Open access to the scholarly content is important to take the research to the next level and give it momentum that is lost in the long process of publishing in paywalled journals, and also because underprivileged researchers are not able to access them. Countries across the world are finding various ways to make research accessible instantly after publication and also free of charge. India is not an exception to the open access trend that is pervasive worldwide. India firmly backed the open access movement with the One Nation, One Subscription journal access strategy. India’s Ministry of Education said, "The government is going to adopt a "One Nation, One Subscription" (ONOS) policy for scientific research papers and academic journals from April 2023 to ensure access for researchers countrywide, and the government will negotiate with journal publishers for "all people in India" to have access to journal articles under a single, centrally negotiated payment to be made by the government."1

Another recent initiative towards open access is having a national archive and interlinking it with the national archives of G20 countries. India is discussing laying the foundation for a national archive to share open access research among G20 countries. A few more meetings to be held to discuss the agenda and plan for the national archive of India, which is interoperable among the archives of G20 countries. The Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, Prof. Ajay Kumar Sood (March 2023), chairing the G20 Chief Scientific Advisors' Roundtable (CSAR), a government-to-government level initiative of the G20 Presidency, for careful consideration on a critical topic: free and universal access to scientific journals that are behind paywall.

Points for discussion are: 

• Free of cost, immediate access to the scientific journals
• Article processing charges and subscription fees of journals
• Interoperable interlinking of national repositories with international repositories and archives
• Open access mandate to make publicly funded research widely available.

1. Ministry sets ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ deal deadline (universityworldnews.com)
2. https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1911981
3. Open-access publishing fees deter researchers in the global south (nature.com)
4. India to pitch for open access to research among G20 countries: Principal Scientific Advisor Prof Sood, Health News, ET HealthWorld (indiatimes.com)
5. One Nation, One Subscription journal-access plan of India - LibCognizance

Researchers in any field, accessing research publications face two main problems. One, it takes around one year in the whole process of submitting, reviewing, accepting, and publishing research work in an online journal to be accessible. Another one is most of the papers remain behind the paywall as they are published in journals that are accessible only after having a subscription. So, many researchers in different countries, and of different universities and colleges who don't have subscriptions to these journals are unaware of the research findings in their fields. The need to make the current research results, immediately and freely accessible to the research community for building the ground for further research, has given rise to Preprints servers. A growing number of disciplines are building online repositories of preprints that are openly accessible to all readers. India also launched its preprints service in 2017 in agricultural sciences and now launched the country's first community Preprints service IndiaRxiv.