India journal subscription deal comes up against open access goal

A new central subscription service to academic journals is expected to boost India’s research capabilities by giving students at some universities access to journal papers for the first time, but there are concerns about its relevance as open-access publishing grows.

India’s Ministry of Education has announced Cabinet approval for the One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) scheme, which will provide access to “high impact” journals for all public universities. In a statement, the ministry said that the deal would “open a goldmine of knowledge available in top quality scholarly journals” to nearly 18 million students and researchers.

In total, 30 international publishers are included in the subscription, including Elsevier, Springer Nature and Taylor & Francis, with 60 billion rupees (£555 million) allocated to fund the scheme until 2027.

Previously, India’s universities negotiated their own academic subscriptions individually – an expensive process, particularly for institutions that receive less government funding. As a result, although the country’s research output has grown significantly in recent years, students and researchers at state-funded universities may have struggled to access Indian and international publications. 

“There was a disparity between the resources which were available to the centrally funded institutions and the [state-government] funded institutions,” said Mohammad Nazim, associate professor in the department of library and information science at Aligarh Muslim University. “So this One Nation One Subscription policy is very useful for those institutions which were not able to subscribe to a large number of resources or journals.”

Negotiations with publishers have been ongoing since 2019, when the idea was originally proposed. 

“The new system is substantially more economical than purchasing individual journal subscriptions for Indian academic and research institutions, offering a more streamlined and cost-effective approach to accessing scholarly literature,” said Eldho Mathews, a higher education researcher and programme officer at the Kerala State Higher Education Council. 

However, despite reports that the government could soon begin negotiations on article processing charges with publishers to try to secure a better deal for researchers, there are concerns that the policy of investing heavily in traditional publishers conflicts with the wider move among the scientific community towards open-access publishing.

Moumita Koley, senior research analyst at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, argued that ONOS was less relevant – and potentially worth less – than when it was first envisioned, because open access has since grown and more articles are now free to read. She also believed India should rely less on traditional Western publishers. 

Campus resource collection: Unlocking the potential of open access and open research

“While many researchers prefer publishing in established international journals, and I firmly believe their freedom to choose where to publish should not be restricted, there is also a longstanding push for self-reliance across various sectors,” Dr Koley told Times Higher Education. 

“In line with this vision, alongside the growth of our scientific publishing landscape, we could consider publishing some of this research in high-quality, locally managed journals.”

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com