Good. But also if any of that research was done by any university supported by tax dollars or otherwise public funds or even charitable contributions all that research should be free and open — that anyone has to pay twice or thrice for research and knowledge is insane.
And all these journals just gatekeep to be rent seeking entities. It’s gross.
This injustice is being adressed by The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to the Sciences and Humanities [1], which a large number universities worldwide have already signed.
All employees and students of my university are encouraged to publish open access or grant the university a royalty-free, non-exclusive, non-commercial, worldwide licence to publish it in their own repository, if the publisher is more restrictive.
It's good students are getting easy access to research papers but government funds going to these nasty opportunistic publishers is sending a very bad message. Deals like this only encourage these publishers that they have support and that they are in a 'legitimate' business.
We ought to be treating this mob like we do with cigarette manufacturers—barely on the side of 'legitimate' and that they're only still there because of historical circumstance.
The money the Indian Government has invested would have been better off spent ensuring that evey paper published in India would be published through its own scientific press. To achieve that it could make publishing in journals published by scumbag publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, etc. unlawful.
And all these journals just gatekeep to be rent seeking entities. It’s gross.