The One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) scheme for providing equitable access to all scholarly research articles and journal publications, will likely roll out at the start of next year. The Government will pay a unified subscription charge to international publishers for access to their articles and journals, replacing the earlier set-up where each institute individually paid for different subscriptions.
Principal Scientific Adviser to the government, Professor Ajay Kumar Sood today said in a press conference in New Delhi that the ONOS scheme will prevent overlap of research journal subscriptions and reduce inefficient utilization of funds. Our Correspondent reports that the six thousand crore rupee scheme will grant unrestricted access to research journals and articles to students, faculty, and researchers at government academic institutions.
The One Nation One Subscription scheme will provide complete access to the full collection of the world’s 30 leading research publishers. Under the first phase, over 1 crore 77 thousand users from around 6 thousand 300 government education institutes will benefit. This will cover all streams of STEMM, management, social sciences, and humanities, with no discipline specific restrictions. The number of journal titles will see an uptick, going from around 8 thousand to over 13 thousand 400 titles. The scheme also aims to tackle the limited visibility of Indian researchers by providing discounts on Article Processing Charges – APCs for Indian authors while paying APCs of select good-quality Open Access journals.
The ONOS scheme is likely to be introduced by the start of next year till 2027. It aims to change research evaluation methods and reduce dependencies on journals.