(2 Jan 2021) On New Year’s Day, the government of India released the bold and ambitious draft Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP) to the public for comments.
The policy aims to bring about changes in the research ecosystem of India by encouraging innovation to make the Indian science and technology ecosystem one that can survive global competition.
As part of such an endeavour, the government proposed a ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ plan which would make thousands of journals freely available to Indians.
One Nation, One Subscription
According to the policy draft, “The Government of India will negotiate with journal publishers for a “one nation, one subscription” policy whereby, in return for one centrally negotiated payment, all individuals in India will have access to journal articles. This will replace individual institutional journal subscriptions.”
It is estimated that Indian research institutes spend nearly 15 billion rupees on subscriptions to paywalled journals and articles alone. Through the policy, the government of India intends to become the largest country to give free access to content behind paywalls to such a large population.
ED Times has the full story by Roshni Ramesan here.
The draft policy is here.
