£560 million India scheme a ‘game changer’ for country’s researchers
The Indian government has launched a radical ‘One Nation One Subscription’ initiative aimed at giving its researchers and education establishments immediate access to a huge range of international journals.
The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has hailed the development as a “game-changer for Indian academia and for youth empowerment”.
The scheme, which launches in January and will run for three years, has the stated aim of “establishing India in the global research ecosystem by bringing ease of doing research to the doorstep of all students, faculty and researchers in the government institutions”.
The government has pledged to invest around £560 million ($710m) over the three-year period, to “open a goldmine of knowledge available in top-quality scholarly journals” to nearly 18 million students, faculty, researchers and scientists.
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Some 30 major international journal publishers have been included in One Nation One Subscription; all of the nearly 13,000 e-journals published by these publishers will now be accessible to more than 6,300 government higher education institutions and central government R&D institutions.
The publishers include Elsevier ScienceDirect, Springer Nature, Wiley Blackwell Publishing, Taylor & Francis, Sage Publishing, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and BMJ Journals.
Researchers and students will be able to access journals through a national subscription managed by the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET), an independent organisation under the country’s University Grants Commission (UGC).
Press coverage in India has revealed many differing opinions about the scheme; while many are supportive of the initiative’s general aims, there has been some criticism regarding the logic of creating a deal with just 30 publishers.
Others have suggested that negotiating smaller, more flexible purchasing models may have provided better value for money. Some have also shared concerns about the potential loss of jobs and positions should the government decide to freeze the payments.