The world is moving on from paying publishers — India should too (Prateek Amrawanshi)
Frederick Noronha
World is moving on from paying publishers — India should too [ 23-06-2026]
1. 📚 The Core Problem: The "Scam" of Academic Publishing
To understand this article, you first need to understand how bizarre the academic publishing industry is. When scientists do research (usually using government taxpayer money), they write a paper and give it to a foreign commercial publisher (like the journals Nature or Science) for free.
The publisher then puts that research behind a massive paywall. If other scientists or students want to read it, their universities have to pay millions of dollars in subscription fees. If the scientist wants the publisher to make the paper "open access" (free for the public to read), the publisher charges the scientist an Article Processing Charge (APC), which can sometimes cost over $5,000 just for one single paper!
Essentially, countries are paying foreign companies billions of dollars to read the exact same research their own citizens produced.
2. 🇮🇳 India's Current "Band-Aid" Solution: ONOS
To help Indian researchers and students get past these paywalls, the Indian government launched a massive program called the 'One Nation One Subscription' (ONOS) scheme. India is spending a staggering ₹6,000 crore over three years to buy a bulk subscription to over 13,000 foreign journals so that 6,300 Indian institutions can read them.
While this is great because it allows students in smaller towns to finally read world-class research, the author argues it is a trap. It solves the "reading" problem, but not the "publishing" problem. India is essentially locking itself into a dependency, permanently subsidizing rich foreign companies instead of building its own system.
3. 🌍 What is the Rest of the World Doing?
The article points out that while India is writing massive cheques to these publishers, the rest of the world has realized this system is broken and is fighting back:
- Europe: Instead of paying greedy publishers, European countries have literally built their own publicly owned publishing platform called Open Research Europe. Soon, researchers from 11 countries will be able to publish their work there for absolutely free, cutting out commercial companies entirely.
- China: China is aggressively building its own high-quality domestic journals. They even announced they will officially stop paying those ridiculous $5,000 APC fees to big foreign journals, telling their scientists that publishing in Chinese journals is just as prestigious.
- Australia: They passed a strict law that any research funded by the public must be made freely accessible to everyone immediately, with no exceptions.
- The United States: The U.S. Congress is actively investigating the massive profit margins of these publishers, questioning why they are wasting so much taxpayer money on these subscriptions.
4. 🛠️ The Solution for India
The author argues that ONOS should only be a temporary bridge, not a permanent destination. If India wants true "knowledge sovereignty," it cannot rely on foreign companies forever.
In Simple Terms: Imagine a town where citizens grow wheat, give it to a foreign bakery for free, and then the town spends its entire budget buying the bread back. Instead of just negotiating a bulk-discount for the bread (which is what India's ONOS scheme is doing), India needs to build its own bakery! The government should use its funds to upgrade Indian journals and build free, publicly owned publishing platforms just like Europe and China are doingComments
_/ Frederick Noronha फ्रेडरिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا
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