Despite its laudable intent, One Nation One Subscription is not a silver bullet

The ONOS is a phased scheme with the ultimate ambitious goal of providing all Indians access to e-journals through designated library points.

On 1 January 2025, phase one of the One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) became operational. Approved by the Union Cabinet on 25 November 2024, the three-phase scheme aims to rationalise and expand access to journal resources, particularly for educational institutions located in tier-2 and tier-3 cities that have historically been left out of the global knowledge flows. The proposed outcome of this initiative is to spur indigenous research leading to increased publications.

However, despite the laudable intent, ONOS is not a silver bullet to accelerate publications: it does not address the lack of basic research infrastructure and inadequate training for interpreting and producing research outputs. We argue that a holistic approach involving access to educational resources and development of tools, training and research infrastructure may be a better approach for improving research output in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. But, first, what is ONOS?

Unpacking ONOS

The primary aim of the scheme is to provide access to more than 13000 e-journals from 30 publishers including heavyweights such as Elsevier, Taylor and Francis, Springer Nature, and Wiley. The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser claims that about 1.8 crore students, researchers, and faculty members from about 6,400 educational institutions will benefit from this move.

The scheme is budgeted to cost Rs 6000 crores over three years, that is, Rs 2000 each year. But this is only the first phase of ONOS. The ONOS is a phased scheme with the ultimate ambitious goal of providing all Indians access to e-journals through designated library points. The intermediate step is expanding access to private institutions (which are left out in the first phase) and may also involve ‘transformative agreements that combine subscription costs with open-access publishing.’

The ONOS is based on the premise that a unified, rationalised subscription to e-journals is better than the arrangement that existed before — 10 library consortia formed by Indian educational institutions subscribing separately to publishing houses. The new arrangement ends up spending, as the director of the Global Library at O.P. Jindal Global University in Sonipat Muthu Madhan has pointed out, double the estimate given by the government for the previous arrangement per year. A 2020 joint paper by scholars from India’s three science academies places the figure at over INR 1200 crores for the year 2018 (for accessing e-journals).

It is currently unclear whether the hitherto arrangement of 10 library consortia subscribing to journals was saturated. That is, how many researchers in these 2400 institutions were actually accessing the e-journals, and how much limit was still underutilised.

Need for a holistic approach for tier-2 and tier-3 educational institutions

In addition to increasing access to educational resources, increasing academic output in educational institutions in tier-2 and tier-3 institutions is central to the ONOS scheme. As the press release announcing the cabinet approval for ONOS had stated: ‘The ANRF [Anusandhan National Research Foundation] will periodically review the usage of One Nation One Subscription and publications of Indian authors of these institutions.’

While access to journal resources might be a necessary condition for tier-2 and tier-3 educational institutions, it is not in itself sufficient. In such educational institutions, there may be a lack of tools, training and research infrastructure (for example, equipment and labs) that are essential for conducting research, especially in the hard sciences. To reinvigorate the research and development ecosystem in hitherto underserved educational institutions, a holistic approach involving both access to educational resources and development of tools, training and research infrastructure is required. A framework could be devised for identifying 100 institutions in tier-2 and tier-3 cities for rolling out this holistic approach.

We also argue that the ANRF should evaluate the performance of the ONOS scheme, including publications coming out of tier-2 and tier-3 institutions, in a scientifically rigorous way. This evaluation should be conducted transparently and findings released publicly. As the ONOS scheme is being implemented in a phased manner over three calendar years, it can be calibrated based on ANRF’s evaluation. Performance evaluation should take into account the disparities between disciplines on publication timelines. For instance, in life sciences, publications may take more than three years to come out even when access to educational resources and labs is provided.

Subscription versus open access debate

There is a deeper debate about public money being given to already hugely profitable global publishing houses. This debate addresses fundamental questions about subscription versus open access to educational resources. Aware of this debate, the government is not positioning the ONOS as a ‘value judgement on the subscription-based model of knowledge dissemination’ but instead as ‘the most practical India-specific solution towards expanding knowledge access’ until a global open access model becomes sustainable. It is for this reason that in addition to access to e-journals, one component of the phase one of ONOS is supporting Indian authors with the author processing charges (APC) for publishing in open access journals. Funding of Rs 150 crore has been allocated per year for this component. Paying for subscriptions as well as APCs essentially amounts to channeling money to the same ecosystem twice. While this might be a short term measure, the government should consider innovative ideas to move beyond the current publishing ecosystem.