Revamping the Scholarly Publishing Landscape: A Case for Open Access

The for-profit publishing industry has taken over the reins of the scholarly publishing landscape which was primarily meant for the academicians and by the academicians. The developments in information communication and technology facilitated open publishing, open sharing and open access, the researchers, however, still prefer for closed access journals, which survive mostly on the metrics developed and promoted by the for-profit publishing industry for their reputation. Also, in the contemporary academe, the merit of the researchers is determined largely by the number of their publications and by the fact that these are published by the purportedly reputed publishers who predominantly publish overpriced and closed access journals. The reputation of the researcher is overshadowed by the reputation of the publishers. This paper attempts to highlight the strategies employed by the commercial publishers to maintain their oligopoly in the field. It also aims to understand and critically analyze the various publishing and subscription models such as Plan S and APCs which are being promoted as open access models and their relevance in an academic environment especially in the Indian context. The paper checks for the viability of One Nation One Subscription model. It also discusses the apathy of academicians in general towards Open Access and their continuing romanticism for high impact journals even if they and their institutions are unable to afford these journals