One Nation One Subscription: boon and bane?
Vivek Mehra shares his hopes and concerns over India’s $750m investment in access to research
This week, the Government of India announced the launch of its much awaited One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) scheme. I have been following this since the idea was first proposed four years ago as part of the New Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The rationale behind this initiative must be understood before dissecting its implementation and implications. Education in India, at all levels, is treated as not-for-profit. Both central and state governments are tasked with establishing educational institutions and allocating budgets to ensure minimal fees. In 2009, Parliament enacted the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act.
Over the years, through various acts of parliament, the policy has been amended to allow private trusts to operate education institutions. The result is that we have a number of private schools, colleges, institutions and deemed universities. But each one of these is run by a not-for-profit trust.
It stands to reason, then, that the largest buyers of educational resources are the Central and State governments. The ONOS scheme focuses on higher education and resources that help students with research material both for curricula setting and for furthering research.
The highlights of the scheme are as follows:
- A single-window purchasing entity, INFLIBNET, has been tasked with negotiating with the top 30 publishers out of a pool of 70+ originally identified publishers. The balance 40+ are expected to be closed in due course.
- In Phase1, approximately 6,300 institutions and 18 million students will gain access to all the resources of the 30 publishers, at no cost. This cost will be borne by the central government.
- The 6,300 institutions form the creamy layer of some 28,000 institutions believed to be operational in India. The said 6,300 are funded by central and perhaps some state budgets (education department).
- There is a budgetary allocation of around US$ 750 million for three years. My interpretation is that this is the budgetary allocation and not necessarily the amount committed to the 30 publishers. It is highly possible that a portion is allocated first, and the rest as Indian institutions build their digital infrastructure and gain access.
The benefits of such a scheme are obvious; the single negotiator can easily get a better deal than the fragmented 6,300 could do on their own. The delivery will be centralised and hence usage will be monitored across Indian institutions. Students will get access to learning materials that have rarely been available to them.
While no official information is available, subsequent phases of the scheme are expected to include more institutions, especially in Tier 2 and 3 areas. Private universities, deemed universities, standalone institutes will eventually be covered under this scheme.
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There are two other issues that this move raises, and these need more attention than what has been allocated by mainstream media.
The publishers’ point of view
I have been a publisher for most of my professional life. When the first proposal on ONOS floated around the launch of the New Educational Policy 2020, there was cause for concern.
The first concern is that the government, being the largest purchaser of these resources, will cap the spend while expanding access exponentially. This means a publisher is being guaranteed a fixed revenue by the government for the entire Indian market. The guaranteed revenue will clearly be for the content available on 1 January 2025.
Statutory additions to existing journals are factored into the annual pricing. As has been seen over the last 20 years in the West, adding new content to the bundle (beyond the committed amount) doesn’t attract a proportional increase in revenue. In other words, if there are 1,000 journals in a given bundle, adding another 200 journals will NOT yield additional revenue of 20%.
In these large deals, the price is generally fixed for a specific period – in this case, three years. There may be small annual increases built into the deal but there are rarely provisions for new content being added. It’s purely logical that when revenues are fixed the only area to manage then is cost. New content will attract the same cost but will not yield any new profit. In such a scenario, it is my belief that publishers will systematically reduce manpower in India, which is by far their greatest cost; one that increases every year.
Sales teams, content acquisition teams, production teams and marketing teams at these 30 publishers will surely be affected. The tragedy would be that a host of trained manpower will not just be left jobless but will not find jobs in the field of journal publishing in India. Each affected person will have to reinvent themselves; perhaps reskill and not just upskill. The journal publishing and distribution network in India will diminish.
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The Indian researcher
The second concern is the one that affects the Indian researcher. The 18 million students, faculty, and researchers are potential clients to publish their research at some point in time. Clarivate’s numbers from 2022 record some 200,000 articles published from India. That’s just about 1% of the total market size. Even if we focused on early career researchers, teaching faculty, senior researchers the best estimate is a population of 2.9 million. Of these let’s assume 200,000 find their way into the prestigious journals of the 30 top publishers. That still leaves around 2.7 million without any publishing. Traditional journals already have extremely high rejection rates, some as high as 99%.
This leaves us with Open Access publishing. The Government of India has stated that around US$45 million as APC (https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/one-nation-one-subscription-9691391/). Figures of APCs from India are not readily available from MNC publishers. It is very possible that even though the US$45 million is correct, a significant amount of this has not reached credible publishers but has found its way into what are known as fake journals or predatory journals.
Compound this scenario with MNC publishers having a “no launch journal” policy in the field of traditional subscription-based journal publishing. This policy has been in force for the last 10 years and nothing suggests this will change. Open Access is only possible with article processing charges being paid to publishers. Currently APCs range from around US$900 to US$12,500. Enough has been written about the Indian Government’s inability to fund APCs at these levels.
Publishers have not indicated whether they will offer a special pricing for Indian content. This is especially true because Indian research is NOT seen as marketable to Western audiences. Citations and Indexing to Western standards doesn’t work for pure Indian content.
The result is that the already pressured Indian researcher is going to feel the pressure increase. With the UGC relentlessly pursuing a policy of journal inclusion only after three years of publishing, Indian publishing will have to find ways to keep the fires burning for this gestation period. And this is only to meet the current publishing needs.
While these are interesting times to be in journal publishing, the biggest threat to Indian research publishing is the management of the sheer volume that India has the potential to produce. Western publishers quickly adapted to China’s increased output because the Government there provided monetary support at acceptable levels. With the Indian government tightening purse strings it is worth watching the space to know what happens to the Indian researcher.
For now, it is time to celebrate this landmark policy decision. Knowledge is being democratised and will no longer remain confined to a privileged few.
Dr Vivek Mehra is the founder and CEO of Vikramshila Research and former CEO and Managing Director of SAGE Publications India
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