World is moving on from paying publishers — India should too, Pg2

Key Highlights:

• Major research-producing nations, including China, the U.S., Australia, and Europe, are actively shifting away from traditional commercial scholarly publishing models.
• China is strategically building a domestic scholarly publishing ecosystem and discouraging reliance on foreign publishers, including stopping payments for high Article Processing Charges (APCs).
• The U.S. government is scrutinizing the costs of academic publishing, viewing publishers' profits as a fiscal and transparency concern.
• Australia has mandated immediate open access for publicly funded research through its updated ARC Open Access Policy, effective July 1, 2026.
• Europe is developing publicly owned publishing infrastructure, such as Open Research Europe, and promoting the diamond open access model to remove commercial publishers from the equation.
• India has committed ₹6,000 crore over three years to its One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) scheme, operational since January 2025, to provide access to over 13,000 journals from 30 publishers.

Publishers.png

Detailed Insights:

• China's strategy involves changing research evaluation practices, investing in journal infrastructure, and encouraging researchers to publish in domestic journals to build knowledge sovereignty.
• The Chinese Academy of Sciences announced it would stop covering APCs for over 30 high-cost international journals, including Nature Communications, which charge over $5,000 per paper.
• The U.S. Office of Management and Budget proposed curtailing subscription and journal publication costs, including APCs, under federal awards.
• The ARC Open Access Policy v2026.1 requires journal articles and conference papers from ARC-funded research to be made openly accessible immediately upon publication, with compliance falling on grant-administering organizations.
• Open Research Europe, backed by a nearly €17 million budget, aims to provide a publishing platform where researchers from 11 participating national systems can publish without paying.
• The diamond open access model ensures articles are freely available to readers and authors do not pay APCs, with costs borne by funders and research institutions.
• India's ONOS scheme provides access to scholarly content for approximately 6,300 government, academic, and research institutions, benefiting researchers in tier-2 and tier-3 institutions.
• While ONOS addresses the reading problem, it does not solve the publishing problem and involves paying for content that is already freely accessible.
• The scheme faces criticism for opaque publisher pricing, lack of protection against future cost inflation, and insufficient investment in Indian journals.
• India is encouraged to implement green open access mandates for publicly funded research, rights retention policies, and invest in domestic publishing platforms.

Key Concepts Involved:

• One Nation One Subscription (ONOS): India's national scheme providing centralized access to scholarly e-journals from multiple publishers to academic and research institutions.
• Open Access: The practice of providing free, immediate, online access to scholarly research, primarily peer-reviewed journal articles.
• Article Processing Charges (APCs): Fees levied by publishers on authors or their institutions to make their research articles openly accessible.
• Diamond Open Access: A model where scholarly articles are freely available to readers, and authors do not pay any publication fees, with costs covered by institutions or funders.
• Green Open Access: A method of achieving open access by authors self-archiving their research outputs (pre-prints or post-prints) in institutional or subject repositories.