ONOS bitten: On India’s ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ plan

The Union Cabinet approved the “One Nation, One Subscription” (ONOS) plan on November 25, which aims to make expensive research journals more accessible to scholars and publicly funded research institutions. The ONOS initiative was first proposed in the 2020 draft of India’s National Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy, as a response to the increasing fees charged by academic publishers for access to scholarly articles. However, the plan has raised concerns about the ongoing dominance of commercial publishers and the potential lack of meaningful reform in access models.

Key Features and Positive Aspects of ONOS

• Centralization of Subscription Access: ONOS centralizes the subscription process for research journals by replacing individual institutional consortia with a single government-managed subscription. This aims to provide affordable access to expensive academic journals, making them available at underfunded government institutes that previously struggled with high subscription fees.
• Publicly Funded Institutes Benefiting: ONOS will primarily benefit publicly funded institutions, ensuring that researchers from government-backed institutes can access research papers without facing financial barriers. This policy is seen as an effort to democratize access to knowledge by reducing the burden on scholars in these institutions.
• Cost Reduction for Government Institutes: With ONOS, a substantial amount of money (?6,000 crore) will be allocated to securing access to 30 major publishers. This is expected to alleviate the financial strain on research institutions, making high-quality, peer-reviewed research more accessible to scholars working on limited budgets.

Criticisms and Limitations of ONOS

• Persistence of Commercial Publishers’ Dominance: While ONOS may reduce costs for access, it fails to challenge the hegemony of commercial publishers, many of whom profit from publicly funded research. The model does not promote alternatives like open-access or support home-grown scholarly journals, which would allow India to exert more control over the dissemination of research.
• Lack of Support for Open-Access Models: Critics argue that the government missed an opportunity to promote “green” or “diamond” open-access models, which ensure public access to research by default, rather than continuing to channel significant sums of money into foreign publishers. Such models would align with the global movement toward making research universally accessible without paywalls.
• Limited Scope and Transparency Issues: ONOS will be limited to publicly funded institutions, and its implementation lacks clarity on monitoring journal quality. There are concerns over the lack of consultation with research institutes on their specific needs and whether journals with questionable academic standards or those that have become irrelevant will be included or excluded from the list.

Implications and Recommendations for the Future

• Missed Opportunity to Influence Global Research Accessibility: India has the potential to influence research accessibility in the developing world, yet ONOS primarily benefits foreign publishers. By supporting the open-access movement and encouraging domestic publishing models, India could have created a more equitable system for scholarly communication.
• Government’s Justification for ONOS: With the rise of "gold" open-access journals (where researchers pay to publish and articles are freely available), the continued reliance on subscription-based models under ONOS raises questions about the government’s justification for not adopting more progressive access strategies that would better align with current global trends.
• Need for Comprehensive Consultation and Reform: ONOS should have been preceded by consultations with research institutions to tailor the policy to their specific needs. Going forward, the government should consider more holistic reforms that go beyond centralized subscription and address long-term issues in research accessibility, including the promotion of alternative access models and support for domestic research infrastructure.

Practice Question:

Q. Critically examine the 'One Nation, One Subscription' (ONOS) plan approved by the Union Cabinet, highlighting its benefits, limitations, and the potential alternative strategies for enhancing access to scholarly research in India.