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What is this initiative after all?
ONOS will allow free access to journals publishing academic research and scientific papers at a national level from next year. To coordinate free access, India is setting up the Information and Library Network, or INFLIBNET, a central agency under the University Grants Commission. The center said it will involve more than 6,300 institutions with more than 18 million students. Apart from the research and development laboratories of the Central Government, all the state and central higher education institutions are involved in it. India’s Research National Research Foundation or ANRF has to manage the scheme, and review how many Indians have published.
What can academics access under ONOS?
ONOS will include 13,000 journals from 30 publishers, including top names like Wiley (publisher of scientific journals) advanced Materials), Elsevier (health magazine Knife), Springer Nature and AAAS (publishers of academic journals ScienceThese publishers have thousands of journals related to scientific research in India and abroad. Individual subscriptions to these magazines can cost thousands of dollars; India is spending ₹6,000 crore ($700 million) to make these subscriptions free over the next three years. Academics will be able to access these journals through a single ONOS portal.
Why is this an important initiative?
Most students and researchers cannot pay for a subscription or even an article themselves. If their institution does not provide access, many people resort to what some call piracy, by using websites like Sci-Hub and Z-Library. Now government institutions, including those in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, do not have to worry about raising funds for access to scientific knowledge.
How have publishers fought piracy in India?
Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society sued Science Hub and Libgen in the Delhi High Court in 2020. These platforms host freely accessible versions of published research and are widely used by students, teachers and academics. This matter is ongoing. In 2023, a similar case was filed in the Delhi District Court by tax law publisher Taxman India against the online platform Z-Library, which was subsequently blocked in India. Publishers have filed similar copyright cases against such platforms around the world.
Shouldn’t academic knowledge be free?
Many academics believe that publishers unfairly profit from scientific advances while blocking access to new knowledge. Universities also benefit from public funding. Around the world, there is a growing “open access” movement seeking to make academic knowledge freely available. Its most famous proponent was Aaron Swartz. In 2012, US authorities sentenced Swartz to prison for “stealing” paid research papers from the digital academic library JSTOR. The following year, Swartz died by suicide at the age of 26.
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