The Union Cabinet chaired by prime minister Narendra Modi has approved the One Nation One Subscription, a new central scheme to provide country-wide access to scholarly research articles and journals.
The One Nation One Subscription facility, which will be administered through a user-friendly and fully digital process, will be available for higher education institutions and R&D laboratories managed by the central and state governments.
An amount of Rs 6,000 crore has been allocated for the scheme for three calendar years – 2025, 2026 and 2027 – as a new central sector Scheme. The subscription model will build on and further enhance the scope and reach of the range of initiatives undertaken by the government of India over the past decade in the domains of education, for maximizing access to quality higher education for the youth of India.
“This will supplement the ANRF (Anusandhan National Research Foundation) initiative to promote research and development and foster a culture of research and innovation throughout government universities, colleges, research institutions, and R&D laboratories,” the government said.
The benefits of One Nation One Subscription scheme will be provided to all higher educational institutions managed by the central or state governments as well as central research & development institutions through a national subscription coordinated by the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET), an autonomous inter-university center of the University Grants Commission (UGC).
This list covers more than 6,300 institutions, translating into nearly 1.8 crore students, faculty and researchers, who will be able to potentially avail benefits of One Nation One Subscription.
The initiative in line with the goals of Viksitbharat@2047, National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) 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.
The ANRF will periodically review the usage of One Nation One Subscription and publications of Indian authors of these institutions. The department of higher education will have a unified ‘One Nation One Subscription’ portal through which the institutions will be able to access the journals.
In a press conference, Abhay Karandikar, secretary, department of science and technology, said ONOS is only dealing with electronic journals from 30 publishers, whose entire collection will be available under ONOS. Institutions are free to subscribe to resources such as ebooks and databases and journals from publishers other than these 30 publishers.
The 30 publishers include prominent names covering the streams of STEMM, management, social sciences and humanities. The list includes names such as Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Sage Publishing, etc.
