One Nation One Subscription: Revolutionizing the research ecosystem of India

The publication of scientific peer-reviewed journals has undergone a significant transformation owing to the ever-evolving and expanding sector of information and technology. Owing to the rapid advancements in various scientific domains, and the progressively increasing number of scientific publishers, the number of scientific publications published annually has also been steadily rising. However, with this progression, there has been a rapid growth of “predatory journals” where, to generate revenue, journal publishing companies employ aggressive email marketing and high acceptance rates to get authors to submit their important research works to journals without conducting appropriate peer review procedures. This has become one of the major problems in scientific literature threatening the system of publications as a whole.[1] Paper and electronic are the dominant distribution channels for scholarly journals, with almost every publisher launching parallel electronic versions of their journals. The process of publishing scientific journals has changed in past years with easy access to almost all major subscription journals both in paper and electronic formats. The advent of general web search engines and specialized services for scientific literature such as Google Scholar has emerged as a huge development making it easier for authors, scholars, and readers to access articles.[2] More than 37 million citations to biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books are available in PubMed’s extensive database. The daily-updated PubMed journal list, which contains all MEDLINE titles as well as additional non-MEDLINE titles, contains about 30,000 records.[3] There are around 100 medical journals published in India, and there is an escalation in the number of publications, owing to the growing demand for mandatory publication by academicians and the increasing interest in the growing publishing market.[4] The conventional approach of providing educational and learning resources involves subscribing to scholarly periodicals and journals. Nonetheless, this has always been a costly affair as subscriptions to high-quality medical journals are very expensive, and it was in the 1990s, that the Open-Access (OA) approach of journal publication started.[5] Similar to open-source software development, most early OA journals were founded in the 1990s by individual academics with a business model based on voluntary work involving journal management and peer review. However, the volume of papers was usually very modest.[6] Due to the widespread usage and availability of the Internet, OA journals have begun to proliferate and now, account for the majority of publications across all disciplines. Vitek Tracz established BioMed Central (BMC) in 2000, making it the first dedicated professional OA publisher, and since then, BMC has been in the process of launching numerous journals primarily funded by Article Processing Charges (APCs), in various biological and medical domains to take advantage of economies of scale in marketing, e-infrastructure, and other areas.[2] There are several OA models, such as the Gold OA journal, in which authors pay the publisher, or APCs, a charge at the time of manuscript acceptance to cover peer review and publication expenses; subscriptions do not generate any money. Even if the peer review and publication processes can be expedited (without compromising the quality), the publishing processes in this case are similar to those of subscription-based publications.[7] Under the green OA approach, authors or third parties are permitted to freely distribute manuscript versions of their papers published in traditional journals online. This can be done on the authors’ websites or, ideally, in subject-based or institutional repositories.[8] Hybrid journals offer both a traditional strategy – in which the institution pays for a subscription or readers buy individual articles – and an OA approach, in which readers can access articles for free and without a subscription. As a result, a subscription-based journal might provide free article access to members without a subscription.[9] The proliferation of OA and the push to publish articles exclusively online has led to the emergence of more publishers and journals to exploit the OA model of publication. Since many authors choose to publish their work in predatory OA journals rather than the ones requiring a thorough and time-consuming peer review, this raises significant concern over scientific OA publications. Since the journals using the APCs model are often targeted and criticized as the business model with reduced review standards to increase earnings, there are several excellent APC-funded journals from respectable publishers with comparable quality to their subscription equivalents.[10] Publishers of OA medical and health publications receive the same number of citations as subscription journals because of the increased readership that follows open availability, and successful OA model innovations are paving their way in the academic infrastructure. INDIAN SCENARIO: HIGHER EDUCATION, RESEARCH, AND PUBLICATIONS The higher education system in India has expanded significantly, especially after gaining independence, and is now among the biggest in the world. Reports have suggested an increase in the enrollment in higher education, with an impressive growth in the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) from 0.4 in 1950–1951 to 28.4 in 2021–2022, expressing significant progress in enrollments over the decades. Further, the landscape of the education system has also risen and transformed, with 1168 universities, 45,473 colleges, and 12,002 standalone institutions in the year 2021–2022.[11] India has approximately over 7000 Research and Development facilities in diverse fields, and in the year 2018, around 0.17 million research papers were published by Indian scientists in Scopus-indexed journals. In addition, it has been also stated that more than Rs. 1200 crores were spent on e-journal subscriptions, with an estimated Rs 1500 crores being spent on these and/or print subscriptions.[12] However, Indian researchers face several issues in publishing as well as accessing journals of importance owing to the limited funding presented to an average Indian researcher. Accessing published articles is challenging for scholars due to the high subscription and access fees. Among the potential advantages that online journals provide to libraries include multiple simultaneous access and distant access, integrated searching functions, multimedia capabilities, and reduced storage problems. Still, the situation regarding students’ and scholars’ access to reputable publications deteriorates as a result of the lack of funding for the libraries of different institutions. Thus, a different approach is needed for gathering, enhancing, and disseminating educational and learning resources. There are more than 10 library consortia funded by the Government of India to address the issue of limited access to e-resources in institutions, which includes e-Shodh Sindhu (Indian National Digital Library in Science and Technology-All India Council for Technical Education Consortium, University Grants Commission [UGC]-Infonet Digital Library Consortium, and National Library and Information Services Infrastructure for Scholarly Content [N-LIST]; Ministry of Education); National Knowledge Resource Consortium (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research [CSIR] and Department of Science and Technology [DST]); Department of Atomic Energy Consortium; Ministry of Communications and Information Technology consortium; Consortium for e-Resources in Agriculture; e-resources in Medicine; Department of Biotechnology e-Library Consortium; Defence Research and Development Organisation Consortium; and Digital Earth Sciences Consortium (Ministry of Earth Sciences).[13] However, most of these consortiums function with constrained financial, human, and technological resources, lack of infrastructure and services for continuous access to subscription resources, absence of federated search and absence of discovery services, digital archives for subscribed resources, and off-campus access to resources for authorized users.[13] Since, the availability and accessibility of print and electronic materials affect the caliber of publications, and research. It is the right of every Indian researcher to publish their work in reputable journals, and to solidify the research position of the nation in high-caliber publications, further establishing India as a leader in high-caliber research. India has emerged as a center of excellence in innovation and is unprecedentedly contributing to numerous scientific domains across the globe. EMERGENCE OF ONE NATION ONE SUBSCRIPTION SCHEME The Department of Higher Education, Government of India, has launched the “One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)” scheme to strengthen India’s position as a research, learning, and knowledge hub as well as promote interdisciplinary research. With nearly 6400 institutions nationwide, the ONOS scheme will provide access to scholarly research e-journals from leading publishers covering the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, medicine, management, social sciences, and humanities. The learning resources will be distributed through free access to over 13,000 journals from 30 publishers, including the top 4 global publishers, namely Wiley, Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Taylor and Francis.[14] On November 25, 2024, the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, approved the new Central Sector Scheme “ONOS.” Under the scheme, a total of about Rs. 6000 crores has been allocated for ONOS for 3 calendar years (2025–2027) as a new Central Sector Scheme, benefitting all Higher Educational Institutions under the management of the Central or State Government and Research and Development Institutions of the Central Government. The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, has approved ONOS, a new Central Sector Scheme to implement the scheme, a National Subscription, coordinated by a central agency (Information and Library Network [INFLIBNET]),[15] an autonomous interuniversity center of the UGC will be availed to all Higher Educational Institutions under Central or State Government as well as the Research and Development Institutions of the Central Government, benefitting nearly 1.8 crore students, faculty and researchers. This works toward the goals of Viksitbharat@2047, National Education Policy 2020, and supports the Anusandhan National Research Foundation, promoting research and development and fostering a culture of research and innovation throughout government universities, colleges, research institutions, and R and D laboratories.[16] Further, the scheme ensures that institutions at any geographical location have access to world-class research resources. The first phase of ONOS has been tentatively marked to be initiated in January 2025, with subscription charges centrally paid by INFLIBNET, but exclusive of independent subscriptions. There is a unified portal called “ONOS” for institutions to access the journals through national subscription coordinated by the INFLIBNET center.[17] Every scheme has its benefits and limitations, and various gaps are reported for the ONOS scheme. There have been arguments about the sustainability of this scheme as certain nations such as the United States have made publicly funded research to be freely accessible by 2026, and facts regarding high-profit margins to reputable international journals undermining regional journals of importance.[18] Certain other issues such as internet accessibility in remote locations, the monitoring of usage and progress of the scheme, and other technical issues emerging shall need to be addressed so that the potential benefits of the scheme can be reaped. The Ayush system of medicine encompassing traditional Indian medicine and practices, has gained incredible popularity and acceptance over the last decade. The huge step of initiating ONOS is aimed at revolutionizing the current research ecosystem of India, however, its inclusiveness is still in doubt, as the concerns regarding involving Ayush institutions, research centers, and giving due credit to Ayush-related publishers and journals need to be addressed. The inclusion of all institutions that carry out significant and influential research in the Ayush medical system is necessary to benefit the Ayush research sector. With the extensive aid of ONOS, and high-caliber empirical scientific publications, validating the potential role of Ayush systems in addressing global health challenges may propagate and flourish, further strengthening the position of India in the global healthcare sector.[19] ONOS is a crucial step toward democratizing knowledge access in the nation and requires thorough evaluation techniques at every possible step to assess and further reinforce the vision towards its implementation. It should be meticulously evolved as per the changing ecosystem and needs of the science, to make it sustainable, further improving the quality of access and production of scientific research in the nation.