CrossrOAds – Facts, evidence, ideas and opinions on Open Access, scholarly communication and copyright

"One of the issues raised by researchers in the discussions on Plan S is the requirement of disseminating scientific works, in journals as well as on repositories, under an open licence. The original Plan S statement talked of fulfilling “the requirements defined by the Berlin Declaration”, expressing a preference for the CC BY licence.

This was later detailed in Guidance on the Implementation of Plan S. While still referring to the Berlin Declaration, the document offers its own definition of reuse rights. This definition is very close to what is found in the description of the CC licences on the Creative Commons website (Table 1). This appears justified, as the CC licences, as well as our understanding of copyright issues related to OA, have much evolved since the time of the Berlin Declaration (2003, not a year after CC licences were launched)...."