India’s ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ plan | Defined

The story to this point:

The Union Cupboard authorized the Indian authorities’s ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ (ONOS) scheme on November 25. The ONOS guarantees to offer equitable entry to scholarly journals in all public establishments.

What does the ONOS entail?

First mooted round 2018-2019, the scheme’s bold rollout comes with a considerable monetary outlay of ₹6,000 crore over three years (2025-2027), to be paid to 30 main worldwide journal publishers. For perspective, the Indian public and its tutorial establishments collectively spend round ₹1,500 crore yearly on journal subscriptions. This can be a tough estimate and doubtless contains the price of subscription to databases as nicely; in that case, the present complete public expense to entry journals will probably be nicely decrease than ₹2,000 crore per 12 months.

On the outset, ONOS’s promise to supply equitable entry to analysis articles, no matter an establishment’s status or monetary capability, which looks like a step in direction of democratising data. However a more in-depth examination reveals complexities that decision for deeper evaluation.

Is ONOS swimming in opposition to the tide?

The central query is: why is India investing closely in a subscription-based mannequin at a time when the worldwide analysis ecosystem is more and more embracing Open-Entry (OA) publishing?

Within the subscription mannequin, a journal receives manuscripts from scientists (about their research, and so on.), evaluates them via peer assessment, and accepts (or rejects) them. As soon as a paper is accepted, the journal publishes it and makes cash by charging individuals and establishments to entry it. OA refers to papers which can be revealed to be freely accessible. There are totally different sorts of OA. A standard sort is known as gold OA, the place the journal makes cash by charging authors an article processing cost (APC) to publish papers within the journal. The APC for a single paper has been recognized to be hundreds of {dollars}. For instance, Nature Communications expenses $6,790 per paper.

Scientific data, as a public good, ought to ideally be accessible to all, particularly when taxpayers fund it. The COVID-19 pandemic confirmed why you will need to have instant and unrestricted entry to analysis, not only for scientists but in addition for the individuals at massive: to fight misinformation and drive knowledgeable decision-making.

At the moment, greater than 53% of all scientific papers worldwide are open entry indirectly, in accordance with information from Clarivate’s Internet Of Science platform. This can be a important enhance since 2018-2019, when ONOS was first conceptualised, and raises questions on ONOS’s monetary prudence. If greater than half of the analysis articles are freely accessible, ought to India not be paying considerably much less for subscriptions than earlier than? ONOS dangers draining taxpayer cash to realize an out of date good.

Some worldwide developments additional complicate the image. The U.S. Workplace of Science and Know-how Coverage has mandated that from 2026, all publicly funded analysis articles have to be freely accessible with none delay. Equally, Horizon Europe, the European Union’s flagship funding program, requires peer-reviewed publications ensuing from its funding be made freely out there on-line. Contemplating these strikes, in one other 12 months a big fraction of analysis produced worldwide is prone to be freely accessible to everybody.

This timeline raises questions on ONOS’s relevance past 2025.

What are the challenges of business publishing?

The worldwide scholarly publishing system is dominated by a handful of business publishers based mostly in Western nations, and so they have lengthy been criticised for extreme subscription charges, inefficiencies leading to extended delays in publishing articles, and resistance to innovation.

The scholarly publishing trade is constructed on publicly funded analysis. Researchers generate new data, write their findings, and carry out peer opinions — all with out direct compensation from publishers. Within the subscription mannequin, these publishers cost exorbitant charges for entry, making a state of affairs the place public establishments should pay to entry work they’ve already supported. Writer revenue margins typically exceed 30%, revealing the exploitation implicit to scholarly publishing techniques.

Even the shift in direction of OA has been dominated by gold OA and its excessive APCs. Many outstanding journals in a number of disciplines, resembling organic science, have transitioned to develop into absolutely OA. Indian researchers wishing to publish in these journals must pay APCs for the reason that allocation for ONOS doesn’t present for this payment. Furthermore, most subscription journals are actually hybrid, so researchers — particularly from the U.S. and the EU — are paying APCs to publish their articles to be OA in these journals.

India, with its immense pool of expertise and sources, has the potential to reimagine this publishing ecosystem, fostering innovation within the workflow. Particularly when a lot of the backend work within the publishing trade is outsourced to India, the infrastructure and knowhow undoubtedly exist within the nationwide ecosystem. However ONOS dangers entrenching the established order by reinforcing reliance on Western publishers.

What’s the downside with copyright transfers?

One other important situation with the subscription mannequin is the necessity for researchers to give up their copyrights to publishers. This permits publishers to make use of their work with out contemplating the authors’ rights or consent. A current controversy involving Taylor & Francis (T&F) and Microsoft exemplifies the extent of this downside. In early 2024, T&F had signed a deal permitting Microsoft to make use of its journal content material to coach synthetic intelligence (AI) fashions. Since authors don’t maintain the copyright of their work, there isn’t any want for permission from authors — but they objected as a result of using their work to coach AI fashions was going unpaid. There may be an pressing want for insurance policies that shield researchers’ mental property.

There are methods to handle copyright violation considerations. Harvard College pioneered a coverage in 2008 that granted the college a non-exclusive, irrevocable proper to disseminate the work of college researchers. Researchers retained the fitting to self-archive their work in OA repositories. Many institutes just like the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how and the College of Oxford adopted go well with. ONOS has the chance to emulate these fashions by incorporating a nationwide ‘rights retention’ coverage, enabling Indian researchers to deposit their work in institutional repositories instantly after publication — a observe often called inexperienced open entry.

India’s personal 2014 Open Entry Coverage requires researchers funded by the Departments of Biotechnology and of Science & Know-how to make their work brazenly accessible — however its implementation has been lacklustre. The ONOS may have been the best platform to implement this mandate, making certain Indian analysis turns into globally accessible via open repositories instantly after publication.

Is digital content material preserved?

One other situation is the long-term preservation of analysis articles, now that the majority main journals are revealed on-line. A current research within the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication reported that 28% of articles with Information Object Identifiers (DOIs) — distinctive IDs to establish revealed papers — aren’t preserved, exposing gaps in present practices.

The discontinuation of Heterocycles, a journal revealed by the Japan Institute of Heterocyclic Chemistry, in 2023 left round 17,000 articles inaccessible, highlighting the dangers of relying solely on publishers to protect scientific data. On this case entry was finally restored, however the delay illustrates the necessity for options like self-archiving via inexperienced OA.

Is self-reliance doable in publishing?

In an period the place self-reliance (‘atmanirbharta’ within the authorities’s lexicon) is a nationwide precedence, it has been missed in scholarly publishing. Whereas Indian researchers could proceed publishing in prestigious journals like Nature, Science, Cell, and so on., important potential exists to raise Indian journals to world-class requirements.

India has the sources and experience to construct a strong indigenous publishing ecosystem. Preprinting and information sharing must also be thought-about as an integral a part of the publishing workflow (preprinting refers to a paper being revealed on-line earlier than it has been peer-reviewed.) By investing in infrastructure, editorial processes, and international visibility for Indian journals, the nation can scale back its dependence on Western publishers and appeal to high-quality submissions from the world over.

This isn’t simply in regards to the cash being drained from our ecosystem: it’s additionally about establishing India as a frontrunner in science and innovation.

What may ONOS have completed?

ONOS might be lauded for its ambition to democratise analysis entry, but it surely ought to have addressed deeper structural points plaguing scholarly publishing. There ought to have been parallel efforts to permit authors to retain copyright, carried out OA via institutional repositories, and, most significantly, improved self-reliance in scholarly publishing.

Given the allocation ONOS has obtained from the Indian authorities, it definitely had the potential to set a precedent for equitable and revolutionary publishing by addressing all the problems in parallel — but it selected to miss them. With out addressing these systemic challenges, ONOS dangers changing into a expensive short-term repair. It’s time to re-evaluate whether or not this initiative is a step ahead or an costly detour.

Moumita Koley is a senior analysis analyst on the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.