Draft 5th national science, technology, and innovation policy for public consultation (2020), Department of Science and Technology, Government of India
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Draft 5th national science, technology, and innovation policy for public consultation (2020), Department of Science and Technology, Government of India
What is this about?
The Draft 5th National Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (2020) by India’s Department of Science and Technology positions open science and open access as defaults, guided by the principle of being “as open as possible, as closed as necessary,” while balancing ethics, privacy, intellectual property, and security. It links openness to research quality, reproducibility, translation speed, and equitable access, particularly for under-resourced communities. The policy outlines clear expectations for researchers, institutions, funders, and publishers, including rights retention, use of Creative Commons licences, FAIR data principles, persistent identifiers, and repository deposition, while allowing justified exceptions for sensitive or commercial data. It emphasises enabling infrastructure, compliance monitoring, and governance mechanisms such as ethics oversight and secure data environments, alongside equity measures like reducing author costs, multilingual communication, and capacity building. By consolidating dispersed rules into actionable guidance aligned with international initiatives, the draft provides India’s research ecosystem with a coherent framework for responsible, transparent, and inclusive open science practices.
