Centre mulling expansion of ONOS scheme to private higher education institutions

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• Education Ministry may expand ONOS scheme to private universities and colleges
• Private HEIs may access global research and publish in top journals more affordably.
• ONOS funds research access and APC support for government institutions.

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The Ministry of Education is considering expanding its flagship One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) scheme to private higher education institutions (HEIs), sources said.

At present, the ONOS scheme is limited to government-funded institutions. However, the Centre is examining a proposal to allow private universities and colleges to join the scheme on a pre-negotiated payment basis, sources added.

"The ministry is considering a proposal to make ONOS available to private HEIs on a pre-negotiated payment basis," sources said.

India has 473 private universities and over 31,000 private colleges, according to the latest All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) data for 2021-22.

The One Nation One Subscription scheme was launched to provide nationwide access to high-quality international scholarly journals and research papers through a single centrally negotiated subscription. The scheme enables students, researchers and faculty members to read and download peer-reviewed research papers and academic literature from leading global publishers.

In addition to providing access to research papers, the ONOS framework now supports Article Processing Charges (APCs), which are paid to publish research in open-access journals. Under the scheme, APCs for selected high-quality open-access journals are centrally funded through the ONOS executing agency.

As per ONOS guidelines, fully open-access journals that rank in the top 5 per cent under any one of three SCOPUS indicators - CiteScore, Source Normalised Impact per Paper (SNIP) or SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)-are eligible for APC support. These journals may belong either to the publishers covered under ONOS subscriptions or to other eligible publishers.

Extending ONOS to private institutions would enable faculty and researchers in the private higher education sector to access global research databases and publish in reputable open-access journals at a pre-negotiated rate, reducing financial barriers to academic research and publication.