May 31, 2019

expert reaction to the launch of the revised implementation guidance on plan s

Reactions to revised implementation guidance on Plan S.

Philippe Terheggen, Managing Director, STM Journals at Elsevier, said:

“Elsevier welcomes cOAlition S’ updated implementation guidance, ‘Accelerating the transition to full and immediate Open Access to scientific publications’. Elsevier fully supports and promotes Open Access. Authors can achieve full and immediate open access – and so be Plan S compliant – either by publishing their articles in our gold open access journals, or by publishing their articles gold open access in our hybrid journals. We welcome that cOAlition S recognises these as channels for scientists to publish their research. We will provide practical guidelines for authors before Plan S goes live in 2021, so that it’s clear how to publish in Elsevier journals while also being Plan S compliant.”

Steven Inchcoombe, Chief Publishing Officer, Springer Nature, said:

“We are, and continue to be, committed to the fastest and most effective route to immediate OA for all primary research and we welcome the inclusion by cOAlition S of some of our most recent feedback in their revised guidance. 

“Placing at the heart of their guidance transformative deals and expanding transitional arrangements to include transformative journals, as we proposed in May, and which could enable us to introduce an OA option on Nature, will go a long way to delivering the sustainable transition to OA that we all want to see achieved. 

“Committing to reviewing, at the end of 2024, all aspects of the effects of Plan S’s principles is a good and natural action given the scale of changes and remaining uncertainties we all face. Since the speed at which funders and institutions fund OA and authors take up OA is simply not in the control of publishers, the inclusion of a deadline which seeks to predict the outcome of the review is, we believe, potentially counterproductive. For example, even before Plan S principles start to be effective in 2021 it could soon have a negative effect on the number of institutions willing to enter into 3 or 4 year transformative deals. 

“We also remain deeply concerned with the approach proposed for Green OA as this could have serious unintended consequences.”

“We do look forward to continuing our discussions, particularly on transformative arrangements and Green OA, and working together with them and many others to deliver the transition to OA so the wider goal of open science can also be achieved.” 

Robert Kiley, Head of Open Research at Wellcome and interim cOAlition S Coordinator, said:

“Together with our partners at cOAlition S, and in response to a large consultation exercise, we have decided to update our forthcoming open access policy. We remain committed to our core principles – to make research freely available at the time of publication and fully reusable – but we have made changes to align with other funders and ensure the community has adequate time to adapt. 

“Our updated policy will now become effective from 1 January 2021. We will continue to support the costs associated with publishing Wellcome-funded research, including providing support (until the end of 2024) for publishers who are committed to transition to a fully open access model. On a case-by-cases basis, our funded researchers will also be able to make requests for their work to be available through a Creative Commons, attribution, no derivatives licence (CC-BY-ND) 

“We hope these changes reflect what we heard from the community and will help us work towards a fully open access world, where no research is behind a paywall.” 

Declared interests

None received.