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In India arsenic successful galore parts of the world, nationalist wealth is the main funder of technological research. Governments put heavy successful laboratories, equipment, and salaries for researchers. Yet the results of this publically funded probe are usually published successful journals owned by conscionable a fistful of commercialized publishers. These publishers don’t wage the authors oregon the adjacent reviewers who measure the work. Both lend their clip and expertise for free.
However, the publishers past complaint precocious subscription fees for entree to these journals, efficaciously making the nationalist wage twice: erstwhile to money the probe and a 2nd clip to work it.
Against this backdrop, the Budapest Open Access Declaration successful 2002 set retired a acceptable of bold principles. The declaration challenged the profoundly entrenched practices of the scholarly publishing industry, which had agelong excluded immense sections of the planetary probe assemblage from accessing cognition utilizing costly paywalls. The declaration came arsenic the open entree movement started questioning why, successful a integer property successful which printing and postage nary longer dictated costs, entree to cognition remained had to beryllium controlled down costly subscription paywalls. The declaration ignited a question that promised to democratise entree to technological knowledge, ensuring probe funded by the nationalist would besides beryllium disposable to the public.
More than 20 years later, this imaginativeness of equity and inclusivity successful cognition sharing remains mostly unfulfilled. Adapting to the winds of change, commercialized publishers present beforehand unfastened access, but again astatine a precise precocious cost. Instead of subscription barriers, researchers present look towering nonfiction processing charges (APCs), often ranging from $2,000 to $10,000 per paper. Many institutions successful the Global South, and adjacent successful wealthier nations, proceed to beryllium priced retired of both publishing and accessing research.
In India, the authorities has attempted to code this inequity done the ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ (ONOS) initiative: starting from 2025, ONOS provided entree to journals from 30 large planetary publishers to each researchers successful publically funded institutions. While the outgo of this nationwide woody is substantial, particularly fixed that implicit fractional of the planetary probe lit is already disposable done open-access routes, arsenic seen from the scholarly database Web of Science, the intent down ONOS remains commendable. It represents a measurement toward broadening entree beyond elite institutions.
Yet it besides compels america to ask deeper questions. Should we proceed paying these ample sums to overseas publishers to entree cognition that our ain researchers produce, again with nationalist money? Shouldn’t that cognition astatine the slightest beryllium freely accessible to each citizen, empowering them with the technological temper needed successful an epoch rife with misinformation? Perhaps astir importantly: wherever is the tone of an Atmanirbhar Bharat successful this enterprise?
Ultimately, portion the ONOS inaugural whitethorn transportation important promise, it inactive leaves galore foundational questions unresolved. As we people International Open Access Week, which is an yearly planetary run to beforehand unfastened access, the year’s theme, ‘Open Access Week 2025: Who Owns Our Knowledge?’, prompts deeper reflection.
In India, wherever publically funded probe drives overmuch of subject and societal innovation, the presumption that the scholarly output belongs solely to commercialized entities that big them merits scrutiny.
Knowledge and ownership
Copyright transportation successful world publishing is simply a signifier wherever authors formally transportation the copyright ownership of a scholarly enactment to the publisher. This signifier began to instrumentality signifier aft copyright laws specified arsenic the US Copyright Act 1976, which grants authors exclusive rights to their archetypal works, frankincense motivating publishers to get and clasp copyrights to power the organisation of enactment successful journals and immoderate consequent commercialized use.
Historically, this transportation was viewed as essential for publishers to negociate permissions, reproduction, and dissemination. This was particularly truthful successful the subscription-based models, wherever publishers monetise articles by requiring readers to subscribe to the journals they publish.
Over time, specified copyright transportation agreements became standard, necessitating authors to relinquish their exclusive rights connected their enactment if they wanted to people it successful scholarly journals.
The scenery contiguous is much varied. While with accepted subscription-based journals, publishers travel the request of complete copyright transfer, the emergence of open-access publishing has changed the dynamics. Fully open-access journals mostly let authors to clasp copyright but use licenses, e.g. Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) permit free and wide reuse with attribution to the archetypal creator.
But astir authors motion copyright transfers owed to the unit to people wrong the prevailing world culture. This signifier is evidently not conducive to serving the interests of probe dissemination and reuse oregon the authors themselves. Recent initiatives similar ‘Plan S’ advocator for authors retaining copyright to beforehand wider accessibility and scholarly connection without unnecessary restrictions. Authors are besides encouraged to carefully reappraisal copyright transportation agreements to recognize retained rights and publishing conditions.
Creative Commons licenses
Authors tin people their papers utilizing assorted Creative Commons (CC) licenses to intelligibly specify however others whitethorn reuse their work. Three licenses successful peculiar are notable:
(i) CC-BY (Attribution) allows a idiosyncratic to stock the enactment and reuse oregon adjacent accommodate it, adjacent for commercialized purposes, arsenic agelong arsenic the archetypal writer is credited; (ii) CC-BY-NC (‘Attribution-NonCommercial’) allows reuse but not for commercialized purposes; and (iii) CC-BY-NC-ND (‘Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives’), the astir restrictive, allows reuse but forbids some commercialized usage and adaptation.
Publishers often beforehand the usage of the CC-BY-NC-ND license, but in practice, however, this licence limits cognition reuse by prohibiting translation, remixing oregon substance mining — each actions captious for acquisition and technological innovation.
Retaining copyright
When authors transportation copyright to publishers arsenic portion of work agreements, they often suffer ineligible power implicit however their enactment is accessed, reused oregon shared. Large publishers similar Elsevier, Wiley, and Springer typically necessitate copyrights to beryllium transferred for subscription-model journals, giving the steadfast exclusive rights to administer and nett from the content.
As a result, authors look ineligible dilemmas implicit archiving their ain articles connected organization repositories oregon sharing them publicly, yet limiting their visibility. On the different hand, authors who clasp copyright (or the quality to stock their enactment nether an unfastened license) are empowered to share, adapt, and reuse their ain assistance without organization oregon commercialized restrictions.
Commercial publishers similar Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, and Taylor & Francis and nine publishers similar the American Chemical Society usage restrictive licenses successful their subscription models, granting publishers ineligible exclusivity to monetise access. From 2024 oregon so, the large publishers have besides been selling scholarly contented to Big Tech companies to bid their artificial quality (AI) models, often without authors’ explicit consent. Taylor & Francis’s woody with Microsoft is unsocial with $10 million. The planetary AI datasets licensing marketplace has been valued astatine astir $486 cardinal successful 2025.
Such commercialized information sharing agreements mean researchers’ intelligence spot is being monetised twice: archetypal done subscriptions, past done AI partnerships — portion they proceed to not beryllium compensated and being denied power implicit their ain work.
What authors tin do
Authors person 3 courses of enactment successful beforehand of them. First, they should self-archive preprint versions of their papers and accepted manuscripts successful preprint and organization repositories. Second, they should petition additions to publishing contracts with journals earlier they taxable their papers, successful bid to clasp immoderate rights (they tin usage the SPARC Author Addendum template, for instance). Third, they should advocator for institutions to make rights-retention policies that let them to automatically openly licence the institutions’ scholarly output.
For aboriginal submissions, authors whitethorn besides similar utilizing the CC-BY licence oregon utilizing organization unfastened entree routes that guarantee their papers are disposable for the nationalist to entree for escaped and to forestall unauthorised commercialized exploitation.
In the tone of Open Access Week, the question ‘who owns our knowledge?’ is not conscionable a theme: it’s a telephone to reclaim intelligence sovereignty. The aboriginal of equitable assistance depends connected authors, not corporations, owning and sharing the cognition that shapes society.
Moumita Koley is simply a elder probe expert astatine the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.
