With the Union Government announcing the launch of ‘One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) Scheme’ from 1 January 2025, aimed at providing access to research e-journals to higher education institutions, there is a renewed debate about the expenditure of these institutions on Libraries. Data from the NIRF submissions indicates that Institutions offering Law, Management spend a greater share of their capital expenditure on Libraries.
The world today is marked by rapid growth and advancement in Science and Technology. Continuous innovation and the creation of new knowledge have been the core feature of this growth across different sectors. However, easy and equitable access to such knowledge is often limited by several factors, including but not limited to financial resources. In the globalized world which is dependent on continuous innovation and expansion of knowledge, easy & equitable access to such knowledge has become vital for future growth and advancement, especially for academic institutions, students, faculty, researchers, and other individuals
In what it says is an attempt to bridge this access gap, the central government has announced the launch of One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) Scheme from 1 January 2025, aimed at providing access to scholarly research e-journals from prominent publishers covering the disciplines of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), medical, management, social sciences and humanities, to all individuals in the country who need them. There has also been criticism about the scheme that it enriches publishers and benefits few.
Against this backdrop, we look at the ONOS Scheme, its features, and its alleged benefits, together with trends in the expenditure incurred on libraries by higher educational institutions, as per the data submitted to the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF).
Note on Data: Data for this story is sourced from Dataful’s collection on NIRF Datasets. Detailed data on expenditure is not available for all HEIs but for only the top 100 in most categories and for fewer institutions in categories such as Law, Dental and Agriculture, in the NIRF reports.
ONOS Scheme and Objectives
In a press conference held on 10 December 2024, the office of Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA), a body under the Cabinet Secretariat, said that the necessity of ONOS is driven by a contemporary innovative society with aspirations for deep technology advancements. In the same context, access to knowledge is a key requirement to avoid rediscovering the wheel (re-inventing the same knowledge) and to generate and share new knowledge.
Therefore, the first phase of the ONOS scheme is announced with a budget outlay of Rs. 6000 crores over the period of 3 years (2025-27) to provide access to Subscription journals and to selected good quality Open Access (OA) journals to every individual in the country who needs it. To carry out this purpose, the government said it has had negotiations with 30 publishers, including the top 4 global publishers, namely Elsevier, Springer-Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley, which will give access to over 13,000 journals and will benefit nearly 6,400 institutions and 1.8 crores students, faculty and researchers across the country including Higher Educational Institutions such as central and state universities, colleges (including all medical colleges) and central government (Research and Development) R&D institutions. In addition, there will also be consolidated central funding of Rs. 150 crores per year to support Indian authors to pay for Article Processing Charges (APCs) for good quality OA journals.
The scheme is planned for implementation in three phases. In phase one, there will be access to government, academic and R&D institutions in the country by merging all the library consortia. Phase two will include private academic institutions through a public-partnership model and in phase three, there will be universal access at designated public libraries.
In phase one, the government projects that there will be a 213%, 170%, and 66% increase in the number of users (such as students, faculty, researchers, etc.), beneficiary institutions (INIs, universities, colleges, etc.), and journal titles, respectively, from before ONOS period. ONOS is seen as a further step towards the objectives ofthe National Education Policy, 2020 and the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF).
Average of 10% of capital expenditure is spent on Libraries by institutions submitting data to NIRF
The NIRF is a scoring and ranking system developed by the Ministry of Education for Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs). Based on self-disclosure data submitted by HEIs on key performance indicators such as Teaching, Learning, and Resources (TLR), Research and Professional Performance (R&P), Graduation Outcomes (GO), Outreach and Inclusivity (OI), and Performance (PI), the NIRF evaluates each education institutions’ cumulative score derived from a weighted evaluation of these indicators and ranks the institutions according to their scores. The NIRF provides data on evaluated scores and ranks of HEIs by categorizing them into different fields of study. Some of these are also covered within ONOS, such as STEM and others.
As per the available NIRF data, the total capital expenditure of HEIs has increased over the years, without adjusting for inflation. In the case of 513 institutions that submitted data in 2015-16, the total capital expenditure was Rs. 7,396 crores. By 2018-19, this has increased to Rs. 18,511 crores for 690 institutions and to Rs. 22,497 crores by 2022-23 for 553 institutions. The library expenditures incurred during these years were Rs. 780 crores, Rs. 1987 crores, and Rs. 1916 crores, respectively. The average library expenditure across the years from 2015-16 to 2022-23 was 9-11% of total capital expenditure. The average library expenditure per institution was between 2 and 3 crores per year.
Institutions offering Law and Management Spend highest in terms of percentage of capital expenditure on Libraries
If one compares different fields of study, the institutions offering Engineering, Management, Medical and Universities spent the most each year from 2015-16 to 2022-23 in terms of total expenditure on libraries. In 2015-16, Engineering, University and Medical institutions stood at the top with Rs. 275 crores, Rs. 263 crores, and Rs. 124 crores in library expenditure, respectively. In 2018-19, Engineering, University, and Medical were the top three with Rs. 898 crores, Rs. 487 crores, and Rs. 280 crores in library expenditure, respectively. In 2022-23, University, Engineering, and Medical were highest with Rs. 689 crores, Rs. 489 crores, and Rs. 243 crores library expenditure, respectively.
However, when compared by share of library expenditure to total capital expenditure, the institutions offering Law, Management have stood at the top each year from 2015-16 to 2022-23. In 2015-16, institutions offering Law, Management and Architecture had 70%, 29%, and 17% of the total capital expenditure spent on libraries. In 2018-19, Management, Law, and Dental were the top three with 32%, 27%, and 26% of total capital expenditure on libraries. In 2022-23, Law, Management, and Dental were the highest with 26%, 22%, and 14% of total capital expenditure on libraries.
Between 2017-18 to 2022-23, Library to Capital Expenditure share varied from 1% to 40% in the Top 10 ranked institutions
Across the years from 2017-18 to 2023, eleven institutions have featured among the top 10 institutions in terms of rank in the overall category i.e. when all the fields of study are combined together. In each of these years, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras and the Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bengaluru stood in the first and second ranks, respectively. The third and fourth ranks were interchangeably occupied by IIT-Bombay and IIT-Delhi. Notably, eight out of these eleven institutions which stood in the top 10 positions during the period were IITs.
The total capital and library expenditures of the top 10 institutions were Rs. 1020 crores and Rs. 130 crores, respectively, during 2017-18, with library expenditure constituting to about 12.7% of the total capital expenditure. By 2019-20, the capital and library expenditures were Rs. 1200 crores and Rs. 161 crores, respectively, with library expenditure being 13.4% of the capital expenditure. In 2022-23, they were Rs. 3039 crores and Rs. 178 crores, respectively, with library expenditure slumping to 5.8%.
In terms of the percentage of capital expenditure on libraries, there is no noticeable trend of consistent spending in these institutions. For instance, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) had spent one crore rupees out of a total Rs. 23 crores in capital expenditure on libraries during 2017-18. In terms of the share of capital expenditure spent on libraries, JNU stood in the last position with 4.3%. The highest in this year was IIT-Bombay with 48% capital expenditure spent on libraries. In 2018-19, the JNU stood in the first position with 26% of capital expenditure on libraries. In 2019-20, it dropped to seventh position with 11% expenditure, and in 2022-23, it continued in the same position with 4.5% expenditure. Similar trends of varying library expenditures are noticeable for other institutions among these top 10 ranked institutions.
In terms of the percentage of capital expenditure on libraries during 2017-18 to 2022-23, IIT-Guwahati and IIT-Kharagpur have stood among the top 3 each year, except in 2021-22.
