ONOS has begun consulting private universities about Phase II — and the one thing to do before it opens takes a week to obtain

Since January 2025, One Nation One Subscription has been the largest fact in Indian library provision — and, for private and self-financed institutions, the largest exclusion. Phase I covers government institutions. Everyone else has been waiting to hear whether there would be a Phase II and what it might ask of them.

There is now something concrete to look at. The ONOS portal carries a notice that a consultative meeting with private universities and private deemed-to-be universities is being organised — in the scheme's own words, "to gather valuable inputs and collaboratively discuss the next steps for ONOS Phase II implementation and the possible participation of private universities", with institutions asked to register online before 18 September 2026.

Read that phrasing carefully, because it is doing precise work. Possible participation. Next steps. This is a consultation, not an announcement of terms, and any private institution told otherwise by a vendor is being sold something. But it is the first formal invitation to the private sector, the registration date has just passed, and the preparation it implies is worth starting now.

Everything below was read from onos.gov.in on 27 September 2026.

What ONOS actually is at this point

The scheme's own dashboard, today: 6,500+ member institutions, 13,000+ journal titles across 27 broad subject categories, from 30+ publishers. Usage reported as 1,140 lakh+ full-text downloads in 2025 and 783 lakh+ so far in 2026.

Eligibility, as stated on the portal's How to Join page, is unchanged: all government higher education institutions, central and state, and central government R&D institutions. That is the line Phase II is about.

The prerequisite nobody expects: an AISHE code

This is the practical heart of the article, and it is the reason to act before terms are published.

Registration on the ONOS portal requires the institution's name, its AISHE code, and the contact details of an institute nodal officer — and the portal states plainly that the AISHE code is mandatory for registration. An institution without one must apply through the AISHE portal first. Institutions with students apply as a college, university or stand-alone institution; institutions doing research without students apply under the R&D category, with an authorising letter.

The nodal officer has a specified standard too: a regular, senior, whole-time employee of the institution. Not a contract librarian, not a vendor's representative.

A great many private colleges have an AISHE code and have never checked whether it is correct and current; some newer institutions do not have one at all. Obtaining or correcting it is an administrative process with its own timeline, and it is entirely independent of whatever Phase II eventually decides. If your institution does one thing in response to this article, make it verifying the AISHE code and naming a nodal officer.

What is in the package, publisher by publisher

For a library deciding what to keep buying, the useful question is not "how many journals" but "which ones, and do I already pay for them". Title counts from the ONOS publisher list, today:

Taylor & Francis 2,548 · Elsevier ScienceDirect 2,389 · Springer Nature 2,345 · Wiley 1,316 · Sage 1,097 · Project Muse 751 · Cambridge University Press 412 · Oxford University Press 384 · Emerald 313 · IEEE 210 · ACM Digital Library 157 · World Scientific 143 · Bentham Science 111 · Institute of Physics 91 · American Chemical Society 73 · Thieme 52 · Annual Reviews 51 · ASME 38 · BMJ 36 · ASCE and ICE 34 each · American Institute of Physics 30 · American Society for Microbiology 16 · SPIE 16 · American Physical Society 15 · American Mathematical Society 9 · Cold Spring Harbor 7 · AAAS Science 1.

Two entries deserve notice. IndianJournals.com is in the list with 239 titles — the scheme is not only international content. And alongside the commercial publishers sit CSIR-NIScPR (18), DRDO research journals (3) and collections of Indian open-access journals.

Backfiles are included for many publishers, with start years given per publisher — ACM from 1954, ACS from 1996, Science from 1997. That matters more than it sounds. We wrote last week that free-only access fails on older literature, only 15.7 per cent of 1995 work being open; for a covered institution, ONOS closes part of exactly that gap.

A correction: ONOS does fund article processing charges

On 20 September we wrote, in a piece on open-access journals, that ONOS "is about reading access" and "is not a fund that pays your article processing charge". That was wrong, and we have corrected the article.

The portal is explicit: article processing charges are one of the components of the ONOS scheme, and APCs for selected good-quality open-access journals are centrally funded through the scheme's executing agency. The selection criteria are set by the ONOS Core Committee and currently cover Gold open-access journals in the top 5 per cent by any of three indicators — CiteScore, SNIP or SJR — among publishers participating in ONOS. There is a published guideline, a searchable list of selected titles, an application route and a funding-status dashboard, and the homepage reports 199 APC applications submitted.

Separately, ACM is subscribed under a read-and-publish agreement, which gives covered institutions premium access to the ACM Digital Library along with publishing rights under that agreement.

So the accurate position is narrower than "ONOS pays your APC" and much wider than what we said: there is central APC funding, it is restricted to a defined top tier of Gold open-access journals at participating publishers, and an author at a covered institution should check the selected-titles list before assuming they must pay.

The instinct when a scheme excludes you is to wait for the announcement. The prerequisites do not wait: an AISHE code, a named nodal officer, remote authentication that works, and usage data good enough to know what you would still need to buy. None of those depend on Phase II, and an institution without them will not be ready on the day terms are published.

What a private university should do now

Verify the AISHE code, or apply for one. This is the blocking step and the one with an external timeline.

Name the nodal officer — regular, senior, whole-time — and make sure that person is the one receiving the consultation correspondence rather than a general office inbox.

Do the things ONOS will not do for you, which we have written about through this month: N-LIST membership if you are a college, remote authentication that works from a hostel, a deposit policy for your own output, and the free national resources switched on. Every one of those remains necessary whether or not Phase II includes you.

Measure what you would actually need. If Phase II arrives, the question your finance committee will ask is which existing subscriptions it replaces. The answer requires COUNTER usage data for the titles you currently buy, mapped against the publisher list above. An institution that has that mapping ready negotiates from evidence; one that does not will renew everything out of caution.

Do not let a vendor tell you what Phase II contains. The scheme publishes its own notices, guidelines and dashboards. Until terms appear there, they do not exist.

Why it matters for students and researchers

For a student at a private institution, nothing has changed yet, and the honest advice is unchanged too: use the free tier deliberately and ask the librarian what the college already licenses. If Phase II eventually includes your university, the difference will be immediate and large — 13,000 titles is more than any private Indian institution licenses on its own.

For a researcher, the APC correction is the actionable part today, and only at covered institutions: before paying an article processing charge from a grant, check whether the target journal is on the ONOS selected-titles list.

For an institution, this is a rare case where the preparation is cheap, useful on its own merits, and independent of the decision. The AISHE code, the nodal officer and the usage data are worth having in a world where Phase II never happens.

Frequently asked questions

Is ONOS open to private universities?

Not in Phase I, which covers government higher education institutions — central and state — and central government R&D institutions. A consultation with private and private deemed-to-be universities on Phase II and their possible participation is under way, with online registration requested before 18 September 2026. Terms have not been published.

How does an institution register for ONOS?

Through the ONOS portal, providing the institution's name, its AISHE code and the contact details of a nodal officer who must be a regular, senior, whole-time employee. The AISHE code is mandatory; institutions without one apply through the AISHE portal first.

Which publishers are included in ONOS?

More than thirty, including Taylor & Francis, Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Sage, Cambridge, Oxford, Emerald, IEEE, ACM, ACS, IOP, BMJ, Annual Reviews, Project Muse and World Scientific — alongside IndianJournals.com, CSIR-NIScPR and DRDO research journals.

Does ONOS pay article processing charges?

Yes, for a defined set. APC support is a component of the scheme, centrally funded, currently covering Gold open-access journals in the top 5 per cent by CiteScore, SNIP or SJR among ONOS publishers. A selected-titles list, guideline and application route are published on the portal. We previously reported the opposite and have corrected that article.

How many institutions and journals does ONOS cover?

The portal reported 6,500+ member institutions and 13,000+ journal titles across 27 subject categories on 27 September 2026, with 1,140 lakh+ full-text downloads in 2025.

What should a private college do while waiting?

Verify its AISHE code, appoint a nodal officer, switch on the free national resources, join N-LIST if it is a college, fix remote access, and assemble usage data for the subscriptions it currently pays for.