Cabinet approves 'One Nation One Subscription' scheme for access to research articles, journals
The Union Cabinet on Monday approved 'One Nation One Subscription', a new scheme for providing country-wide access to scholarly research articles and journal publication.
A total of about Rs 6,000 crore has been allocated for One Nation One Subscription for three calendar years, 2025, 2026 and 2027 as a new Central Sector Scheme.
The scheme will provide nation-wide access to international high impact scholarly research articles and journal publications to students, faculty and researchers of all higher educational institutions managed by the Central or state government and research & development institutions of the Central government.
The scheme aims to provide centralised digital access to global academic journals for universities and researchers. It will replace the current system of individual and consortia-based subscriptions with government-negotiated national licences.
30 global publishers including international publishers like Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and American Physical Society have already been onboarded.
All of the nearly 13,000 e-journals published by these publishers will now be accessible to more than 6,300 government higher educational institutions and Central government R&D institutions, an official statement said.
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.
Access to journals will be provided to the institutions through a national subscription coordinated by the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET), an autonomous inter-university centre of the University Grants Commission (UGC) through an entirely digital process.
UGC chairman M Jagadesh Kumar said, “One Nation One Subscription will open a goldmine of knowledge available in top quality scholarly journals to nearly 1.8 crore students, faculty, researchers of all disciplines, including those in tier 2 and 3 cities, encouraging core an interdisciplinary research in India.”
