The PSA said that in line with trying to make scientific knowledge more accessible, the PM-STIAC has taken up the matter of charges levied on researchers for getting their work published in international journals.Principal Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister, Professor K Vijay Raghavan on Wednesday said that the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) has launched a Natural Language Translation project that endeavours to translate science into regional languages to “make science more accessible to everyone”.
“Science is the fulcrum of society and the economy, but for it to be able to transform it, it needs to be positioned correctly. In India the nature of science and scientific literature is not inclusive… In engineering colleges in the country, even those who may not be proficient in English need to study the subject in English. Our endeavour is the translation of scientific literature, textbooks, research articles in all regional languages so it is accessible to everyone. The process to do this is already on and the HRD minister is assisting us. We have also been talking to as many state governments as possible,” he said.
Admitting that the allocation of funding was in favour of elite research and premier institutes as opposed to state colleges, the PSA said this was an important issue the Council was looking into. “The fact is that 95 per cent students in our country go to state colleges. So we need to look into this. We are also in the process of creating Research Clusters. For example, one cluster may contain academic institutes in the NCR including DU, Delhi IIT, JNU etc — which is to have seamless exchange of information, knowledge and technology and should also allow students to move from one institute to another.”
The PSA said that in line with trying to make scientific knowledge more accessible, the PM-STIAC has taken up the matter of charges levied on researchers for getting their work published in international journals.
Raghavan announced eight other man missions that will be driven by PM-STIAC in collaboration with ministries, including increasing research and technology in the ‘Quantum Frontier’, the Artificial Intelligence Mission to address issues of social needs, healthcare, education and agriculture through AI, among others.
