Open Access 2019: A Year of Momentum on the Subscription Off-Ramp | Absolutely Maybe

Plan S, the open access strategy from European funders in cOAlition S, gained momentum in 2019. However it pushed back its start date in May (to 2021), aiming for 2024 as the year to have completed the transition from pay to read to pay to publish. Instead of institutions paying subscriptions, funders and institutions would direct funds to publishing academic work. Their vision for the future:

After 2024, we will be encouraging institutional libraries and large consortia to switch from ‘read and publish’ agreements with publishers to ‘pure publish’ deals for portfolios of subscription journals that have become open-access journals. The cOAlition S funders will contribute to financing such deals, which will be more cost-effective and have fewer transaction costs than a single-paper charging system. The financial transaction would then no longer be between the author and the editor or journal, removing any concerns about perverse incentives for lax quality control.

The contrast between this strategy based on supporting commercial publishing, and those which base publishing within academic institutions and consortia, grew stark this year. That contrast and its implications were made clear by 2 of the entries marked  below, both from authors in Latin America. And the year ended with a bombshell rumor from the US. Read on…