Mint primer | Should India pay for academic journal access?

What is this initiative all about?

ONOS will allow national access to academic research and journals publishing scientific papers free of charge starting next year. To coordinate free access, India is setting up a central agency, the Information and Library Network, or INFLIBNET, under the University Grants Commission. It will cover more than 6,300 institutions with over 18 million students, the Centre said. All state and central higher education institutions are covered, besides central government R&D labs. India’s Anusandhan National Research Foundation, or ANRF, is to manage the scheme, and review how many Indians are published. 

What can academics access under ONOS? 

ONOS will include 13,000 journals from 30 publishers, including top names such as Wiley (publisher of scientific journal Advanced Materials), Elsevier (health journal Lancet), Springer Nature and AAAS (publisher of academic journal Science). These publishers own thousands of journals across niches in scientific research in India and abroad. Individual subscriptions to these journals can cost thousands of dollars; India is spending ₹6,000 crore ($700 million) to make these subscriptions free over the next three years. Academics will be able to access these journals via a single ONOS portal. 

Why is this a significant initiative? 

Most students and researchers cannot afford to pay for subscriptions or even an article on their own. If their institution does not offer access, many resort to what some call piracy, using websites such as Sci-Hub and Z-Library. Now government institutions, including those in tier-II and tier-III cities, need not worry about raising funds for access to scientific knowledge. 

How have publishers fought piracy in India? 

Elsevier, Wiley, and the American Chemical Society sued Sci Hub and LibGen in the Delhi high court in 2020. These platforms host freely accessible versions of published research and are widely used by students, teachers and academics. This case is ongoing. In 2023, a similar case was filed in a Delhi district court by tax law publisher Taxmann India against online platform Z-Library, which has subsequently been blocked in India. Publishers have filed similar copyright cases around the world against such platforms. 

Shouldn’t academic knowledge be free? 

Many academics believe publishers unfairly profit from scientific progress while blocking access to new knowledge. Universities benefit from public funding, too. Worldwide, there is a growing “open access” movement demanding academic knowledge be freely available. Its most famous proponent was Aaron Swartz. In 2012, the US authorities sentenced Swartz to jail for “stealing” paywalled research papers from digital academic library JSTOR. The next year, Swartz died by suicide at the age of 26.