Editorial 1: Entering a year of uncertainty
Context:
Soothsayers seldom read the future correctly, especially in the realm of geopolitics. Quite a few soothsayers, however, were partially right at the beginning of 2022 when they said that uncertainty and impermanence would dictate the course of world events that year. The year did witness a spike in geopolitical challenges and risks, but no one predicted that 2022 would be a year that would put the world to test.
Russia- Ukraine conflict:
- The Russia-Ukraine conflict, which erupted in February 2022, has become a major disruptor of the existing order. In turn, it has led to one of the largest population shifts in modern times. With hindsight, however, some of this could have been anticipated. By mid-2021, Russia had begun a major build-up around Ukraine and in December 2021, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a list of new security guarantees it wanted from the U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including a promise not to expand the alliance eastward.
- What possibly could not have been anticipated was the extraordinary display of Ukrainian nationalism, and the swift response of the West, including NATO and the U.S., in rallying behind Ukraine and extending military and other types of cooperation. All said, even today few experts are able to fully comprehend what all this presages or what lies in the future.
Fallouts of the war
- It might, therefore, be intriguing to make a comparison with the situation that prevailed during World War I, especially in 1916. Back then, the risk of escalation both horizontally and vertically was underplayed. It might be useful to heed the lessons from that time. In the present case, any escalation vertically would mean the use of nuclear weapons.
- Any escalation horizontally would mean opening new fronts. As in 1916, there are many ‘unknowns’ today. Unexpected incidents could result in dangerous outcomes. The spectre of an all-out war is ominously present.
- There could be several other fallouts as well. Already, the ‘proxy war’ between the U.S., Europe and NATO on the one hand, and Russia on the other, is having a major fallout in the economic realm. The incessant imposition of sanctions by the West and its allies on Russia, the barring of Russian banks from SWIFT, and the freezing of Russian foreign assets have all provoked an energy crisis.
- This is accompanied by the soaring prices of oil, with Russia using oil as a weapon. The full extent of this is yet to be properly understood, but what it does portend is the possibility of a wider conflagration.
- The ripple effects of the recent developments in Europe are evident. Some of this is occurring well beyond European shores. China-Russia relations are a case in point. China has chosen this time to deepen its strategic ties with Russia. Both countries have said their “relations are enjoying the best period in their history”. Furthermore, in the light of the heightened concerns of the West over Taiwan, newer alignments are becoming evident across Asia.
Increase in defence spending
- As 2023 has dawned and the arc of instability increases, what is also becoming evident is a massive increase in defence spending by almost every country — notwithstanding the economic stress they all confront. Estimated spending on defence across the globe is understood to have crossed $2 trillion in 2022, and is expected to increase substantially in 2023.
- Increased defence budgets are threatening to alter the nature of defence relationships and, in turn, what is propounded as strategic autonomy. New strategic alignments could unsettle the current world order, putting paid to previous beliefs in the virtue of non-adherence to a particular bloc, and ideas such as non-alignment.
- This year could, hence, well be the year in which many past ideas regarding economic, technological and financial autonomy may come to be altered or given up. The pace of history will accelerate in 2023, with the war in Ukraine being a major contributory factor.
- A case in point may be India’s reliance on Russian military equipment, which has been New Delhi’s sheet anchor for many years. This could change with Russian equipment faring poorly against the latest Western weaponry in the Ukraine conflict; India may well consider looking elsewhere for future defence supplies.
- India’s current shift from a professed policy of non-alignment to multi-alignment can possibly help it widen the arc of its defence ties. Groups such as the Quad (U.S., Australia, Japan and India) may, going forward, gain greater salience in India’s defence architecture, given the increased tensions between India and China. India’s defence ties with France, especially in the area of state-of-the-art defence equipment, appear set to grow in 2023.
- Consequent to this, many other changes can be anticipated. Terms like strategic autonomy have already lost their meaning given the fact that the war in Ukraine has brought home to Europe and other countries the fact that Ukraine, or for that matter any other country in Europe, could not have withstood the Russian offensive without the U.S. and NATO. The same conclusion is likely to dictate the thinking of countries in Asia when confronting major “bullies” like China.
India’s neighbourhood
- Going ahead, and apart from Europe, China, India and parts of Asia are likely to face major headwinds. For China, controlling COVID-19 and managing the fallout of its economic downturn would be the main challenges. Consequently, it is unlikely that China would unilaterally provoke a conflict or take a provocative posture vis-à-vis its neighbours this year. Nevertheless, Taiwan and any breaching of the First Island Chain will remain China’s top priority.
- For India, the altered shape of the international order leaves little room for comfort. The China-Russia entente creates a dent in India’s long-standing strategic relationship with Russia, the impact of which could be far reaching.
- Meanwhile, the absence of settled borders with both China and Pakistan will continue to plague India. Many areas along the China-India border will remain live, and incidents such as the recent one in Yangtse could be repeated, but a major conflict appears unlikely.
- Pakistan, mired in its own internal problems and economic difficulties, is unlikely to pose a major threat in 2023. Nevertheless, Pakistan’s provocations and use of terror modules are likely to continue, leading to sporadic attacks in Jammu and Kashmir.
- During 2023, India will also find itself hemmed in by other problems that have emerged in South Asia. In Nepal, the new government appears tilted towards China and could become a problem. Afghanistan under the Taliban will remain an issue, but more problematic is the rising curve of terrorist activity emanating from there, spearheaded by groups such as the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K).
- India’s relations with both Sri Lanka and Bangladesh appear delicately poised, and will require employing deft diplomacy. This year may not, however, see major changes in India’s relationship with most countries of West Asia. It may test whether India’s long-term preference for a non-interventionist strategic culture is paying dividends in its neighbourhood or not.
Conclusion:
All indications are that while terrorism will remain an omnipresent threat this year, major terror attacks may not occur. Nevertheless, the Islamic State, mainly the ISIS-K, has shown signs of revival and its role and activity in Afghanistan are the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Hence, the world may need to be on its guard in 2023.
Editorial 2: The open access movement, to make academic papers accessible for all
Introduction:
Open access (OA) is a term associated with certain practices in academic publishing which improve access to scholarly work. An OA scientific paper will be free and fully accessible.
The OA Movement:
- The OA movement is prominent today because of the high cost of accessing scientific papers. It’s common for a paper published by many journals to cost $15+ to read once and $30+ for permanent access. Subscriptions to these journals have also become more expensive, costing universities several crores a year.
- There are many OA initiatives that offer better alternatives. India recently took the first steps of its ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ (ONOS) scheme: the government, instead of universities, will negotiate with publishers for a capped and fixed fee to access their papers (of studies funded by the state) and pay the fees, so that everyone in the country can read the papers at no additional cost.
- The Education Ministry has so far shortlisted 70 publishers and set an implementation deadline of April 1, 2023.
How papers are published
- Scientists write up a paper and submit it to a journal. Editors at the journal share the manuscript with peer-reviewers — experts on the same topic who scrutinise the authors’ claims, and also provide feedback on structuring the manuscript, including references to previous results, reaching certain conclusions, etc. After the review is complete, the draft is finalised and the journal publishes the paper — in print, online or both.
- In the ‘subscription model’, papers published online are behind a paywall.
- A paywall is a method of restricting access to content, with a purchase or a paid subscription, like news or research papers.
|
- Paywall fees have increased in leaps over time. In a 2018 analysis, Duke University found that 59 of the 100 “most highly cited articles ever published are behind a paywall” and that the “average cost of one of these articles for an unaffiliated researcher is $33.41” — or ₹2,285 (2018).
- A 2020 report prepared by fellows of India’s science academies wrote, “During 2018, India spent an estimated ₹1,500 crore for subscriptions to [e-journals] and/or print journals.” Higher access costs put papers out of reach of other researchers as well as journalists, policymakers, students, etc.
The different types of OA
- OA gained momentum with the advent of the internet in the early 1990s, followed by researchers’, librarians’, and other stakeholders’ interest in reducing publishing costs and improving access.
- In 1991, physicist Paul Ginsparg created arXiv.org, a preprint repository. A preprint is the manuscript before it has been submitted to a journal. Preprint papers aren’t peer-reviewed in the conventional sense, but some workarounds exist, like post-publication peer-review.
- The availability of preprints prompted many journals to switch to OA as well, but with a twist. Some of them began to charge the authors of a paper before publishing instead of the paper’s readers after publishing — a fee that journals called an article processing charge (APC). The APC model is called Gold OA.
- In Green OA, an institute-level repository archives copies of papers by its researchers and makes them public after an embargo period, often specified by the journals that publish the papers.
- In Diamond OA, a journal publishes papers at no cost. Additionally, while hybrid journals follow the subscription model, once a paper is published and paywalled, its authors can pay extra to ‘make’ it OA.
- Gratis OA allows no uses beyond fair use
- Libre OA allows one or more uses beyond fair use.
- Sci-Hub, a web platform that provides open-access to lakhs of illegally obtained research papers, and whose legality is currently being considered in the Delhi High Court, is said to be Black OA.
|
Need for ONOS:
- However, many journals charge exorbitant APCs. Nature Communications publishes papers that are openly available but its APC per accepted paper is ₹5.2 lakh. (There are waivers for low-income and lower-middle-income countries but India isn’t eligible.)
- In 2016-2019, the 2020 report stated, Indian researchers spent ₹38 crore to publish papers in “just two OA journals: PLOS One and Scientific Reports”.
- The government conceived of ONOS in 2020 to lower this bill, but experts remain sceptical. There are three main concerns —
- While the government will pay a fixed sum to journals, this sum could still be large
- Which journals will be included in the negotiations and why? (a ‘recommended list’ faced some resistance in 2020)
- As India has a large population of researchers with diverse interests, journals may not agree on a common price.
The future of OA
- UNESCO’s 2021 ‘Recommendation on Open Science’ asked that “no one [is left] behind with regard to access to science and benefits from scientific progress” as countries confront epochal problems like global-warming and zoonoses.
- The contemporary focus is on the means to secure OA’s adoption. In 2018, an international consortium created an initiative called Plan S. The member-organisations under Plan S work to ensure that from 2021, “scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants” are “published in compliant OA journals or platforms”.
- In January 2021, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation deployed a policy to enable “the unrestricted access and reuse of all peer-reviewed published research funded, in whole or in part, by the foundation”. Other research-funding organisations have published similar policies. However, researchers required to meet such targets often pay large sums to Gold OA or hybrid journals.
Conclusion:
Michael Donaldson, a member of the scholarly publishing industry, has written that across the industry, the OA transition “has been slowed by the challenge of identifying sustainable ways to cover the costs of OA publishing.”