Union Cabinet approves 'One Nation One Subscription' scheme for access to research articles, journals

New Delhi: The Cabinet on Monday approved the One Nation One Subscription (ONOS), under which students, faculty and researchers of all higher education institutions managed by the central government and state governments as well as research and development institutions will be given access to international scholarly research articles and journal publications.

The ministry of education, in a release, said that the scheme is set to benefit nearly 1.8 crore students, faculty, researchers and scientists of all disciplines. In all, a total of 30 major international journal publishers have been included under the scheme. “All of the nearly 13,000 e-journals published by these publishers will now be accessible to more than 6,300 government Higher Education Institutions and central government R&D institutions,” the release by the education ministry read.

The government further said that access to journals will be provided through a national subscription coordinated by the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET), an autonomous inter-university centre of the University Grants Commission (UGC) digitally. For the scheme, the government is setting aside Rs 6,000 crore for 2025, 2026 and 2027. The Department of Higher Education will have a unified portal “One Nation One Subscription” through which the institutions will be able to access the journals, the government said.

The Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) will periodically review the usage of subscriptions and publications of Indian authors of these institutions. The department of Higher Education and other ministries under which higher educational institutes and research and development institutions come under, will have to proactively conduct Information, Education and Communication (IEC) campaigns among students, faculty and researchers of these institutions about availability and method of access to the scheme. The Centre will also ask state governments to carry out campaigns for wider publicity.