The government is set to launch the ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ (ONOS) initiative on January 1, providing access to research papers from top global journals to about 1.8 crore students from state-funded higher education institutions, including universities and IITs.
In a press conference, Principal Scientific Advisor AK Sood announced that more than 13,400 international journals covering fields such as science, technology, engineering, medicine, mathematics, management, social sciences, and humanities would be available to researchers under the first phase of the ONOS initiative.
The initiative will offer access to journals published by 30 major publishers, including Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley, to 6,380 higher education and research institutes, including 451 state public universities, 4,864 colleges, and 172 institutes of national importance.
Previously, institutions like IITs or central universities only subscribed to a limited number of discipline-specific journals, but under ONOS, all institutions will have access to 13,400 research journals. The initiative, which will begin on January 1, will offer access to these journals for the next three years.
The second phase of the initiative will extend access to private academic institutions through a public-private partnership model, while the third phase will offer universal access to international journals through designated points at public libraries.
The initiative will be managed by the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET), an autonomous inter-university center of the University Grants Commission (UGC). Sood emphasized that ONOS would provide widespread access to scholarly journals for students, faculty, researchers, and scientists across all disciplines, including those in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, promoting both core and interdisciplinary research in the country.
This initiative has been launched as a central sector scheme with a budget of Rs 6,000 crore for a three-year period.