Starting January 1, around 1.8 crore students from state-funded universities and IITs will be able to access research papers from leading global journals. This is part of the government’s ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ plan.
At a press conference, the government’s Principal Scientific Advisor, AK Sood, announced that over 13,400 international journals covering fields like science, technology, engineering, medicine, mathematics, management, social sciences, and humanities would be made available to researchers in the first phase of the ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ (ONOS) initiative.
As part of 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 leading journals published by 30 publishers, including Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley.
“Earlier, institutions such as IITs or central universities subscribed to a small set of journals related to specific disciplines but, under ONOS, all institutions will have access to 13,400 research journals,” said Department of Science and Technology Secretary Abhay Karadikar.
He said the ONOS initiative would be launched on January 1 and access to top journals available for the next three years.
In the second phase, the government plans to expand the initiative to private academic institutions through a public-private partnership model. The third phase will provide universal access to international journals via designated access points at public libraries.
ONOS will be managed by a central agency, the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET), an autonomous inter-university center of the University Grants Commission (UGC).
“The initiative will expand access to scholarly journals to a vast diaspora of students, faculty, researchers and scientists of all disciplines, including those in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, thereby promoting core as well as interdisciplinary research in the country,” Sood said.
The initiative has been launched as a central sector scheme with a budget of Rs 6,000 crore for a three-year period.