Govt to strengthen research integrity and open access publishing in Tier 2 & 3 academic institutions

The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Government of India and Springer Nature, a global leader in research publishing, have announced a strategic collaboration to increase awareness of the importance of research integrity, open access and other scholarly publishing practices across India's Tier 2 and Tier 3 academic institutions.

The partnership will drive the RISE-UTTHAN initiative — a structured academic engagement programme designed to equip academia, researchers, and scholars with globally benchmarked tools and knowledge to foster ethical, accessible, and high-impact research practices.

The RISE-UTTHAN initiative will focus on three critical pillars of the academic research lifecycle:

1. Research Integrity in Science and Education - equipping scholars to conduct and communicate research that meets the highest standards of ethics and transparency.
2. Open Access Awareness and the Future of Science - complementing India's One Nation, One Subscription initiative by helping researchers understand the evolving landscape of open science globally.
3. Book Publishing in a Changing World - building researcher capacity to navigate evolving publishing models, from traditional to digital and open formats, ensuring their work reaches wider audiences and contributes to global knowledge-sharing.

Through a mix of workshops, lectures, and hands-on training, the initiative will engage 25–30 research-active institutions and reach approximately 5,000 researchers during the India Research Tour 2025, scaling further in subsequent years based on institutional feedback and resource alignment.