After Coalition S disrupted scientific publishing, new plan retreats from strict requirements | Science | AAAS

"Today, Coalition S, the group of 28 organizations behind that effort, released a new, 5-year strategy that aims to build on Plan S—but with no teeth and a broader view on how to improve an industry many view as slow to change. “I would have hoped for something more disruptive, which is what the coalition stood for when they started,” says information scientist Stefanie Haustein at the University of Ottawa.

The group originally intended Plan S’s mandate to push beyond the results from previous, voluntary efforts to promote open-access publishing, and the strong move was heralded as revolutionary by some. But others criticized the mandate as limiting academic freedom, as the group initially pledged not to pay for open-access publishing in paywalled journals. Some critics later said the plan backfired by incentivizing the rise of an author-pays business model under which some prestigious journals charge authors thousands of dollars per open-access article while continuing to publish paywalled content....

Faced with these criticisms, the new plan, Coalition S Strategy 2026-2030, takes a softer approach, favoring alternatives to paywalled journals without an expressed goal of supplanting them. The new strategy acknowledges that “no single model can meet all needs.” Instead, Coalition S will “endorse and advocate for a multitude of routes to open access and open science that align with our vision” of “a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable publishing system.” For example, the plan supports preprints and publishing in peer-reviewed, “diamond” open-access publishing venues—a nascent form of scholarly communication that, unlike most open-access journals, does not charge authors. But the group will decide later whether to help fund the cost of operating such alternative venues; it expects to undertake further consultations among its members and may not roll out specific plans before 2028. And unlike recent moves by others funders, such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institution and the Gates Foundation, the new strategy contains no new mandate limiting the types of venues in which its grantees publish."