Science Europe launched Plan S on 4 September 2018. It is an initiative of cOALition S, a consortium launched by the European Research Councils and a number of major national research agencies and funders (one of which is Science Foundation Ireland). It aims to accelerate the move to open access publishing. Its key principle is that, by 2020, all research funded by public grants must be published in open access journals or platforms. Since its publication, there has been a widespread consultation process and the revised implementation guidance sees the date for full implementation has extended to 2021 with support for journals with transformative agreements in place until 2024. The guidance also reflects a commitment by the funders to revise methods of research assessment along the lines of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). A review process will be in place until 2024. The European University Association welcomed this clarity on the guidelines.
1. Authors should retain copyright on their publications, which must be published under an open license such as Creative Commons;
2. The members of the coalition should establish robust criteria and requirements for compliant open access journals and platforms;
3. They should also provide incentives for the creation of compliant open access journals and platforms if they do not yet exist;
4. Publication fees should be covered by the funders or universities, not individual researchers;
5. Such publication fees should be standardised and capped;
6. Universities, research organisations, and libraries should align their policies and strategies;
7. For books and monographs, the timeline may be extended beyond 2020;
8. Open archives and repositories are acknowledged for their importance;
9. Hybrid open access journals are not compliant with the key principle;
10. Members of the coalition should monitor and sanction non-compliance.
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
