Scholarly content is published in serial content publications. Subscription costs of these publications rise faster than the inflation cost. Academic libraries funds were not sufficient to afford the increasing costs. The unique scholarly content cannot be replaced by cheaper tittles or journals. The publishers of such journals take advantage of this situation, and use the scholarly material to do commerce. This is called serial crisis.

How to tackle this? There are two methods. One can subscribe to a large number of scholarly publications centrally for a country or a network of institutions. It is called the Big Deal. Another method is called Open Access (OA). It means no-cost access to research works published either as journal articles or book. OA happens in two ways. The work can be archived in an open online repository. Alternatively, the work can be published in an OA journal or book. India has 128 OA repositories and reservoirs. Shodhganga is one such large reservoir of Indian theses. OA repositories have some limitations since they do not follow the standards of research publications. There are no digital identifiers for global indexing.

The logic behind Open Access is simple. The research is funded by tax-payer’s money. Therefore, it should be freely available.

OA will end the serial crisis of 50 years. OA movement started in the 1990s. If medical research is made open, it can save lives. In August 2022, the US announced OA policy. By 2025, all federal agencies will have to implement open access policies. There was early development of OA in Europe — the Budapest Initiative, 2003. The Bethesda Statement, 2003, Berlin Declaration, 2003. By 2018, all key funding organisations decided to follow OA. Even in Australia, two funding agencies followed suit. India espoused OA policy in 2014.