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

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.