One Nation One Subscription comes at a huge cost

As top US universities scrap big deals with top scientific publishers, India’s ONOS scheme seems flawed and outdated

YOU COULD be forgiven for thinking that the much bandied about "One Nation One Subscription" is another of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rallying calls, a catchy political slogan, like "One Nation One Election". It is actually an initiative, ONOS for short, to widen access to the latest scientific knowledge (and hopefully spur innovation here) by signing a single deal with 30 of the biggest names in the global scientific publishing industry. It will provide access to scholarly research articles in 13,000 journals published by the industry to an estimated 18 million students and researchers in government universities and public laboratories. For this access India has agreed to pay a single subscription fee of US $715 million, which works out to slightly over ₹6,000 crore, for a three-year period starting January 1, 2025. Is it "a game changer", as Modi describes it?

The price, hammered out in protracted negotiations-the initial number of 70 publishers was whittled down to 30-over almost three years, is, according to the official view, a great bargain because the single national purchase has brought down the cost to the country. Earlier individual institutions or consortia of libraries negotiated the price for the journals they wanted. Now, through a common ONOS digital platform, students, faculty and researchers across 6,300 government universities, colleges, research organisations and Institutions of National Importance will be able to access the costly journals. A decided benefit of ONOS is that it would eliminate duplication and waste of resources through overlapping subscriptions.