India’s plan to pay subscription fees for all its citizen may harm the norm of making science available
===

Author: Dasapta Erwin Irawan (ITB/RINarxiv), Juneman Abraham (Binus), Rizqy Amelia Zein (Unair), Sridhar Gutam (ICAR India)

India, the world's second most populous country, is planning to make [scholarly literature available for everyone](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02708-4) under its latest science, technology and innovation policy.

The policy will push for the whole country to have a nationwide subscription to replace existing subscriptions paid by different research and education institutions to access research journals. The Indian government is in talks with the world's top scientific publications to create the system.

If it works, India would become the largest country to give access to paywalled journal articles to more than 1.3 billion of its citizens.

Many scientists have responded [positively](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02708-4) to the plan. A report by [Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade](https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/indo-ks5-lipi.pdf) argues that the agreement would help identify unnecessary spending due to duplicate subscription.

India spent [15 billion rupees or equivalent to US$200 million](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02708-4) paid by different research and education institutions to access research journals. Such number is almost equal to the [France’s funding for India's COVID-19 response](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/finance/france-commits-200-million-euros-for-indias-covid-response/articleshow/76445176.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst).

Such huge spending is relatively common for developing countries. Indonesia spent almost [US$ 1 million](https://www.ristekbrin.go.id/kabar/kemenristekdikti-berlangganan-e-journal-senilai-rp-148-m-dosen-peneliti-dan-mahasiswa-dapat-mengakses-secara-gratis-2/) for subscription fees in 2018. This amount of money could pay the tuition fees [for hundreds of students](https://edukasi.kompas.com/read/2020/01/23/18023321/berapa-biaya-kuliah-5-ptn-terbaik-indonesia-itb-ugm-ipb-its-dan-ui?page=all#:~:text=Untuk%20biaya%20UKT%20pada%20mekanisme%20BOP%2DPilihan%20berkisar%20Rp%207.500,IPS%20dengan%20mekanisme%20BOP%2DPilihan).

Both cases are two clear examples of [deliberate ignorance](https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2018/10/the-tangled-web-of-scientific-publishing/) of a country to pursue short term-narrow options of prestigious conformity to [oligopoly](https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/06/11/study-views-academic-publishing-oligopoly) of commercial publishers over [value to society](https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/10/24/competition-value-and-sustainability-why-this-cant-go-on/).

However, despite the economic benefits from India's plan, some scientists and academics are concerned that it may harm the spirit of making science and knowledge available for everyone under an open access mechanism.

## Harming (open) science norm

American sociologist Robert K. Merton [argues](https://studentportalen.uu.se/uusp-webapp/auth/webwork/filearea/download.action?nodeId=1639791&toolAttachmentId=352862&uusp.userId=guest) that all modern scientists should share ownership of their knowledge and research, while creating science in exclusivity, like putting it behind pay wall, is the opposite of this norm.

This principle encourages the birth of open science movement which aims at making all scientific research and its dissemination accessible to everyone.

Open access publication system, under which research journals are distributed for free after their writers paid the publication fees, works under the spirit of open science.

Following this logic, some countries believe that paying distribution fees or known as article processing charges (APC) to publishers [will settle the exclusivity problem](https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/10/23/open-science-who-is-left-behind/).

However, open science is based on Merton's values to [treat science as public goods](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:SCIE.0000027311.17226.70) and not commercial entities.

Therefore India's plan to purchase access to paywalled knowledge from commercial entities may harm the spirit of modern science.

Making scientific papers accessible by spending public money to pay unreasonable APC is [another false action to avoid](https://zenodo.org/record/3700646), because the money will go straight to company's profit, without substantial added value, aside to peer review comments which came from other fellow academics.

India's plan indicates that commercial publishers are winning over the application of the open access system to make scholarly literature available for everyone.

The debates between making scholarly journals available for everyone by paying commercial publishers to open up their paywalls or adopting open science principles are as ancient as the tale of [David and Goliath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Goliath_(1960_film)). It has been an all time war between [scientists battling the commercial publisher giants](https://www.norrag.org/the-cost-of-knowledge-education-unions-unite-against-the-privatisation-of-scholarly-research-by-jon-tennant/).

India's plan to have a nationwide subscription won't end this ongoing [debate](https://forbetterscience.com/2018/09/11/response-to-plan-s-from-academic-researchers-unethical-too-risky/), since it's still in favour of commercial publishers.

At this stage, commercial publishers clearly are winning.

In addition to India's plan, [the latest deal](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/nature-family-journals-inks-first-open-access-deal-institution) between international scientific publishing company Nature and Germany is another example.

This agreement will allow authors at institutions across Germany to publish an estimated 400 open-access papers annually in Nature journals. However, it may come with a high price of 9,500 euro or around US$ 11,200 per article, making it the highest price ever paid for an open science article.

Therefore, it is a high time for countries with limited financial capabilities, like [India](http://openaccessindia.org/category/open-access-policy/) and [Indonesia](https://sainsterbuka.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) to continue to fight for the distribution of science as public goods to ensure that everyone gets equal access to knowledge.

## Other critics

The subscription payments also do not resolve [the copyright issues](https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/india-research-publishing-open-access-one-nation-one-subscription-k-vijayraghavan/) once the paywalled scientific materials are made open to the public. Publishers are still holding the copyright by requesting authors to sign the copyright transfer agreement after the acceptance of the manuscript. Up to this point, researchers would lose their rights over their own work. [It's something that they aren't fully aware nor they take for granted](http://fossilsandshit.com/ethics-copyright-transfer-scientific-research/).

While under open access system, researchers retain the copyrights of their published manuscripts even though they are widely accessible.

The nationwide subscription [may also worsen existing inequalities](https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/10/23/open-science-who-is-left-behind/) between scholars from developing and developed countries in accessing scientific materials and publishing research results. Under the agreement, any Indian scientist interested in publishing his/her research via open access mechanism is still required to ask for state funding to pay the APC.

At the end, we are only the customer of the publication industry, while the state, on behalf of us, will be the party to spend money and commercial publishers will be the ones who take the biggest profit.

We’re not going anywhere towards making knowledge available for everyone if the government as the most important stakeholder doesn’t have faith in Merton’s scientific ethos and constantly chooses the route to pay for access to read scholarly literature.