Calls for disease-specific open access criticised - Research Professional News

"Amid monkeypox content push, Plan S leaders say all research should be openly available

Open access to research results should not be “dictated by the perceived urgency of a disease”, leaders of the Plan S open-access initiative have stressed, amid a push to make papers on the monkeypox outbreak freely available.

Plan S executive director Johan Rooryck and head of strategy Robert Kiley said in a blog post published on 16 August that—in line with Plan S—funders should instead require open access to any papers reporting work they have supported.

Earlier this month science and technology leaders from across the globe called on scholarly publishers to provide open access to papers reporting research on monkeypox, to aid the public health response to the disease. Science leaders made similar requests during the Zika, Ebola and Covid-19 outbreaks.

Publishers have responded to the call to action, with Springer Nature and Elsevier both announcing they were making monkeypox content free to access.

But Rooryck and Kiley criticised this disease-specific approach, saying that publisher responses are “typically time-limited and may contain restrictions on how the research can be reused”. ..."