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 One Nation One Subscription

Guidelines on Payment of Article Publishing Charges

1. Background

1.1. 

The One Nation One Subscription (ONOS), a central sector scheme of Government of India, with the Department of Higher Education (DHE) as the nodal department, was approved in November 2024 and has been launched from 1st January 2025. The ONOS portal provides access to scholarly research articles from journals published by the 30 publishers included in the ONOS. The access is available to all students, faculty and researchers of central government and state government Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Research & Development (R&D) organisations of

The central government.

1.2. Prior to ONOS, there were 10 different library consortia who had their own
subscription models. In addition, many government HEIs used to have their own
subscription for some of these journals. After ONOS, all these have been merged into a single ONOS consortia. All the participating Ministries in the Government of India has pooled their resources for funding the ONOS and the remaining fund is being provided by the Ministry of Finance, Government of India. The ONOS portal has been developed and maintained by the Inflibnet, an Inter-University-Centre of the University Grants Commission (UGC)

The ONOS scheme not only provides access to journal articles but also supports the payment of Article Publishing Charges (APC) for selected high-quality open access journals, with central funding managed by the executing agency. Starting in 2025, these guidelines aim to streamline APC payments for eligible authors—regular faculty, students, researchers, and principal investigators—who are the first or corresponding authors and have made significant intellectual contributions to the article. Only research articles accepted in the top 1% of fully open access journals, as determined by SCOPUS indicators, qualify for APC support. Authors must apply through the ONOS portal, ensuring authenticity and providing required declarations to prevent duplicate claims. Payments are processed directly to publishers through the PFMS system, with TDS and other applicable taxes deducted at source. The program follows a first-come, first-served policy and prioritizes inclusivity by potentially capping the number of articles funded per author or institution, ensuring broad access to the benefits of the scheme.

1.3. While providing access to the journal articles have been the major component of the ONOS, the Article Publishing Charges / Article Processing Charges (APC) is also an approved component of the ONOS scheme. It was approved that negotiated APCs for selected good quality open access journals will be centrally funded through the executing agency for ONOS. The list of such journals shall be decided by groups of
subject experts.
1.4. This document is prepared after detailed deliberation at the Core Committee of the ONOS. The guidelines will be followed starting from the year 2025 to see its
usefulness in addressing the APC payment related issues. Further modifications, under the guidance of the Core Committee, shall be undertaken as and when necessary.
2. Guidelines for payment of APC:
2.1. Eligible authors: Regular faculty, students, researchers, Principal Investigators of the Higher Education Institutions and R&D Institutions with active registration in ONOS are eligible to apply. The corresponding institution nodal officer of ONOS will have to authenticate that the applicant is a Bonafide regular employee/ student of the Institution. In particular, all of the following conditions are to be fulfilled:
2.1.1. The applicant must be the first author or corresponding author of the article for which APC payment request is being applied for.
2.1.2. The applicant should submit documentary evidence regarding acceptance of
publication while submitting the application regarding payment of APC charges.
2.1.3. The application should be sent with proper authentication from the Head of the Institution that the applicant is a Bonafide regular employee/ student of the HEI/R&D Institution.
2.1.4. The applicant should have made significant intellectual contribution to the
article. A combined declaration from all authors in this regard needs to be
uploaded as per specified format (enclosed with this guideline) while applying
for payment of APC charges by ONOS.
2.1.5. The applicant must ensure that multiple claims are not submitted for the same article.
2.2. Eligible Journals: Fully open access journals which are in top 1% as per any of the 3 indicators: CiteScore, SNIP or SJR published by SCOPUS are eligible for payment of APC from ONOS. In other words, list of top 1% journal for each of the 27 main subject areas given in SCOPUS will be first prepared and then the fully open access journals appearing in this top 1% journal list will be eligible. The Open Access journals can be either from the 30 publishers providing access to their published journals in ONOS or other publishers.
2.2.1. The list of journals which shall be eligible for the payment of APC charges
will be prepared every year by Inflibnet in consultation with the Department
of Higher Education (DHE) and made available on the ONOS website.
2.2.2. If a journal appears in the list in one year (say in the year 2025) but gets
excluded from the list next year (say year 2026), articles accepted for
publication in the year 2025 will remain eligible for payment of APC, even if
the actual payment happens in 2026.
2.3. Eligible Articles: Only research articles accepted for publication/ published in eligible journals are eligible to apply for APC payment.
2.4. Mode of Payment: Once an article is accepted for publication, the author will apply on the specified section of the ONOS portal giving details as per requirement. Once the application is accepted for payment, the same will be intimated to the author and the publisher (using the address of communication provided by the author). Actual payment to the publisher’s bank account will be made directly using the PFMS mechanism. TDS and other taxes will be deducted at source as per Government of India rules/ directives in this regard.
2.5. The workflow for APC will be as follows for Authors:
2.5.1. Registration on the ONOS APC page using Institutional email id of the author through OTP
2.5.2. Select from the drop-down of predefined list of journals and submit details of accepted article with date of submission, communication of acceptance etc.
2.5.3. Verification of the Author by ONOS/corresponding Institute for their institutional affiliation with any ONOS Eligible Institution
2.5.4. Declaration of the applicant along with joint declaration by all authors that no claim from any other source (government or private, Indian or outside) for payment of APC charge has been made or will be made for this article. If any such payment is received for the same, the author shall be liable for refund of the APC charge received from ONOS, in addition to other administrative/ legal actions, as deemed fit.
2.5.5. Submission of details for payment or invoice for payment through central account directly to the account of the journal.
2.5.6. Acceptance by ONOS based on fund availability or rejection of the request with intimation to author
2.5.7. Payment by INFLIBNET Centre
2.5.8. Intimation to Author with details of payments made
2.5.9. Confirmation from Author about publication of the article. An author can apply for APC payment only after confirmation of publication of article (s) for which ONOS has previously paid.
3. Additional Guidelines for Acceptance
3.1. APC payment will be made on a first-come, first-served basis, considering all subject groups and all journals eligible for payment as a single group. No separate allocation with respect to any subject group/ journal type will be done.
3.2. Payment will be made only for APC fees applicable for publishing in fully Open Access mode.
3.3. APC fees will be available only for the articles where first author/ corresponding author is a regular employee or student of the ONOS member institute. Moreover, the applicant should have made a significant intellectual contribution to the article. A combined declaration from all authors in this regard needs to be made while applying for payment of APC charges by ONOS.
3.4. If funding is available from the funding agency or from Government grants for
payment of Open Access Fees, the article will not be eligible for APC charges from ONOS. The authors will have to give a declaration to this effect. If the declaration is found to be false at any future time, necessary administrative and legal proceedings will be initiated against the person giving the declaration.
3.5. To ensure that the benefits of APC charge payment from ONOS reach more HEIs and researchers, the ONOS Committee reserves the right to put a ceiling on the maximum number of articles from a single author/ Institution which shall be provided APC
charge.