Government Moots “One Nation, One Subscription” Policy

The draft of the 5th National Science Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP) has been finalized. The draft policy seeks to make scholarly research papers and literature accessible for free to everyone in the country.

“The Government of India will negotiate with journal publishers for one nation, one subscription plan whereby, against one centrally negotiated payment, all individuals in India will have access to journal articles. This will replace individual institutional journal subscriptions” said Prof Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, The Department of Science and Technology (DST), in a press conference.

The policy drafted through a 4 track process of consultation, aims to bring changes through short, medium, and long-term mission mode projects by building an ecosystem that promotes translational as well as foundational research and innovation among both individuals and organizations in alignment with global standards.

“The Government of India will negotiate with journal publishers for one nation, one subscription plan whereby, against one centrally negotiated payment, all individuals in India will have access to journal articles. This will replace individual institutional journal subscriptions” said Prof Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, The Department of Science and Technology (DST), in a press conference.

“Times have changed with the future coming at us at a much faster pace. This policy will help us prepare for the fast pace of change. New problems are emerging that could only be tackled through science, technology, and innovation, and this policy is a right step in that direction” said Prof Sharma.

Aligned to the evidence based policy paradigm, it proposes to set up a National STI Observatory. The National STI Observatory will act as a central repository for all kinds of data related to and generated from the STI ecosystem, assisting the monitoring of the progress and enable tweaking of the same as per the emergent needs. “It will encompass an open centralised database platform for all financial schemes, programmes, grants, and incentives existing in the ecosystem, and a dedicated portal will be created to provide access to the outputs of such publicly-funded research” says the policy document.

The draft policy has already been floated for extensive public consultation. Suggestions, comments, and inputs on the draft policy may be shared till Monday, the 25th of January 2021 on email: india-stip@gov.in. The policy draft is available on https://dst.gov.in/draft-5th-national-science-technology-and-innovation-policy-public-consultation .

Source: Vigyan Prasar