Title

Majority of scholarly journals from India in WoS and SCOPUS are closed access and promoted by foreign publishers: A 2026 concern on technological embargo

Authors

Yogesh Singh Bisht¹, Ruby Singh², Senkuttuvan Pavithra^3,*, Sivakumar Monisha³, Muthukumaran Kameshwari³, Muthukumaran Kamaleshwari³, Thangamani Yogasri³, Anandhan Nisha³, Marimuthu Vishnu Priya³ & Anandhan Viji³

Affiliation

¹AskBisht (Academic Publishing Platform), New Delhi, India; ²Gevanam Genomics (P) Ltd, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India; ³Biomedical Informatics (P) Ltd, Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu, India; *Corresponding author

Email

Yogesh Singh Bisht - E-mail: singh.yogeshweb@gmail.com
Ruby Singh - E-mail: contact@gevanamgenomics.com
Senkuttuvan Pavithra - E-mail: pavithranarayan304@gmail.com
Sivakumar Monisha - E-mail: monishasivakumar092001@gmail.com
Muthukumaran Kameshwari - E-mail: kaviya21092002@gmail.com
Muthukumaran Kamaleshwari - E-mail: kamali21092002@gmail.com
Thangamani Yogasri - E-mail: yogsthangam2109@gmail.com
Anandhan Nisha - E-mail: nishaanandhan02@gmail.com
Marimuthu Vishnu Priya - E-mail: vishnu002priya@gmail.com
Anandhan Viji - E-mail: sjcetvijiaids@gmail.com
 

Article Type

Views

Date

Received February 1, 2026; Revised February 28, 2026; Accepted February 28, 2026, Published February 28, 2026

Abstract

Scholarly communication of data is important for advancement of science. This is done using scholarly journal platforms promoted and managed by publishers. Further, many of these journals are indexed in commercial databases such as WoS from Clarivate Inc. (Canada), SCOPUS from Elsevier Inc. (Netherlands) and several others. This inclusion is selective based on criteria defined by Clarivate Inc. and Elsevier Inc. in their capacity as private business entities. Moreover, inclusion is claimed to be representative by both parties. However, it is not comprehensive and they have large scale business activities in India. Furthermore, there is a huge hype among the scientific community and educational institutions for using data in these databases for selecting journals for scholarly communication. The WoS and SCOPUS databases have included about 300 Indian Journals. This accounts for about 1.4% journals in the database. Nonetheless, about 68% of these journals are closed access and it is managed by foreign publishers such as Wolter Kluwer, Springer, Elsevier, Francis and Taylor etc. This is a 2026 concern for technological embargo while balancing creativity and freedom of expression.

Keywords

Data analytics, WoS, Scopus, freedom of expression, impact factor, India

Citation

Bisht et al. Bioinformation 22(2): 2502-2506 (2026)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.