cOAlition S, Plan S and accelerating OA [Response of Taylor & Francis]

"What is Taylor & Francis’ response? 

We share many of the aspirations of Plan S and are advocates for open access, which we have shown through converting titles to full open access, signing up to ‘transformative’ agreements, launching new services and products such as our Research Dashboard, and experimenting, for example with our Green Open Access zero embargo pilot on Library and Information Science journals. We have offered Creative Commons licences on open access content for the past five years. We have also long seen the value of archiving in repositories.  Our early commitment to long-term preservation of research through our partnership with archives such as Portico and CLOCKSS illustrates this. As customer needs have changed we have also created supportive policies to enable authors to archive accepted manuscripts in institutional repositories. This option is normally available a set period of time after publication. 

That said, we have some reservations around Plan S and its related implementation guidance, many of which may be clarified once more detail is provided. We have serious concerns about its impact on investment levels, academic independence, and the power, reach and competitiveness of academic research. We would point to the growth of open access in the UK as an example of how cross stakeholder collaboration could help to achieve cOAltion S’s goals (following the 2012 report on open access by the working group chaired by Janet Finch, the UK has seen a growth in OA that outstrips global averages).  

As a large publisher, we will be able to weather the effects of Plan S more effectively than some smaller publishers, which has been pointed out in various blog posts on the issue. The point around engagement in transformative agreements has for example emerged as an area where smaller publishers will need to play catch up...."