Open Access and Plan S: 5 key activities

"Some researchers have expressed concerns with Plan S, fearing that if their publication choices are reduced, then this may negatively impact on their likelihood to secure future grants and tenure. 

This concern has arisen as Plan S is explicit in saying that OA publications costs (typically Article Processing Changes, APCs) for articles published in subscription journals will no longer be funded, outside of Transformative Agreements. Researchers however, can still seek to publish in subscription journals, as long as they make a copy of their research article (either the accepted manuscript, or the published version) freely available without an embargo and with an open licence.

It is also worth stressing that funders who align their OA policies with Plan S make clear that when assessing research outputs as part of a funding decision, they will value the intrinsic merit of the work and not consider the publication channel, its impact factor or other journal-based metrics.

Within cOAlition S we have also established a task force to monitor the effects of Plan S. As early career researchers feel especially affected by Plan S, representatives from the Global Young Academy, Eurodoc, Young Academy of Europe and the Marie Curie Alumni have joined this group to ensure their voice is heard....

Support for fully OA journals and platforms continues to be a key part of the Plan S strategy.  Recognising however, that a single, global APC price for any given journal may not always be the most equitable way to cover publishing costs, we have started to discuss with a number of OA publishers the idea of linking the APC to the purchasing power parity (PPP) of different countries. ...

Wellcome and UKRI, on behalf of cOAlition S, contracted Information Power to develop a framework through which publishers could price the services they provide. The draft framework seeks to breakdown the price charged into seven discrete “service buckets” such as “% of price from submission to desk reject or acceptance” and “% of price for peer review management”.

To determine whether it is feasible for publishers to provide this level of data and whether this information is of use to libraries and funders, the framework will be piloted in then first quarter of 2020. 10 publishers have agreed to join this pilot including Springer-Nature, Brill, PLOS the Company of Biologists and EMBO Press. ..."