(22 Jul 2025) India’s transformation has been largely driven by the New Education Policy (NEP) and an ambitious national initiative known as One Nation, One Subscription (ONOS). This government-led plan aims to consolidate access to research materials for educational institutions across the country, ensuring that millions of students and researchers can access high-quality scholarly content.
Nearly 6,400 institutions across the country including Higher Educational Institutions i.e. central and state universities, colleges (including all medical colleges) and central government R&D institutions will benefit from ONOS. This translates to nearly millions of students, faculty and researchers across the country getting access to more than 13,000 journals from 30 publishers including the top four global publishers (Elsevier, Springer-Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley).
As part of the recent Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) Act, the Government plans to seed and promote a vibrant research culture in the tier-2 and tier-3 higher educational institutions. Through ONOS, many such institutions will begin to get access to journals, which is a necessity for doing research. Under ONOS, the govt. has negotiated for national licenses for e-journal subscriptions with 30 publishers, thus consolidating various consortia/institutional subscriptions. In addition to the above, it is also planned to have a consolidated central funding to support Indian authors to pay for APCs for good quality OA journals.
Tracy Gardner, Marketing Consultant for Accucoms shares her observation on ONOS and the implication on academic publishers.
