Taking stock of what Plan S – a funder led initiative to deliver widespread open access to research – has achieved since its conception and launch in 2018, Rachael Pells and Robert-Jan Smits discuss their new book “Plan S for Shock”. In mak…
Category: Plan S
Genuine open access to academic books requires collective solutions
UKRI, the UK’s national research funding agency, and cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funders, recently reaffirmed their commitments to delivering open access to academic books. However, whilst an open trajectory has been clearly se…
How will the Rights Retention Strategy affect scholarly publishing?
The extent that authors retain control over their published research is dependent on what rights they sign over to their publisher prior to publication. As part of efforts to promote the immediate open publication of research a number of research funde…
Universal Open Science policies risk alienating researchers
Open Science policies are becoming increasingly institutionalised at the national level. However, as Erika Lilja shows, the inherent contradictions of implementing Open Science policies in a uniform manner across all disciplines risks alienating researchers from these policies. Grand challenges, such as inequality and climate change, and sudden global challenges, such as COVID-19, require mission-based and solution-centered … Continued
Open but Unfair- The role of social justice in Open Access publishing
Stage one of the Open Access (OA) movement promoted the democratization of scholarly knowledge, making work available so that anybody could read it. However, publication in highly ranked journals is becoming very costly, feeding the same vendor capitalists that OA was designed to sidestep. In this Q&A, Simon Batterbury argues that when prestige is valued … Continued
Open Science- Who is left behind?
Open Access initiatives promise to extend access to scholarly conversations. However, the dominant model of Article Processing Charges, whilst lowering financial barriers for readers, has merely erected a new paywall at the other end of the pipeline, blocking access to publication for less-privileged authors. In this post, Tony Ross-Hellauer, Angela Fessl, and Thomas Klebel, ask … Continued
Open Access is here to stay. But who will pay?
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the already steady transition towards Open Access publishing. However, precisely what this future looks like and how it will be paid for by smaller, independent publishers is less clear. In this post, Danielle Padula outlines key findings from a report into the current state of Open Access among scholarly society and universities publishing … Continued
The commercial model of academic publishing underscoring Plan S weakens the existing open access ecosystem in Latin America
Health emergencies such as those we face today reveal the importance of opening scientific knowledge; something that not-for-profit open access publishing has permanently and organically allowed for a long time. The expansion of Plan S, a research funder led initiative to promote a global transition to open access to scholarly research, to Latin America has … Continued
Read-and-Publish Open Access deals are heightening global inequalities in access to publication.
One of the most significant impacts of Plan S (the drive to initiate an open access transition in scholarly publishing) has been to accelerate interest in national level read-and-publish deals. Whilst these deals have streamlined open access provision in the Global North, Jefferson Pooley argues that they lock in and exacerbate existing inequalities in scholarly … Continued
Opportunity or threat? What Plan S can contribute to Open Access in Latin America
Concerns about the threat from the Global North to Latin America’s exemplary tradition of open access publishing are understandable but ultimately misplaced. Renegotiation of subscription agreements and the stipulation that article-processing charges should be covered by funders or institutions are examples of the ways in which Plan S presents new opportunities for the region, even if there is still work […]