India Takes Out Giant Nationwide Subscription To 13,000 Journals (science.org) 31
India has struck a landmark $715 million deal with 30 global academic publishers to provide nationwide free access to nearly 13,000 research journals. The "One Nation One Subscription" initiative, launching January 2025, will benefit an estimated 18 million students and researchers. The agreement, which surpasses similar arrangements in Germany and the UK, marks a significant shift in India's academic publishing landscape, despite the country's position as the world's third-largest producer of research papers. Science magazine: India's is expected to encompass some 6300 government-funded institutions, which produce almost half the country's research papers. Currently, only about 2300 of these institutions have subscriptions to 8000 journals. Under the new arrangement, "universities that aren't so well funded, and can't afford many journals, will gain," said Aniket Sule of the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education. Specialist institutes that only subscribe to journals relevant to their field will benefit from accessing work outside their silos, he added. Colleges that want to subscribe to journals not included under this initiative can use their own funds to do so.
Some part of the $715 million will cover the fees some journals charge to publish papers open access, making them immediately free to read by anyone worldwide when published, Madalli told Science. Details of that component have not been worked out yet, but the amount will be calculated based on the country's current spending on these fees, known as article-processing charges (APCs), which are paid by authors or their institutions, Madalli says.
Some part of the $715 million will cover the fees some journals charge to publish papers open access, making them immediately free to read by anyone worldwide when published, Madalli told Science. Details of that component have not been worked out yet, but the amount will be calculated based on the country's current spending on these fees, known as article-processing charges (APCs), which are paid by authors or their institutions, Madalli says.
knowledge is power except in the US (Score:1)
where nothing transcends the power of lobbyists of publishing companies to make you pay up or stay dumb.
Re:knowledge is power except in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
What's funny in the US is that the people actually fund a lot of the research that they then have to pay for to access in journals, so we pay for it twice.
Biden was going make federal agencies make papers that describe taxpayer funded work to be freely available for the public, which is a start at least.
https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]
the new administration says they are considering doing the same thing, but I see them as far more succeptable to lobbiests and special interests and doubt it will happen, after all, the said they were considering it when they were in power last time and didn't do it.
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Re:knowledge is power except in the US (Score:5, Informative)
Particularly when this research is funded with public monies, it should be forbidden that someone holds the results hostage with a paywall. I don't think it matters which asshat is in office; I don't see it changing anytime soon.
I assume you are talking about USA. Wikipedia says:
On August 25, 2022 US Office of Science and Technology Policy under Biden's administration issued guidance to make all federally funded research in the USA (the first country to do so) freely available without delay,[35][36] thus ending over 50 years of Serials crisis albeit only for the US contributions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The EU has a similar rule since 2006.
Not all research is included in these mandates, they only cover one level (the federal level in USA, and the EU level in EU), but it's already a start and it sets the direction that presumably more agencies are going to follow.
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On August 25, 2022 US Office of Science and Technology Policy under Biden's administration issued guidance to make all federally funded research in the USA (the first country to do so) freely available without delay, [...] The EU has a similar rule since 2006.
So when they say "the US is the first country to do so" they actually mean "the US is the first country in the US to do so", sort of like how the World Series only counts for the US?
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1. Goes against the "small government" approach.
2. The taxpayer will still pay for the research twice: o
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Oh shut up, drama queen. You literally just have to walk into a public library to access peer-reviewed journals.
That poses a curious question. If it's accessible by walking into a public library, why can't I access it online?
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The library has paid for that access, you haven't.
If you pay, you can access it from home as well.
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University library. Maybe. There are a lot of journals and even back in the day I found it very difficult to find copies of all the references in papers I read.
Yes, in theory the internet would be a great boon to research. In practice the internet is used for social media and the spreading of conspiracy theories.
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where nothing transcends the power of lobbyists of publishing companies to make you pay up or stay dumb.
where nothing transcends the power of lobbyists of all companies to make you pay up and stay dumb.
FTFY
Just pay the fees to publish (Score:5, Insightful)
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We have a similar thing for periodicals here, via the library service. You can read most of them for free online by logging in with your library card.
The S word is too scary for some though.
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Its insane that academia can not figure out how to get out of the massive pyramid scheme that are journals.
They provide ZERO actual value anymore. All of the real work is done by uncompensated peer reviewers. All the journal is doing is lending their name to the paper - THAT IS IT.
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The owners of the journals aren't really the problem, or least respectable journals. The big names that get in the way are the publishing houses. Conference papers are even worse. Do those fees being paid to access the content ever filter back to the original scientific associations whose name is on the journal or conference?
OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center (Score:5, Informative)
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How much (Score:2)
to get on the rolls of an Indian University with online library access?
Looking forward to the next LLMs from India that incorporate all of that data.
Journals provide little actual value anymore. (Score:3)
A little known fact about journals for members of the public - all of the folks who actually review articles for journals (the "peers" in the "peer review" process - are entirely uncompensated. The journal pays them NOTHING.
So what are you paying the journal for? Well, they do other minor editorial work, and then they compile the monthly journal itself into a magazine - which no one ever actually reads.
*That's about it.*
Beyond their reputation, journals contribute very little to the modern acedemic process. Journals could be replaced with a substack that had a peer-review process.
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The magazine is then published by someone else who makes most of the money. Just like web sites outsource their advertising to third party circling sharks, so do academic organizations outsource their publishing.
this is brilliant (Score:2)
For $750 million, they bought access to research that cost billions/trillions to develop, and provided access to everyone in their country. With AI to help make it available with a few prompts.. this is a force multiplier for them in terms of development.
Very smart on their part!
Watch Out, Alexandra (Score:2)
Sci-Hub is often cited as enabling the technological revolution in India.
I suspect if we follow the money the publishers lobbied to get this money from taxpayers to buy their own product.
The we-hate-every-Russian racists would love to take out her (operation).
Hopefully they have a .onion address.
I'll bet ... (Score:2)