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This guest blog is authored by Sridhar Gutam, PhD, ARS, Principal Scientist, ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bengaluru & Founder & Convenor, Open Access India – A Community of Practice advocating for Open Access in India
Dr. Sridhar Gutam is a principal scientist at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (ICAR-IIHR) in Bengaluru, specializing in the study of plant physiology and phenology in horticultural crops. Dr. Gutam is deeply committed to advancing agricultural research as well as fostering a culture of openness and collaboration. As the founder of Open Access India—a community of practice advocating ̉open science—he has been instrumental in advocating the unrestricted sharing of publicly funded research and data, contributing to the adoption of open access policies within ICAR. Beyond his research and advocacy, Dr. Gutam is also deeply interested in intellectual property rights and has pursued extensive professional development in this area. His commitment to bridging the gap between science, policy, and education underscores his vision for a more inclusive and accessible global research ecosystem.
This blog post presents Dr. Gutam’s independent views on the newly launched One Nation One Subscription Initiative announced by the Indian Government. Through this piece, Dr. Gutam opens up several avenues of conversation about the merits and potential risks of initiatives like ONOS.
The One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) initiative, with its $560 million funding, aims to provide Indian researchers with access to global scientific literature (currently behind paywalls) by consolidating consortiums and deals into a single, comprehensive subscription model. While this has the potential to improve access to knowledge in the short term, its implications for the Open Access (OA) movement are multifaceted and require thoughtful analysis.
Implications for the OA movement
The ONOS initiative makes paywalled resources widely available to Indian researchers by bundling multiple subscriptions. While this undeniably enhances access, it risks sidelining investments in sustainable OA infrastructures, such as Diamond OA journals and repositories. The availability of subscription access may create a false sense of sufficiency, potentially undermining advocacy for community-driven OA publishing.
Despite its immediate benefits, ONOS reinforces the reliance on commercial publishers and perpetuates the paywall model. This stands in contrast to the ethos of OA, which seeks to eliminate barriers to both accessing and publishing research. By strengthening the dominance of large commercial publishers, ONOS risks inhibiting the growth of indigenous, equitable, and non-commercial publishing platforms, as resources and attention remain focused on expensive subscription agreements.
A truly transformative approach would integrate ONOS with investments in Diamond OA models, community-led publishing platforms, and stronger mandates for self-archiving (Green OA). Such measures would ensure that access to research is not only widened but also made sustainable and equitable.
There are also calls for ONOS to include Transformative Agreements (TAs), which would allow Indian researchers to publish without paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). However, these agreements remain centered on commercial publishers and the author-pays model, leaving fundamental issues of equity and sustainability unaddressed. Instead of allocating resources primarily to subscription and TA models, the government should prioritize Diamond OA journals, institutional repositories, and community-led initiatives. Additionally, efforts are needed to reform research assessment frameworks, which currently emphasize proprietary metrics and commercial databases over research quality and societal impact.
Towards true open access
True OA fosters collaborative discourse among authors, readers, and reviewers, collectively ensuring the quality of new knowledge. This participatory approach aligns with the core mission of science and scholarship: to build upon shared knowledge for societal advancement.
The Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) reports that “Out of 42 million journal articles and conference papers published since 2010, 47% are accessible in some form.” Furthermore, platforms like Sci-Hub, despite legal challenges, continue to provide widespread access, even in resource-rich countries.
Investing such a significant amount in ONOS without a clear roadmap for community-led, non-commercial Diamond OA publishing introduces the risk of perpetuating the closed-access model. This approach could make science less open and leave researchers reliant on recurring, costly negotiations for access.
India’s opportunity
Several global movements are increasingly favoring the Diamond OA model. Some examples that come to mind here are Science Europe’s focus on strengthening Diamond OA; the first and second summits on Diamond Open Access in 2023 and 2024, respectively; the upcoming (2025) public launch of the European Diamond Capacity Hub; and the announcement of the Global Diamond Open Access Alliance in July 2024. In light of these developments, Indian policymakers must reevaluate the unsustainable costs of subscription-based systems for national access. Embracing a community-driven publishing approach would align India with global best practices, reduce dependency on commercial publishers, and establish the country as a leader in equitable knowledge dissemination. This shift would ensure that research and scholarly outputs from Indian researchers gain global visibility and provide greater accessibility to scholars worldwide.
Like Latin America, India has the potential to emerge as a hub for affordable, community-led publishing. To realize this potential, the country must adopt robust support for OA platforms and implement alternative research assessment models that move away from proprietary metrics like Journal Impact Factors as the sole criteria for evaluation.
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