues at their institutions while handling information resources, and they must have a clear understanding of copyright laws, practices, and its implications. This paper examines the copyright trends in India, and librarian’s familiarity with copyright laws and sources consulted to acquire copyright education. Copyright registrations in India are constantly increasing and copyright infringement cases are gradually decreasing. The study has shown impressive results that the majority of academic librarians (90.70%) are aware of copyright laws and their practice. Further, the study illustrates that the majority of librarians (63.27%) have only a basic level of copyright knowledge, and a marginal number of librarians working at medical college libraries (18.18%), university libraries (14.29%), and engineering college libraries (4.65%) have better knowledge of copyright laws. The results of the study suggest the advanced level copyright education at the library schools and continuous opportunities in the form of conferences, workshops, and seminars, etc. It has become compelling at workplaces that better-equipped librarians in terms of deeper knowledge on copyright-related issues in the digital environment are to be appointed

Scholarly open access journals in Economics: a study of DOAJ

The objective of this study is to report the quantitative analysis of open access (OA) journals in economics discipline covered in DOAJ. This article reports 287 economic journals indexed in DOAJ, which reveals the growth rate of journals in economics subject plunged to 87.11% since 2013, and 78.75% journals do not levy any APCs. Further, the results indicated cent percent peer-review process followed by all journals to ensure the quality and validity of its publications. About 97.96% journals publish their content under creative commons (CC) licensing models to enable access to scholarly content for educational use. Further, the study affirms quantitative analysis of various factors such as archiving policy, platforms, indexing in citation databases, SCImago journal rankings, country and language wise trends etc

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Not AvailableCluster bean is a highly self- pollinated vegetable with a very narrow genetic base. Hence, mutation breeding is a viable option for generating variation. In the present study, effect of mutagen was studied in Pusa Navbahar variety of cluster bean using gamma rays from 50 Gy to 600 Gy. Preliminary evaluation at M1 generation for germination and seedling growth parameters revealed at lower doses of 100 to 200 Gy germination and growth parameters showed improvement over control. Further pollens showed steady increase in sterility with increasing dose and mutated lines showed less survivability compared to control. Thus, 100-200 Gy gamma irradiation was found useful to improve the seed germination and seedling growth parameters in cluster bean. While evaluating M2 generation, total 9 types of mutants (dark green, branched, dwarf, white flower, sterile, long pod, short pod, curve pod, small leaf) were observed and the mutation frequency was high at higher doses, whereas both mutagenic effectiveness and efficiency showed decreasing trend with increasing dose. Highest mutation effectiveness was observed at 50-100 Gy. Mutation efficiency based on pollen sterility was maximum at 50 Gy and based on lethality, it was maximum at 150 Gy.Not Availabl

Antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities of selected Chinese medicinal plants and their relation with antioxidant content

Background: The main aim of this study is to evaluate the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties of forty four traditional Chinese medicinal herbal extracts and to examine these activities in relation to their antioxidant content.\ud \ud Methods: The antioxidant activities were investigated using DPPH radical scavenging method and yeast model. The anti-inflammatory properties of the herbal extracts were evaluated by measuring their ability to inhibit the production of nitric oxide and TNF-alpha in RAW 264.7 macrophages activated by LPS and IFN-gamma, respectively. The cytotoxic effects of the herbal extracts were determined by Alomar Blue assay by measuring cell viability. In order to understand the variation of antioxidant activities of herbal extracts with their antioxidant contents, the total phenolics, total flavonoids and trace metal (Mg, Mn, Cu, Zn, Se and Mo) quantities were estimated and a correlation analysis was carried out.\ud \ud Results: Results of this study show that significant levels of phenolics, flavonoids and trace metal contents were found in Ligustrum lucidum, Paeonia suffuticosa, Salvia miltiorrhiza, Sanguisorba officinalis, Spatholobus suberectus, Tussilago farfara and Uncaria rhyncophylla, which correlated well with their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. Some of the plants displayed high antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities but contained low levels of phenolics and flavonoids. Interestingly, these plants contained significant levels of trace metals (such as Zn, Mg and Se) which are likely to be responsible for their activities.\ud \ud Conclusions: The results indicate that the phenolics, flavonoids and trace metals play an important role in the antioxidant activities of medicinal plants. Many of the plants studied here have been identified as potential sources of new antioxidant compounds