One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) is a national scheme run by the Government of India that provides centralized, government-funded reading access to journal content from a large group of international academic publishers to students, faculty, and researchers at eligible government-run higher education and research institutions. It launched operations on 1 January 2025, following Union Cabinet approval in November 2024, and is administered through the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) Centre. This guide covers what ONOS actually is and isn’t, how it’s funded and governed, which institutions and publishers it covers, and how it compares conceptually to other national “big deal” licensing consortia such as Germany’s Projekt DEAL.
What Is One Nation One Subscription?
ONOS replaces a landscape in which individual Indian universities, colleges, and government research institutions negotiated (or, more often, could not afford to negotiate) their own journal subscriptions, with a single, nationally negotiated bundle of publisher content paid for centrally by the government and made available to every eligible institution through one access point. Instead of each institution paying its own subscription fees to each publisher, the central government funds the deal and INFLIBNET coordinates access on behalf of the whole participating sector.
The scheme’s stated aim is to close the access gap between well-resourced institutions (which could already afford large publisher packages) and smaller, regional, or Tier 2/Tier 3 institutions that historically could not, by making the same journal content available nationwide regardless of an individual institution’s library budget.
It is important to be precise about what ONOS is a deal for. Based on the scheme’s own program materials, ONOS is structured primarily as a reading-access (subscription) arrangement: it buys nationwide access to read publisher journal content. It is not, in its current Phase-I form, a Read-and-Publish-style deal that also bundles open-access publishing or article processing charge (APC) waivers for Indian-authored papers the way some transformative agreements elsewhere do. Researchers and administrators evaluating ONOS against a transformative agreement should not assume publishing-side benefits are included unless a specific publisher’s ONOS terms say so.
How ONOS Is Funded and Governed
ONOS Phase-I is funded at approximately ₹6,000 crore (roughly USD 620-720 million, depending on the exchange rate used) for the three calendar years 2025 through 2027, funded directly by the central government rather than by participating institutions’ own library budgets.
Administration is split across a few bodies:
- INFLIBNET Centre (Information and Library Network Centre), an autonomous inter-university centre under the University Grants Commission (UGC) based in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, coordinates publisher access and hosts the unified access portal. The same centre also operates VIDWAN, India’s national researcher-expert database. INFLIBNET previously ran India’s earlier UGC journal-access consortium, e-ShodhSindhu, and ONOS builds on and consolidates that existing infrastructure and publisher-relationship base rather than starting from zero.
- The Department of Higher Education, under the Ministry of Education, operates the unified access portal that participating institutions and their users log into.
- The Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) is involved in reviewing usage metrics and monitoring publication activity tied to the scheme.
This multi-body structure is a common pattern for national licensing consortia: a technical/library body handles publisher-facing negotiation and access coordination, while a ministry-level body handles the portal and policy oversight. Germany’s Projekt DEAL follows a broadly similar division of labor, with MPDL Services GmbH doing the negotiating on behalf of the Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany. See CASRAI’s guide to Projekt DEAL for that model in detail.
Timeline
- November 2024 — The Union Cabinet approved ONOS as a Phase-I, three-year initiative (calendar years 2025-2027).
- 1 January 2025 — ONOS began operations, with access live for eligible institutions.
- 2025-2027 — Phase-I funding period; usage and publisher coverage are expected to be reviewed before any Phase-II decision.
Who Is Eligible
ONOS access is limited to students, faculty, and researchers at:
- Higher education institutions managed or funded by the central government or state governments (public universities, government and government-aided colleges).
- Central government research and development (R&D) institutions.
Government materials describing the scheme cite a target of roughly 6,300 institutions and around 1.8 crore (18 million) students, faculty, and researchers as the eventual beneficiary base, though the number of institutions actually onboarded in the scheme’s first year has been reported at a smaller figure as rollout continues. Purely private institutions that do not receive central or state government funding, and institutions outside the higher-education/public-R&D scope described above, fall outside ONOS eligibility as defined.
Which Publishers and Journals Are Covered
Per INFLIBNET’s own ONOS program materials, the scheme covers journal content from 32 major international academic publishers (some secondary coverage cites 30-32, depending on when the count was taken), spanning many thousands of individual journal titles across disciplines. All journals published by an included publisher are accessible under the deal, rather than a curated subset per publisher. As with any large multi-publisher package, the specific publisher list is subject to change as individual agreements are renewed or added during the Phase-I period — institutions and researchers should check the current list on the official ONOS portal (onos.gov.in) rather than treat any single secondary source’s publisher count as permanently fixed.
How ONOS Compares to Other National “Big Deal” Models
ONOS sits within a broader, internationally recurring pattern: a national or regional body negotiating journal access centrally on behalf of many institutions at once, instead of each institution negotiating separately with each publisher. The rationale is the same wherever this model appears — collective bargaining power against a small number of large publishers, and cost/administrative efficiency for participating institutions. But the specific deal structure varies a great deal from country to country, and the differences matter for anyone comparing ONOS to a scheme like Germany’s Projekt DEAL or a UK Jisc-negotiated agreement:
- What is being bought. ONOS, in its current form, is primarily a reading/subscription-access deal. Projekt DEAL‘s headline agreements (with Wiley, Springer Nature, and Elsevier) are Publish-and-Read deals that bundle reading access with open-access publishing rights and APC coverage for corresponding authors at participating institutions — a materially different, and more expensive per-institution, commitment than a read-only subscription.
- Who pays. ONOS is funded centrally by the Indian government out of a dedicated national budget line, rather than by participating institutions redirecting their own existing subscription spend. DEAL’s Publish-and-Read agreements, by contrast, are explicitly framed as redirecting money German institutions were already spending on subscriptions toward a combined subscription-plus-OA-publishing fee, intended to be cost-neutral to the sector rather than a new incremental spending line.
- Who is eligible. ONOS is scoped to government-funded higher-education and public R&D institutions; DEAL’s consortium spans several hundred German academic and research institutions of various funding types coordinated through the Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany.
- What it doesn’t (yet) address. Because ONOS is not currently structured as a transformative or Publish-and-Read agreement, it does not by itself resolve the APC affordability problem for Indian researchers publishing open access in hybrid or fully OA journals from included publishers — a gap that transformative agreements in other countries are specifically designed to close. Whether ONOS evolves toward a publish-and-read structure in a future phase is a policy question, not something the current Phase-I terms establish.
See CASRAI’s dictionary entries on the transformative agreement and Read-and-Publish agreement concepts for the general vocabulary this comparison relies on.
What Research Administrators Should Track
- Whether your institution is actually onboarded. Nominal eligibility (being a government-funded higher-ed or R&D institution) is not the same as being live on the ONOS portal — onboarding has been phased, and institutions should confirm active access status directly through INFLIBNET/the ONOS portal rather than assuming coverage.
- The current publisher list. Because the list is not contractually frozen for the full Phase-I period, library and research-office staff advising authors on where they can read (or eventually publish) under ONOS terms should re-check the official list periodically rather than working from a cached version.
- Whether OA publishing terms get added. If ONOS is extended into a publish-and-read structure in a later phase, that would change how Indian institutions and funders think about APC funding and OA compliance — a development worth monitoring rather than assuming will or won’t happen.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ONOS the same as an open-access mandate?
No. ONOS provides centrally funded reading access to subscription journal content; it is a licensing/access scheme, not a policy requiring Indian researchers to make their own outputs openly available. It is conceptually distinct from an open access mandate, which governs how a researcher’s own outputs must be shared, not what content they can read.
Does ONOS cover private universities in India?
As defined, ONOS eligibility is limited to institutions managed or funded by the central or state governments and to central government R&D institutions. Purely private institutions without that government funding relationship fall outside the scheme’s stated eligibility criteria.
Does ONOS pay for open-access publishing fees (APCs) for Indian authors?
Not as a core, universal feature of Phase-I. ONOS is structured primarily around reading access rather than a bundled publish-and-read model, unlike some transformative agreements elsewhere (see the comparison to Projekt DEAL above). Any publisher-specific OA benefits should be confirmed against that publisher’s own current ONOS terms rather than assumed.
How is ONOS different from India’s earlier e-ShodhSindhu consortium?
e-ShodhSindhu was INFLIBNET’s earlier UGC-run journal-access consortium, serving a similar coordinating function on a smaller scale and typically requiring participating institutions to contribute toward subscription costs. ONOS consolidates and expands on that existing infrastructure and publisher relationships under a single, centrally and fully government-funded national scheme rather than a subscriber-contribution model.
Who administers ONOS day to day?
The INFLIBNET Centre, an autonomous inter-university centre under the University Grants Commission, coordinates publisher access, while the Department of Higher Education operates the unified access portal and the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) is involved in usage and publication-outcome monitoring.
For related national and consortial licensing models, see CASRAI’s guide to Projekt DEAL: Germany’s National Publish-and-Read Consortium, and the dictionary entries on transformative agreement, Read-and-Publish agreement, and open access mandate.
