India’s recently announced One Nation, One Subscription (ONOS) plan is in some ways an audacious step into the future and, in other ways, an embrace of the past. On the one hand, it’s unparalleled in size and scope; on the other, it appears to be a subscription-based Big Deal package fundamentally similar to those that libraries and consortia have been striking for decades. What are its implications? Rick Anderson and Lisa Hinchliffe sat at the virtual Kitchen Table for a quick chat.

Rick: Lisa, I’d be interested in your thoughts on the implications of ONOS for the global open access (OA) movement. When I first saw the announcement of ONOS, my initial thought was “That’s it for the ‘global transition to open access.’” A country of 1.5 billion people, with a large and growing research enterprise, had just sunk roughly $750 million of public funds into what amounts to the biggest Big Deal subscription arrangement in history, thus entrenching the paid-access model in that very large country for the foreseeable future. It reminds me a bit of when India announced that it will not adopt Plan S, as has the United States, while China is ambivalent: its research institutions have expressed support for Plan S but the government has not signed on. All of this pretty much guarantees that Plan S will remain a regional boutique scheme rather than a global OA system. I wonder if ONOS suggests a similar fate for OA more generally.

Lisa: I promise I’ll answer your question about open access, Rick, but can we pause first and celebrate what an amazing accomplishment ONOS is for access to scholarly content? Regardless of how things develop in the future, there is an immense amount of content that is published under the subscription model, historically and still today. This is content that millions of students and scholars did not have access to and now they will. As a librarian, advocating for access to information for more than three decades, I see this is a stunning accomplishment for information access. And, it demonstrates that India’s leaders recognize the importance of these materials for their national aspirations and strategies. 

I’ve seen a few other commentaries that share your concern that this sets back the global open access movement. I’m honestly not sure that this makes much difference one way or the other. India did not withdraw $750 million from open access. If it had, that would be a notable slowing force. Instead, what we have is an additional allocation supporting information access across the nation, which has a follow-on effect of freeing up funds currently spent by some universities for access. It is possible that those institutions will allocate those funds to invest in open access – that remains to be seen over the coming years of course. And, of course, for those who prefer that the future of open access is Green OA, paid subscriptions are what supports open access! 

As a side note, Devika Madalli, director of the Information and Library Network Centre, the coordinating agency for the effort, has said that some of the funds will cover the fees some journals charge to publish papers open access, so this may also be an investment in Gold OA it seems. 

Rick: I do agree that this deal represents a huge step forward for the goal of providing access to scholarly content – not just for India, but also globally. It’s a model that I anticipate other countries with highly centralized higher education systems will look at very carefully, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see others following suit, especially in less economically advantaged areas where relatively small amounts of government funding have the capacity to create proportionally large amounts of access for scholars, scientists, and students.

Going back to the question of what this means for the OA movement, though: it sounds like I should clarify that the observation with which I opened our conversation was just that — an observation, not an expression of concern about how this might set back the OA movement. If anything, I greet India’s decision with some relief. I’m on the record as believing that we need a scholcomm system that is pluralistic and diverse rather than monolithic and authoritarian, and to be more specific, I believe that the subscription model is a fully valid and acceptable one and has an important place in our ecosystem. A movement that seeks to establish a “global transition to OA” is, in my view, wrongheaded, and any development that helps to preserve the diversity of our ecosystem (in this case, by helping to prevent OA from becoming the only publishing model that is allowed to flourish) is a good thing. India’s move is a step in the right direction, in my view.

Lisa: I appreciate your clarification. I imagine that, among those who want to see open access grow, there are those who are seeking open access as a single-model and those who believe it is an important model that should be dominant but not exclusive in the market. Personally, I see both policy and piracy as factors that are moving the system towards open access publishing. 

It also seems to me that the “rainbow” of open access means that we also shouldn’t think about content being open access or closed.  Rather, we might ask “how is it open” (on the publisher platform — Gold vs. in a repository — Green, as just an example) and “what are the options for accessing closed content (which would include subscriptions, one-off purchases, borrowing/interlibrary loan, and gift access through programs such as the Wikipedia editor access efforts). 

I’ll add that the ONOS is also an opportunity for us to reflect on how access to information is a pragmatic question as well as ideological one. A given institution or country may believe in the value of open access and at the same time recognize that the realities of the current information ecosystem means that subscriptions are a practical strategy to ensure information access for one’s community.

Rick: Agreed! And to the degree that people are working simply to promote or increase OA rather than to impose it universally, I have no objections. I think OA is great and am happy to see it growing; my concerns are with the widespread rhetoric about full/global transition and with the demonization of pay-to-read models. Of course, the definition (or definitions) of “open” continues to be a highly vexed and difficult issue; some of us are happy to see openness exist on a spectrum, and others insist that “open” be defined in a highly constricted way, allowing into the club only those modes of publishing that fit their own ideological preferences. Whether this particular conflict will be resolved at some point or will simply continue to simmer indefinitely without resolution is not yet clear – though if I were a betting man, my money would be on the latter. And frankly, I think that’s probably better for everyone than if some entity were to find a way successfully to impose a single definition on the whole scholcomm ecosystem.

In fact, developments like ONOS give me more confidence in the likelihood of a pluralistic future – not only for publishing models, but also for ideological diversity with regard to publishing models. I agree that access to information is a pragmatic question as well as an ideological one – and this implies the importance of not allowing ideology to blind us (and especially policy makers) to pragmatic realities. ONOS does strike me as, if nothing else, a shining example of the victory of pragmatism over ideology.