Centre launches One Nation One Subscription to facilitate access to research articles
The scheme will benefit around 18 million students, faculty, and researchers across disciplines such as STEM, medicine, social sciences, finance and accounts.
The Union education ministry on Wednesday launched the One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) scheme to facilitate free access to most high-end academic journals and articles published globally to students in various government-funded higher educational institutions, including IITs, across the country.
The scheme will benefit around 18 million students, faculty, and researchers across disciplines such as STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), medicine, social sciences, finance and accounts, etc, the ministry said in a statement after the ONOS launch. The scheme, which was approved by the Union Cabinet on November 25 last year, aims at improving research and development (R&D) ecosystem in the country.
“This call for a vibrant R&D ecosystem resonated with the goals outlined in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which identifies research as a fundamental driver of educational excellence and national progress. The policy seeks to cultivate a robust research culture that not only enhances academic quality but also accelerates India’s growth on the global stage…” the statement read.
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The scheme will provide inclusive access to research for institutions in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, ensuring equitable access to knowledge. At least 13,400 international journals covering STEM, medicine, management, social sciences and humanities would be made available to researchers under the first phase of the ONOS initiative.
Under the initiative, 451 state public universities, 4,864 colleges and 172 institutes of national importance will be among the 6,380 higher education and research institutions that will have access to top journals published by 30 publishers, including Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley, it added.
The ministry further said that the entire subscription process will be centrally coordinated by INFLIBNET (Information and Library Network), an autonomous inter-university centre under the University Grants Commission (UGC), which will manage the distribution of digital access to these journals, ensuring a seamless experience for users.
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Journals will be accessible entirely through a digital platform, ensuring convenience and ease for all users. This approach minimises administrative complexities and makes access available on-demand.
“A total of ₹6,000 crore has been allocated for the scheme, covering three years—2025, 2026, and 2027. The funding will cover the subscription charges for all participating institutions across the three-year period. Further, ONOS will also provide central funding support of ₹150 crore per year for beneficiary authors to publish in selected good quality Open Access (OA) journals,” the statement read.
The phase I, which started on Wednesday, will provide access to over 13,000 journals for at least 6,300 government academic and R&D institutes including central and state-government universities and colleges. The ministry said the experience of ONOS phase I will be used for designing subsequent phases of the scheme.
The scheme is the first step in a multi-pronged approach. “It expands access through the widely used subscription model. The other steps focus initially on promoting Indian journals and repositories and then introducing new research evaluation methods that consider both journal metrics and factors like innovation and entrepreneurship,” the statement read.