Plan S: What It Means for Researchers

The final talk of the Summer School was held by Sabina Leonelli, Professor of Philosophy and History of Science at the University of Exeter and Plan S Ambassador, who presented the characteristics of Plan S, a wider Open Science movement looking to accelerate the transition to provide research results in Open Access. Their ambition is to make full and immediate OA a reality by building a global coalition of funders, institutions, researchers, and publishers. In 2018, Plan S emerged from long-standing European work on Open Science as a set of principles, such as: research results are a public good and should be immediately available to accelerate science; there should not be pay-walled publications or embargo periods; publications should be under a CC BY license by default and researchers should keep the copyrights; there should be transparency about pricing, publication fees, and contracts; funders should commit to pay publication fees; compliance to OA; and commitment to assess research outputs based on their intrinsic merit and not their venue of publication.

In 2019, a large-scale consultation about the impact of Plan S was held which received 600 responses from various stakeholders including many researchers. Due to the responses, the principles and policies of Plan S are being updated and improved. Some of the key changes are: greater clarity on OA compliance routes, a range of transformative arrangements are supported, a stronger emphasis on transparency of OA publication fees, and the option to request a CC BY ND license.

Plan S works with all key stakeholders: researchers to understand their concerns, publishers to promote transformative journals, learned societies who are often a gateway to communities, libraries and library consortia, universities, LERU, and other Open Access initiatives. Leonelli sees a big advantage of Plan S in how it fits with existing research practice since it does not require a major rethink of the authorship and publication process and researchers can participate no matter who funds them. She encouraged the participants to lobby their institutions, scholarly societies, and funders to embrace the Plan S principles.

• Slides: Plan S →