In an important development in Indian biotechnology, the genome sequencing data of 10 000 Indian citizens was launched on 9 January 2025 at the Genome India Data Conclave held in New Delhi, India.

The data forms part of the Indian Genome Project, a national initiative aimed at creating a comprehensive catalogue of genetic variation within the Indian population. It is expected that the database will improve the understanding of India’s diverse genetic pool, facilitate advanced research, and support the development of precision medicine. The initiative is being managed under the aegis of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology.

The sequencing project includes data from 10 000 healthy individuals across various regions and communities in India. By representing the broad genetic diversity of the country, the data is intended to serve as a critical reference point for future clinical, epidemiological, and public health research. The ultimate objective is to enable better detection of genetic predispositions, improve diagnosis of rare and infectious diseases, and support tailored therapeutic interventions (personalised medicine).

The Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC), the designated repository for this genome data, will provide access to researchers through a secure, managed platform. This open-science approach is expected to facilitate collaborations between academic institutions, healthcare agencies, and biotech innovators.

Genome sequencing involves decoding the complete set of DNA within a person, which consists of more than 3 billion base pairs. It includes the identification of genes across all 23 pairs of chromosomes, and holds potential applications in personalized medicine, disease risk profiling, drug response prediction, and health system planning.

While the Human Genome Project (an international collaborative project) completed over 2 decades ago laid the foundation for understanding human DNA at a global level, this Indian dataset offers population-specific insights that are likely to aid more accurate genomic interpretation for Indian patients, with downstream benefits for diagnostics, drug development, and clinical research. The public release of this data has the potential to initiate scientific discoveries rooted in indigenous genomic data.

P.M. NISCHAL, Mysuru, Karnataka

ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3491-5500

The Union Cabinet of the Government of India approved the ONOS scheme on 25 November 2024. ONOS aims at breaking barriers to knowledge by providing all students, faculty, researchers, and scientists across more than 6500 government-managed higher education institutions (HEIs) and central government research and development centres (including those in tiers 2 and 3 cities), ensuring equitable access to knowledge facilitating access to full-text of high-quality international journals. The ONOS scheme will benefit about 18 million researchers across disciplines, such as engineering, mathematics, medicine, social sciences, finance and accounts, etc. with access to more than 13 000 scholarly journals from 30 major international publishers.

The subscription process will be coordinated centrally by the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET), an autonomous inter-university centre under the University Grants Commission (UGC) located at Gandhi Nagar, Gujarat (www.inflibnet.ac.in/activities/onos.php). The full-text of the journals will be conveniently accessible through a digital platform, minimizing administrative complexities. The journals can be accessed through the campus IP address of the institute or outside the campus through INDIAN Access Management Federation (INFED) set up at INFLIBNET. The resources can be accessed through any device including mobiles.

For the three years 2025–2027 (ONOS phase 1), a budget of ₹60 billion has been allocated covering the subscription charges for all participating institutions. Further, ONOS will also provide central funding support of ₹1.5 billion per year for beneficiary authors towards payment of article processing charges (APC) to publish in selected open access journals. By negotiating lower APCs with publishers, the ONOS scheme will facilitate Indian researchers publishing in open access journals without incurring heavy financial costs. ONOS phase I started from 1 January 2025 (www.onos.gov.in/).

The ONOS scheme has to be understood in the perspective of the current global scholarly publishing system. The scholarly publishing industry is sustained by publicly funded research. A handful of commercial publishers based in western countries dominate the landscape of scholarly publications. In the traditional subscription model, these publishers charge fees for accessing full-text, and the funding public institutions have to pay to access work they have already funded. Publisher profit margins often exceed 30%, which, some believe is exploitative.

‘Pay to publish’ with unrestricted open access (OA), ensures that the full-text of research is freely accessible to the reader. This model includes two approaches, namely: fully OA and hybrid OA (a mix of open and restricted access). OA operates through the following primary models: Gold OA and Diamond OA. In Gold OA, after peer review, upon acceptance, the authors/institutions or funding agencies pay an APC, allowing immediate, free online access to the final version. (Several publishers provide institutional agreements to offer discounted APCs). In Diamond OA, instead of the authors or readers, expenses are borne by institutions, grants, or academic consortia. If HEIs need full- text access to journals outside those available on ONOS, these have to be subscribed individually. The U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy (with effect from 2026), Horizon Europe, the European Union’s flagship funding programme, mandate full-text of peer-reviewed publications originating from their funding be freely accessible to all online. Further, a ‘no launch journal’ policy by multinational corporation publishers in the field of subscription-based journal publishing is already in force for the past decade and nothing suggests this is likely to change. With the trend of journals shifting towards Gold OA, the timeline of ONOS in the present model raises questions about ONOS’s relevance beyond 2025. Notwithstanding these issues, as of now, the ONOS initiative is being considered to be a game-changer for India’s research ecosystem.

ALLADI MOHAN, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh

ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3214-9884

It has been estimated in 2021, that there are 1 billion adult males and 1.11 billion adult females with overweight and obesity. If the present trends continue, by 2050, the total number of adults living with overweight and obesity will reach 3.8 billion; and nearly one-third of India’s population (~449 million people) will be overweight or obese (Lancet 2025;405:813–38). This obesity epidemic is a cause for concern. Moving beyond body mass index (kg/m²), a new definition and diagnostic criteria for obesity has been proposed for the global population (Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol 2025;13:221–62); for Asian Indians living in India (Diabetes Metab Syndr 2025;19:102989) that enables differentiation between ‘innocuous obesity’ (obesity without pathological consequences) and ‘obesity with consequences’ (obesity with significant pathological consequences), where in waist circumference, waist-to-height ratio, comorbid diseases, and symptoms related to day-to-day activities are included alongside BMI. These may facilitate prevention strategies for obesity.

ALLADI MOHAN, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh

ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3214-9884