OSI Policy Perspective: Plan S & the quest for global open access

"Research and society will benefit from carefully planned open. Open represents a fundamental shift for research and researchers. Changes to the current system need to made thoughtfully and diligently and we need to measure the impacts of these changes along the way. How patient do we need to be? Granted there can be a fine line between working deliberately and exhausting everyone’s goodwill with slow and incremental progress, but it’s also important not to set ourselves up for failure by believing that the entire scholarly communication puzzle can be solved overnight. Some parts of this puzzle can and should be tackled immediately (the edge pieces if you will); other parts will take time.

Open exists along a spectrum of outcomes. All kinds of open are growing. If we embrace this full spectrum of outcomes we can start focusing on what really matters—getting more of the world’s research information open quickly and working together on building the framework for actually using this open information to benefit research. Getting there is just step one. Figuring out what to do with open (and guiding this process) is equally important if not more so.

Connected issues need to be addressed simultaneously, from peer review to impact factors to embargoes, deceptive publishing, publishing standards, indexing and so much more. Unaddressed, these systemic issues will corrupt whatever plans we design and will keep the full potential of open in check.

Successful solutions will require broad collaboration. The global stakeholder community needs to be connected and involved in developing and rolling out open solutions. There are so many organizations doing good and important work in this space. By leveraging our assets and coordinating our work—at least at the margins—we can work together on capacity building, innovation, best practices, education and outreach, pilot programs, financing, and so much more, and together we can all pull for open in the same general direction. This collective effort is much needed and the benefits of this effort will be enormous and give confidence, stability and vitality to the open scholarship space while also achieving maximally beneficial solutions by drawing on multiple perspectives and respecting the rights of all parties in the system. The drivers of this process can be funders, governments, open advocates, publishers, researchers, universities, libraries, or all of the above like now, but the customers—the researchers—also need to judge what works and doesn’t work for research and these customers need to play an integral role in designing and refining our open solutions over time."