Will the world embrace Plan S, the radical proposal to mandate open access to science papers? | Science | AAAS

"If Plan S fails to grow, it could remain a divisive mandate that applies to only a small percentage of the world's scientific papers. (Delta Think, a consulting company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, estimates that the first 15 funders to back Plan S accounted for 3.5% of the global research articles in 2017.) To transform publishing, the plan needs global buy-in. The more funders join, the more articles will be published in OA journals that comply with its requirements, pushing publishers to flip their journals from paywall-protected subscriptions to OA, says librarian Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, the chief digital scholarship officer at the University of California, Berkeley....

Some European funders think Plan S goes too far. "We and many German [organizations] think that we should not be as prescriptive as Plan S is," says Wilhelm Krull, secretary general of the Volkswagen Foundation, a private research funder in Hannover , Germany. The country is Europe's top producer of scientific papers, ahead of the United Kingdom and France, whose main funding agencies have signed on to Plan S. Germany's biggest federal funding agency, DFG, said it supports Plan S's goals but prefers to let researchers drive the change. Other funders, including the Estonian Research Council, say the timeline is too tight, and they will reconsider joining when Plan S's impact is clearer.

Other European funders are weighing pros and cons. Spain's science ministry says it is analyzing the potential repercussions of Plan S on the country's science and finances, and on researchers' careers. FNRS, the fund for scientific research in Belgium's Wallonia-Brussels region, is waiting for Plan S to announce its cap on article-processing charges (APCs), the fees for publishing in OA journals, which the coalition's funders have pledged to pay. "We're not ready to commit if the costs are too high," says Véronique Halloin, secretary-general of FNRS, whose existing OA mandate caps APC reimbursement at €500—which Halloin admits is on the low side.

Many await the European Commission's policy: Although its grants represent a small percentage of research funding in Europe, its OA rules can influence national mandates. The commission's research chief, Carlos Moedas, supports Plan S, and its 7-year funding program Horizon Europe, which will begin in 2021, contains general statements of support for OA. Plan S's rules will go into the program's model contract for grants, Smits says...."