Muthu Madhan December 5th, 2024 India’s One Nation One Subscription deal enriches publishers and benefits few
1 comment <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/12/05/indias-one-nation-one-subscription-deal-enriches-publishers-and-benefits-few/#comments> | 3 shares Estimated reading time: 7 minutes <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/12/05/indias-one-nation-one-subscription-deal-enriches-publishers-and-benefits-few/#> <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/12/05/indias-one-nation-one-subscription-deal-enriches-publishers-and-benefits-few/#> <?&subject=LSE article&body=https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/12/05/indias-one-nation-one-subscription-deal-enriches-publishers-and-benefits-few/> <?&subject=LSE article&body=https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/12/05/indias-one-nation-one-subscription-deal-enriches-publishers-and-benefits-few/> <?&subject=LSE article&body=https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/12/05/indias-one-nation-one-subscription-deal-enriches-publishers-and-benefits-few/> <https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/12/05/indias-one-nation-one-subscription-deal-enriches-publishers-and-benefits-few/> <https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/12/05/indias-one-nation-one-subscription-deal-enriches-publishers-and-benefits-few/> <https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/12/05/indias-one-nation-one-subscription-deal-enriches-publishers-and-benefits-few/&title=India’s One Nation One Subscription deal enriches publishers and benefits few&summary=&source=> <https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/12/05/indias-one-nation-one-subscription-deal-enriches-publishers-and-benefits-few/&title=India’s One Nation One Subscription deal enriches publishers and benefits few&summary=&source=> 3 Shares *Contrary to its intended goals of reducing subscription costs and improving access to scientific literature in India, **Muthu Madhan **argues the much-hyped One Nation One Subscription policy risks significantly increasing expenditure while delivering little in return.* ------------------------------ One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) was conceived in 2019, when India’s three major science academies released a report, written by a panel of fellows, recommending a single national subscription <https://www.jstor.org/stable/27226408> to optimise the annual expenditure on scientific journal subscriptions by universities and research institutions in India. They estimated these costs to be ₹1,500 crore (approximately $180 million). Although their estimate was arguably high, it became the benchmark for subsequent discussions and negotiations. These proposals rested on a belief, in retrospect naïve, that collective bargaining would help reduce costs. The then Principal Scientific Advisor (PSA) to the government of India extended support for ONOS implementation <https://poynder.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-oa-interviews-k-vijayraghavan.html>with capping article processing charges levied by publishers to make research papers open access on their websites. These proposals rested on a belief, in retrospect naïve, that collective bargaining would help reduce costs. Subsequently, in 2022, the office of the PSA initiated a two-phase ONOS implementation plan. The first phase aimed to merge the ten or more library consortia into a single entity, with the anticipated savings from unified subscription licenses intended to support author-pay open access by covering article processing charges. The second phase sought to expand access to “every individual in India <https://mowr.nic.in/core/Circulars/2023/Coord._22-11-2022_5.pdf>”. Overly ambitious The negotiation committee formed by the government engaged with 70 publishers of journals, standards, and databases. The committee aimed to complete the negotiations by April 2023, but the process dragged on with little progress due to lack of convergence on the framework <https://mowr.nic.in/core/Circulars/2023/Coord._22-11-2022_5.pdf>. Yet, after three years, the union cabinet of the government of India has approved an ONOS scheme involving only 30 journal publishers <https://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/news_updates/cabinet-approves-one-nation-one-subscription-onos/>, signalling a failure of vision and conceding to ‘One Nation, Many Subscriptions <https://x.com/madhan_mu/status/1862859687412339036>’ as the reality. Under this scheme, the government says it will provide access to 13,000 e-journals from these publishers to 18,000,000 students, faculty, researchers, and scientists across 6,300 government-run higher education and research institutions. The government will spend ₹6,000 crore (approximately $723 million) on these subscriptions over a three-year period from 2025. This expenditure(₹2,000 crore or $241 million per year) is more than double the 2023 estimate <https://sansad.in/getFile/loksabhaquestions/annex/1712/AU2865.pdf?source=pqals> provided by Subhas Sarkar, former Minister of State in the Ministry of Education, and 25% higher than the 2019 estimate given by the fellows of the three academies. The government will spend ₹6,000 crore (approximately $723 million) on these subscriptions over a three-year period from 2025. This expenditure(₹2,000 crore or $241 million per year) is more than double the 2023 estimate Capping article processing charges, one of the ONOS aims, which sought to use savings from consolidating library subscriptions to fund author-pay open access, has not been achieved. A deal too big to fail? Negotiating with the for-profit journal publishing oligopoly, whether individually or collectively, has consistently proven to be a ‘heads I win, tails you lose <https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/heads-i-win-tails-you-lose-the-intransigence-of-stm-publishers/>’ game for publishers, as opposing parties hold little power since journals are not classical market commodities. Devika Madalli, a member of the ONOS negotiation committee, recently stated that the policy has not resulted in savings <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-6MTHTrKqI&list=PLIpJXV9MOz0MsIBc1yVogeiMw2liHWoz6&index=9> for the government of India. The justification for the cost increase ‘more will have access’ is unconvincing and merely echoes a flimsy reason used by publishers to defend higher fees. According to *InCites *(2023), authors from about 1,326 institutions in India contributed at least one paper to journals indexed by the *Web of Science* (*WoS*) databases, with just 470 institutions exceeding the threshold of 100 papers. This list includes a significant number of private institutions. We should also note that even in research-intensive institutions the actual use of subscribed journals is suboptimal. For example, Giridhar Madras observed that researchers at the Indian Institute of Science interacted with fewer than half of the journals they subscribed to <https://www.jstor.org/stable/24103036>. Similarly, Ramamoorthi and Jeyashankar found that researchers at a unitary university, a Council of Scientific and Industrial Research laboratory, and a Department of Atomic Energy research institution used (either for publishing or citing) less than 20% of the journals available to them <http://op.niscair.res.in/index.php/ALIS/article/view/9025> through consortia or institutional subscriptions. With this backdrop, investing substantial funds to extend access to information that is esoteric in nature, for a large number of smaller institutions, most of which may lack research capacity, does not appear to be a prudent strategy. *Figure.1: Percent share of open access and non-open access articles published during 2014-2023 indexed in WoS databases, data as seen in InCites* Further, the *Web of Science* databases show that at least half of the articles published in the past four years have been freely accessible (Fig.1), and almost 50% of the papers published in 2024 are already open access. A significant portion of the articles published in 2023 by most of the publishers involved in the ONOS deal were open access (Fig.2). Given this, it is reasonable to question why the Indian government should pay for papers that are already open access. In addition, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation’s support for author-pay open access enables publishers to engage in multiple dipping, altogether leading to a colossal waste of public funds. *Figure.2: Percent share of different types of open access articles, and non-open access articles published during 2023, distributed by publishers involved in ONOS.* Over the past twenty years, many academic libraries worldwide have recognised the downsides of journal big deals and are actively seeking alternatives. SPARC’s big deal cancellation tracking reveals that 89universities, largely from the US, have cancelled similar big deals <https://bigdeal.sparcopen.org/cancellations>, particularly with the large for-profit publishers involved in ONOS scheme. Notably, MIT Libraries cancelled subscriptions to Elsevier journals in 2020 due to copyright restrictions imposed by the publisher. Since then, MIT Libraries have adopted a ‘pay-per-article access <https://sparcopen.org/our-work/big%20deal-knowledge-base/unbundling-profiles/mit-libraries/>’ model, saving significant costs annually without hindering research or teaching. Ignoring such international experiences, India risks replicating an archaic and flawed strategy <https://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/frazier/03frazier.html>, and engaging in the ‘dangerous big deal game’ at a great expense. Ultimately, the ONOS scheme reflects a failure of informed science policymaking in India. Yielding to for-profit foreign publishers and calling it a game-changer and ‘atmanirbahar’ (self-reliant) is a major irony. Given the significant issues and harms associated with ONOS policy, the Indian government should critically reassess its approval, which seems to be based on an ‘illusion of quality and utility’. ------------------------------ *The content generated on this blog is for information purposes only. This Article gives the views and opinions of the authors and does not reflect the views and opinions of the Impact of Social Science blog (the blog), nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Please review our comments policy <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/about-the-blog/comments-policy/> if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.* *Image Credit: **Roman Samborskyi* <https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Roman+Samborskyi>* on **Shutterstock* <https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/creative-photo-collage-artwork-postcard-poster-2201785613> *. * ------------------------------ [image: Print Friendly, PDF & Email] <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/12/05/indias-one-nation-one-subscription-deal-enriches-publishers-and-benefits-few/#> About the author Muthu Madhan Madhan is a librarian with over 25 years of experience in research and academic libraries. He is currently the director of the Global Library at O.P. Jindal Global University in Sonipat, India. He is also a visiting scholar at the DST Centre for Policy Research, IISc, Bengaluru. His research interests focus on the intersection of scientometrics and science policy and open access to scholarly information. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1651-4180 Posted In: Academic publishing | Featured | Open Access 1 Comments 1. Pingback: India’s One Nation One Subscription deal enriches publishers and benefits few – jimmyrakesh <https://jimmyrakesh.wordpress.com/2024/12/05/indias-one-nation-one-subscription-deal-enriches-publishers-and-benefits-few/> Leave a Comment Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Notify me of follow-up comments by email. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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