Abstract
Indian science funding agencies have taken several policy measures to expedite access to scholarly knowledge. The proposed “one nation, one subscription” plan is one such initiative. The main aim of this initiative is to facilitate the availability and accessibility of research articles for all higher educational institutions (HEI). This paper reflects upon the suitability and aptness of this suggested policy through an analysis of Open Access (OA) publication trends. Using Scopus and other web sources, this article tracks how the OA publishing scenario (STEM fields) is changing in India and other top publishing countries. Based on the findings, we argue that a national subscription contract is limiting its scope by considering only the option of subscription and disregarding OA publishing options. However, subscription and open access publishing deals are short-term gains and will ultimately increase the dependency on commercial publishers. In the long term, encouraging research that helps solve local context-specific problems can only be addressed by strengthening the publishing infrastructure by national research funding agencies or respective higher educational institutions through publishing and promoting open access content.
Introduction
Since World War II, science and technology (S&T) have become the major force in driving economic growth worldwide. The effort not only resulted in an increase in R&D activities across all the S&T domains but also accelerated an unprecedented growth in scholarly articles (Koutras, 2019). Throughout these years, efforts have been made to develop journals, through which scientific research findings can be disseminated globally. In doing so, academic publishing practices had to accommodate the surge in publication output, and still today, the growth of scholarly articles is continuing. The swelling in publications output lured commercial entities to step into the academic publishing area and they are the primary establishment that controls the scholarly publishing domain. Currently, five major commercial publishing companies dominate the scholarly publishing industry, enjoy an oligopoly over the market, and their market power drives the subscription price of academic journals (Larivière et al., 2015).
Over the years, scientific research publication has undergone a rapid change from hard copy to digital format, from subscription-only to a complex mix of subscription and various open access (OA) forms. Due to the steep rise in subscription-cost of journals, many institutions, primarily located in developing countries, struggle for legitimate access to scholarly knowledge. This, in a way, has prompted institutions located in the developing country, to squeeze their access by subscribing less or low-budget journals (Suber, 2012).
The increasing cost of subscriptions to scholarly journals is a constant challenge for academic institutions in India as well. In India, the access issue is intertwined with equity; only a handful of institutions afford to subscribe to reasonable numbers of journals, and most institutions across the country are deprived of such facilities. Students and researchers of these vast number of institutions rely on sources like Sci-Hub; Indian researchers extensively use Sci-Hub (Owens, 2022; Pai, 2020; Singh et al., 2021). To improve the access situation, there was a proposal by the Indian Academy of Science in 2017 to strike a nationwide subscription deal with major commercial publishers (Chakraborty et al., 2020). This suggestion has now been translated into a policy, “One Nation, One Subscription,” (ONOS) in India’s fifth STI (Science, Technology, and Innovation) policy draft released in December 2020 (DST, 2020). The objective of ONOS policy is to provide barrier-free access to scientific knowledge across all the HEI (Higher Educational Institutions) located in India and narrow the gaps in access among the Indian institutions. Through the proposed ONOS policy the Govt. of India (GOI) aims to establish a centrally negotiated model to subscribe to journals that can be accessed across all the HEI (Higher Educational Institutes) in India.
However, the scholarly publishing market is changing rapidly. Publishers are experimenting with new open-access business models. Funders are also promoting open access models and platforms; one such example is Plan S (Istratii and Demeter, 2020). Universities and libraries are also negotiating with publishers for open-access publishing prospects (Borrego et al., 2021; Farley et al., 2021; Koutras, 2020). Such changes elicit the question of the suitability of the proposed subscription-only policy directive that does not address the need for open access publishing.
Background
Subscription-based journals’ paywall hinders access to knowledge. A substantial amount of knowledge stays behind the paywall and is inaccessible to a large section of the scientific community. Increasing access-inequity due to the higher costs, monopoly by top publishers, and the revolution in digital technologies have encouraged the debate on open access (OA) (Björk, 2017; Puehringer et al., 2021). The open access (OA) 1 movement started with an intention to provide unrestricted access to scholarly works primarily stored in digital formats and accessible by online mode. Few of the earliest initiatives in the OA space are the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in (2002) (Budapest Open Access Initiative [BOAI], 2002), Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing in 2003 (Brown et al., 2003), and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in 2003 (Bullinger et al., 2003). Since then, there have been significant developments in open access policies and practices worldwide (Koutras, 2020; Schiltz, 2018; Willinsky, 2006).
The OA proposition has created a new dimension in the publishing domain by enabling worldwide barrier-free access to scientific knowledge (Else, 2020). The idea of OA, apart from providing access to scientific knowledge, significantly impacts creating an equitable knowledge society (Tennant et al., 2016). Over the last decade, a considerable number of scholarly works have been published on the impact and importance of OA initiatives. These studies have not only highlighted the features of open access initiatives but also argued that open access is evitable for the sake of knowledge and inquiries (Wolpert, 2013). OA generally draws more citations over time, more readership, and more impact for any research article than subscription-based access (Tennant et al., 2016). Accordingly, these open access articles also get more online views, downloads, and sharing, that ultimately contribute to the metrics (Altimetric) that monitor social media impacts. Such metrics are gradually becoming important since they are increasingly being considered in a researcher’s research and career evaluation (Schimanski and Alperin, 2018).
At present open access collectively refers to different models with different features, which include gold, green, bronze hybrid, and bronze (Istratii and Demeter, 2020). One fundamental aspect is identical for all these open-access types- they are freely accessible digitally. However, in the case of APC-gold (or simply gold), authors pay an article processing charge (APC) to make the article freely accessible from the journal homepage; commercial publishers generally own these journals. In contrast, non-APC gold (or referred to as diamond) are papers that are freely accessible from the journal homepage but do not charge authors any fee to publish. Usually, the financial support to run such journals generally comes from academic societies, universities, or other government-sponsored sources. If authors make their final author version (after peer review but before typesetting) through institutional or other repositories, author homepage, etc., such OA is referred to as green (Björk et al., 2014; Laakso, 2014). The hybrid model refers to traditional subscription-based journals that make a particular article OA when authors pay APC (Björk, 2017; Laakso and Björk, 2016). Whereas in the bronze model, a subscription/hybrid journal makes selected articles available for reading but with some usage restrictions.
The advantages associated with OA are well described in the literature, but they have specific challenges, including the features of different models. Green OA route, making research articles available online through institutional repositories, is quite optimal for researchers, but the implementation of a journal embargo, ranging between 6 and 24 months, seriously hinders this route (Koley and Lala, 2022a). The gold and diamond open access models are fundamentally based on two different strategies (Björk, 2017; Demeter and Istratii, 2020), where the gold route charges APC and diamond journals do not charge APC (Frantsvåg et al., 2021). Various factors drive the APC (Siler and Frenken, 2020), generally between USD 1000 and 5000, and can be as high as USD 11000 (Else, 2020). This model promotes inequality among researchers, depending on their ability to cover the processing charges (Smith et al., 2021). Considering the equity aspect, diamond journals should be the optimal choice for research communities, but the availability and quality of such journals usually are limited (Demeter and Istratii, 2020). However, we can argue that authors from European and US universities publish primarily in the APC-based gold OA journals of major commercial publishers located in this region. On the contrary, authors from non-western universities publish more in diamond journals (Demeter et al., 2021; Iyandemye and Thomas, 2019). The hybrid OA model also perpetuates inequalities among the researchers based on their ability to pay open access fees (Demeter and Istratii, 2020). Consequently, either knowledge is inaccessible since it is behind a paywall or accessible when researchers pay APC- is in conflict with the social value system of accountability, transparency, and scientific knowledge as a common good (Radder, 2017).
In India, OA is being promoted by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India, through an OA policy (DST/DBT, 2014). This policy aims to promote the self-archiving of articles into the institutional repository to foster universal access to articles published by Indian researchers through publicly funded research. The OA policy 2 of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), another distinguished funding agency of Govt of India, also promotes green OA.
Over the years, many research articles have highlighted the growth of open access in India. The study by Nazim (2021) provides a snapshot of India’s open access scenario in academic institutions. Another study highlights the OA publication across subscription and non-subscription models in diverse disciplines (Nazim et al., 2019). The study by Koley and Lala (2022b) highlights the changing dynamics of the open access scenario in India by showing the growth of various OA forms across disciplines. All these studies provide an empirical evidence that publishing and sharing scientific knowledge are changing in India. However, there is a need to push for more open access publishing in the country, considering the significance of OA toward barrier-free knowledge dissemination.
Research objectives
ONOS policy broadly aspires that “The Government of India will negotiate with journal publishers for a “one nation, one subscription” policy whereby, in return for one centrally-negotiated payment, all researchers in India will have access to journal articles. This will replace individual, institutional journal subscriptions” (DST, 2020). But the question is, in the dynamic world of academic publishing, where new open access publishing platforms, infrastructure, and agreements are being established frequently, where significant numbers of articles are available in open access mode, especially in a few disciplines of STEM, how practical a subscription-only deal, undermining the prospect of open access publishing options?
Following the global open access publishing trends in STEM and open access infrastructures of HEIs in India, this article intends to understand the relevance of a subscription-only deal when OA publishing is rising globally. This article also explores the open access publishing avenues available for Indian researchers.
Methodology
This research paper presents the global OA publications trends from the top seven countries (including India) that publish maximum articles in the STEM (2010-2019, 10 years). It also present an assessment of the OA scenario in India by analyzing the publication trends and infrastructure of the top 10 HEIs of the country. The study employed a bibliometric data search strategy using the Scopus (Elsevier) database (https://www-scopus-com.web.bisu.edu.cn) to obtain scientific publications in STEM disciplines from 2010 to 2019. The STEM disciplines conform to the listing in the Scopus database subject category (please see Table 1 for details). The study excluded the social sciences subject group in the Scopus database as the investigation is limited to analyzing the OA trend in STEM subjects since ONOS policy focuses on STEM subjects. The objective of undergoing such a broad overview is to understand the changing dynamics of the publishing industry and the rise of OA publishing trends in top scholarly knowledge-producing countries, including India. Bibliometric search is also supplemented with secondary literature analysis to present a comprehensive picture of open access trends. OA situation in India is supplemented with an analysis of OA publishing patterns of top 10 HEIs, availability of institutional repository, and institutional publishing infrastructure (journals). This strategy provided the opportunity of examining the prospect of India’s “one nation, one subscription policy” for upholding the access and equity rights of Indian academic researchers working in the STEM domains.
STEM subject category.
Source: Authors’ own compilation from Scopus database.
The collected data include the total publication trend and the OA publishing pattern in the STEM subjects from the chosen countries and India between 2010 and 2019 (the study has chosen the United States, China, Germany, United Kingdom, South Korea, and Brazil as the list of countries based on the ranking in STEM category between 2010 and 2019 for the study along with India). The study’s data was collected between July 1, 2021, and February 10, 2022, and the results were represented in graphs and tables using Microsoft Excel 2010 software. The data, for analyzing the OA trend in STEM subjects, was gathered using the Scopus webpage’s “Advanced Search” feature. The following search string was used to extract data on STEM topics between 2010 and 2019, as shown in Table 2.
STEM subject global publication search string.
Source: Scopus database, author’s own compilation.
The above-mentioned string, when entered in the Scopus database, produced the total document published between the years 2010 and 2019 from the entire STEM subject as categorized in Table 1. The data was then filtered based on individual years starting from 2010 to 2019, sorting between the top seven scientific producing countries in the STEM subjects, and was tabulated. The data for total publication in the STEM category across chosen countries in respective years was extracted using the “afflicountry” in the search string. Scopus categorizes publications according to the affiliation country of the corresponding author. The data so obtained is presented in Figure 1. In addition to it, the data for total OA publications out of the total publication made in the respective years for the seven countries was filtered using Microsoft Excel software; this data provided us an overview of the OA trend in the STEM subject between the chosen countries over the years (presented in Figure 2).
Yearly publication trends of top seven countries in STEM fields between 2010 and 2019, 10 years (authors own compilation).
Percentages of OA in yearly publications in STEM fields between 2010 and 2019 (authors’ own compilation).
In addition to this, the study also explored the open access scenario in various research institutions operating in the area of STEM subjects across India. The primary reason for such evaluation is to understand holistically the open access trend in these institutes and the number of scientific papers being contributed by these institutes between 2010 and 2019. The list of top 10 institutes in the number of publications was retrieved from the Scopus database with respect to the chosen STEM subjects between 2010 and 2019. Table 3 describes the search string used in data collection from the Scopus database for the chosen top 10 (Ten) institutes in India.
Search string for top 10 institute in STEM category between 2010 and 2020.
Source: Scopus database.
Results
Open Access (OA) publication trend: Comparative analysis between India and other six countries between 2010 and 2019
According to the Scopus data, the top seven countries in terms of publications in the STEM fields between 2010 and 2019, are presented in the following figure below. China currently produces the most articles yearly in STEM, followed by the US and India at distant third (Figure 1).
The next figure (Figure 2) presents the yearly trends of OA publication in the STEM fields. The OA publications are not a single category but combined contributions of several categories such as green, gold (both APC paid or non-APC/diamond), hybrid, and bronze, as retrieved from the Scopus database.
There has been a gradual increase in OA publications over the years in all the countries (Figure 2). However, when it comes to percentages of OA in the total publications, it is the UK, followed by Germany and the US, leading the trend. Due to extensive promotion and support of OA culture in the UK and Europe, ~80% of publications from the UK and ~60% from Germany are OA publications. The US is also not far behind, with ~60% of total publications being OA (Figure 2). In the case of the UK, the rate of increase in OA publications is quite significant, especially in the UK. However, in the case of Brazil, the trend is not clear. On the other hand, though China and India are the other two top knowledge producers, they are far behind when publishing in open access mode is considered, though there is a growing trend of OA publishing.
Open access scenario of top 10 institute in India
The total and open access publication data between 2010 and 2019 of the top 10 HEIS in the chosen STEM subjects are presented in Table 4, Figures 3 and 4.
Total versus OA publication between 2010 and 2019 in top 10 HEIs.
Cumulative OA over 10 years compared to total publications between 2010 and 2019.
Yearly OA publication trends from top 10 HEIs.
According to data collected from the Scopus database, about 44% of the total publications of AIIMS-Delhi over the past 10 years (2010–2019) are available as OA, 34% of IISc, Bangalore, and 33% of University of Delhi (Figure 3).
However, no clear trend emerges when we see the yearly OA publishing trends (Figure 4). The growth of open access publication ranges between 10 and 30, except for IISc and AIIMS, where OA publication growth touched over 40%–50%. However, no clear emerging trend in OA publication is observed, and this suggests that the OA publication culture is yet to be established in the Indian academic ecosystem. Also, at the individual and institutional level, there is no OA policy exists, clearly indicating that awareness about OA publication is missing among the researchers.
However, while analyzing the data projected in Figure 5 on various OA types, which include Gold OA, Hybrid, Bronze, and Green OA, it is clear that the percentage of Green OA publication is much higher compared to other OA types across all the chosen institutes.
Share of different OA types in total OA publication from top 10 HEIs between 2010 and 2019.
Data from Figure 4 indicates that OA publications from HEIs have slightly increased in the past decade, and the preferred mode of knowledge dissemination by these chosen institutions is the green OA mode. Publishing in the closed mode in the subscription (or hybrid) journals still predominates as there is no APC support. However, the use of green OA mode has not picked up as well, although the DST-DBT OA policy mandates green OA.
The next section focuses on the infrastructure, where the availability of institutional repositories is articulated in Table 5 and institutional journals in Table 6.
Status of institutional repositories of 10 HEIs.
Source: Authors own compilation from multiple web sources.
Institutional journal status.
Source: Authors own compilation from multiple web sources.
Publication infrastructure in Top 10 HEIs
Institutional repositories (IRs) are one of the best ways to disseminate research articles from publicly funded research. Upon publication, researchers can deposit one copy of their article (author’s own version) before type-setting by the journals in the IR. The following table (Table 5) presents the status of IRs of the top 10 HEIs.
Most institutions have IR, but the focus is thesis and dissertation; author versions of the articles are not publicly available in these repositories, as seen from the deposit log of these IRs.
The following table (Table 6) represents the status of institutional journals and the usage of these journals by institute members. Also, not all the journals are indexed in Scopus, thereby showing a variation in OA publication percentages from Scopus data. Also, some of these journals follow an ambiguous publication model, where articles are OA while accessing from India, but not globally.
Table 6 shows that not all institutions have their own journals, and researchers mostly prefer to publish in internationally renowned high-impact factor/ prestigious journals. One of the main reasons behind such actions is assessment criteria for promotions and funding opportunities, which are tied with quantitative research evaluation metrics. However, in AIIM-Delhi, a medical institution, the situation is different, and the primary reason is the Indian medical society journals have a reputation that helps in career evaluation.
There are two other significant initiatives in India that facilitate access to knowledge and guide researchers to publish in legitimate journal.
UGC CARE
University Grants Commission (UGC) of India launched an initiative of quality mandates “to stimulate and empower the Indian academia” through the establishment of a dedicated Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (CARE) in 2018. Two of the major activities listed under UGC-CARE are developing research-based methodology for identification of standard journals and put a stop to the predatory, dubious journals. “UGC-CARE Reference List of Quality Journals” (UGC-CARE list) is the significant step toward it’s mandate. The list is created and maintained by the “UGC-Cell for Journal Analysis” affiliated with the Centre for Publication Ethics (CPE) and operates through a stringent quality control mechanism. The UGC CARE 3 list provides a comprehensive catalog of academic journals from almost all publishers worldwide where researchers in India can publish their work. Only work published in those journals is counted for academic promotion. The UGC’s initiative to publish an exhaustive list of quality journals across various disciplines is a significant step toward promoting quality research, academic integrity, and research ethics in the scholarly community. Previously, India had emerged as a hotbed of predatory journals, and the UGC CARE list is an essential move to curb the proliferation of unscrupulous journals (Patwardhan and Nagarkar, 2021).
INFLIBNET
The Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) 4 Centre, established by the UGC in 1991, plays a vital role in connecting and sharing resources among researchers in India through library interconnection. Furthermore, the INFLIBNET center provides access to scholarly articles and databases by modernizing university libraries in India and connecting them through a nationwide high-speed data network using cutting-edge technologies to maximize information utilization for all researchers across different institutions.
Discussions
China, the US, and India are the top three countries in the number of publications in the STEM field, as seen from the Scopus data compilation presented in Figure 1. Similar results are published in NSF data for 2020 (Karen, 2021). As per the data, China contributed 22.77%, the USA 15.50%, India 5.07%, Germany 3.72%, and the UK 3.59% of total publications in Science and Engineering. India is one of the leading countries in the world in producing scholarly knowledge. Institutes like the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs), Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), and other research institutes of national importance are engaged in producing cutting-edge technology and research. However, these elite institutes have a reasonably good resource for subscribing reasonable numbers of journal titles of major publishers; but the other hundreds of institutions struggle to access basic scientific knowledge. These institutes are far behind in facilitating access to scientific knowledge for their students and researchers due to the paucity of funds to subscribe to journals. Therefore, the proposed ONOS policy seems a good idea. But the previous study shows that disciplinary context in subscription-based journals is an important consideration, and a blanket policy will lead to a waste of resources (Koley and Lala, 2022a) Moreover, the constant shift toward the OA by the leading publishers put even a more significant question on a subscription-only deal.
Before the global OA movement, most of the articles were accessible only through an intuitional subscription model or individual purchase of an article. Access to knowledge is an essential enabler of research and development; therefore, knowledge mustn’t be behind a paywall. However, considering the rapid changes which the scholarly publishing industry is going through, such an idea is questionable. While a substantial number of journals still follow the subscription paywall business model, open access publishing is on the rise. A study that analyses 67 M articles reports that at least 28% (19 M in total) are OA, and the proportion is growing (Piwowar et al., 2018). Our analysis also shows similar trends in open access publishing. According to our analysis, a substantial part of those publications are OA, and in the past couple of years, there has been an increasing trend toward OA publication (Figure 2). As we can see from Figure 2, in 2019, 60%–80% of total publications from the US, UK and Germany are OA. In comparison, about 38% and 33% of publications from China and India, respectively, are OA. In the case of India, the Increasing trend of OA publications was more prominent during 2015–2017, right after the inception of the DST-DBT OA policy (2014).
Collectively we can see a rise in OA publications. Additionally, initiatives like Plan S are instrumental in promoting OA further. Plan S is an initiative supported by cOalisation S, 5 an international consortium of research funding and performing organizations. According to Plan S principles, starting from 2021, all scholarly articles funded by research councils and funded bodies agreeing on Plan S principles must be published in “Open Access Journal, on open Access platforms or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.” 6 Plan S significantly contributes to “accelerating the transition to full and immediate open access to scientific publications” (Schiltz, 2018). Motivated by Plan S compliance, transformative agreements are being signed regularly, mostly by the universities from the global north (Borrego et al., 2021). Consequently, more articles published from these universities are available as OA in past year(s). The transformative agreement generally refers to the contract signed between a library or group of libraries and a publisher that allows access to journal contents and open access to publishing in those journals, thus shifting from only subscription-based reading deals 7 to read and publish deals. According to the analysis presented by ESAC on transformative agreements shows exponential growth in open access, with more than 550,000 articles from 40 countries openly accessible in 2022. 8 Moreover, even a significant numbers of articles are available as pre-prints as well (Iborra et al., 2022; Rise of Preprints, 2020). Such a phenomenal increase in the availability of open access articles is one of the fundamental reasons to question the policy decision of a subscription-only model. Since a considerable portion of knowledge is already available as OA, especially in a few STEM disciplines, a nationwide deal toward a banket subscription looks like a financial loss for the country.
The other dimension of the discussion is the promotion of OA publishing options. As we can see from our analysis, the major Indian academic institutions have still not adopted the open access model, and only small fractions of articles are available as OA (Figure 3), and a frequently used avenue is the green OA (Figure 5). Moreover, there is no clear trends of adoption in OA publication over the years from the top 10 HEIs (Figure 4). First of all, green OA is a delayed access option, and there are no right retention strategies in any of the Indian institutes; therefore, complying with the DST-DBT OA mandate of green OA can put researchers under copyright-related complications. Table 5 provides the status of institutional repositories of the top 10 Indian HEIs. It should be noted that almost all the institutions chosen in the study do have a repository. But these repositories only act as a platform to deposit thesis and dissertation, not for depositing the author-version of the published articles (green OA). This shows that the green OA route was not a successful strategy in India, and the adoption rate is abysmal. The study also finds (for detail, please refer to Table 6) that very few institutions have their own journals. Only CSIR has a diverse set of open access journals to promote open access availability of research articles; otherwise, all the other institutes seem to be more focused on subscription-based scientific knowledge production. But the journals published by CSIR do not have a considerable impact factor or international reputation. Furthermore, while the INFLIBNET center is an important player in sharing scholarly research among scholars, a lot of new initiatives are needed to strengthen knowledge sharing among researchers working at different institutions (Chand and Arora, 2008; Esh and Ghosh, 2021).
On the other hand, when it comes to publishing OA journals that levy APC, Indian researchers are at a disadvantageous position since funding supports for APC are very limited and restricted to very few institutions. Scholars even argue that gold OA journals that charge APC are non-ethical and Indian researchers should not use their grants to pay APC when research funding is scarce (Madhan et al., 2017). The high article processing charge is a barrier not just for Indian researchers but for researchers of other global south countries (Kwon, 2022). However, publishing in prestigious journals is one of the criteria of the academic assessment system in India. Therefore, researchers tend to pay APC to publish in their journal of choice if funding is available.
Moreover, in some disciples, gold OA journals are becoming more and more common, such as the cases in health sciences and biological sciences (Wang et al., 2015). The availability of quality Diamond OA journals is limited in many disciplines, and researchers do not have much choice here (Bosman et al., 2021. This is true in the Indian scenario as well. The rise of Altmerics to supplement impact factor metrics in assessing research is another new dimension that might impact the prospects of diamond journals (Wilsdon et al., 2017). As compiled in Table 6, the publication infrastructure of the top HEIs is poor, and researchers of the institutions are not interested in publishing in these journals since they are not globally recognized.
In India, there is no national policy for support toward APC, and any such consideration may enlist additional financial burden on funding agencies. Since the subscription model is in decline, there is a possibility of reducing the cost of subscriptions and moving toward reading and publishing deals instead of a subscription-only “one nation, one subscription” policy. But such a proposition should also carefully consider the disciplinary diversity in publishing behavior. In some disciplines, subscription journals still dominate, and facilitating access through subscription is more suitable, but it’s the other way round in some fields.
However, any such negotiations may only provide short-term benefits since they won’t add to the country’s journal infrastructure upgradation. The Ibero-Americal publishing model (López et al., 2019), which is a thriving non-profit open access scholarly publishing system handled by academic institutions, can be adopted in India. This will create a more independent future in academic publishing without depending on commercial publishers. There are many Indian journals managed by the Indian Academy of Sciences and CSIR, which are open access and do not charge any fee to the authors. Bringing these journals under a similar consortium model like the Ibero-America will help build a much better system, which can help counter predatory publishing and promote local context-specific research (Koley et al., 2022). But such steps need support from Indian funding agencies, science academies, and good governance to manage quality and on-time review and publishing. A recent study has elaborated on how such an open-access publishing platform can be conceived in India following a diamond model (Koley et al., 2022).
Conclusions
Globally open-access publishing landscape has expanded significantly in recent years. Therefore, public expenditure toward a centralized subscription-only deal as recommended in the proposed “one nation, one subscription” policy will primarily benefit the big publishing companies, not Indian academics. The growth of OA publications with the availability of a considerable proportion of articles as OA point toward the requirement of a coupled deal that accounts for all the aspects of article publishing- subscription, access and suitable avenues to publish. However, if at all such negotiations are feasible in the Indian context, it is a burning question whether they should be done at a national level. We incline to think that it is much easier to track publishing behavior at the institutional level to negotiate deals with publishers. Moreover, the whole ONOS policy proposition reflects only a short-term goal. Monetizing the access to scientific knowledge and publishing new knowledge is equally undesirable for the progress of science, and we need to establish self-reliant pathways to ensure the right to access and the right to publish peer-reviewed authentic, reproducible knowledge in India. Therefore, strengthening the already existing Indian journal systems with the help of ICT technologies and working with the Ibero-American consortia to develop a diamond OA model is one of the most suitable ways. A robust local journal system will also help reconcile a balance between global approaches and local context in research. It will improve the quality and relevance of research performed in Indian Academia. However, current research assessment practices need refurbishing to encourage publishing in local journals.
To sum up, to achieve the objective of facilitating barrier-free access to scientific knowledge across all the HEI in India, the ONOS policy provides a short-term vision and misses the aspects of open access publishing options. For long-term achievements, strengthening the local publishing infrastructure is essential. The elite institutions also have to participate in this mission by preparing their own publication policy by promoting the Indian open access journal system/ open access platforms.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
