Progress on Plan S demands imagination and good faith

"I was dismayed, therefore, by David Nicholas’s recent article. To me, this seemed to misunderstand the plan’s aims and approach and some of its essential elements.

He failed to mention, for example, the plan’s commitment to funding researchers’ publication costs, and cited the role of the ResearchGate and Sci-Hub websites in making papers increasingly free and open, when both have been sued for copyright infringement. I wish he had dug deeper and more carefully because everyone involved in the long-running debates about open access deserves better....

The financial challenges posed to learned societies by Plan S also need to be dissected in more detail. Publishing operations are often justified as supporting valued activities such as travel and research bursaries, but revenue varies hugely between societies and it is fair to ask whether some are placing undue pressures on library budgets. Resolving this issue will require greater transparency from learned societies, but also imaginative thinking about alternative ways to fund their activities....

At times like this, we should not forget our communal desire to enrich the world by sharing with it the fruits of our academic labours...."