Open access

Since the first commercial Open Access journals were launched in the late 1990s, there has been a steady migration from subscription to Open Access.

Plan S, driven by Science Europe, was launched in September 2018. Fourteen national research-funding bodies across Europe (with UK Research and Innovation by far the largest) set out conditions for publication of the research they paid for. Plan S will have serious implications for our publications and in January 2019 The Society responded to the Plan S consultation.

What is Plan S?

Plan S is an initiative aimed at accelerating the transition of the journals market from subscription to Open Access (OA).  It sets out conditions for the publication of the research paid for by a group of funders. The stated principles of Plan S begin:  

“With effect from 2021, all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.” 

Isn’t Open Access expanding anyway?

Open Access has been viable since the mid-1990s and has grown steadily since then. In 2018, 19% of articles were published as Gold OA (OA immediately on publication), either in fully OA journals or in “hybrid” journals, former subscription journals that publish OA papers alongside articles still only available to subscribers. However, the transition has been slower than many people had hoped. 

Who’s behind Plan S?

Plan S was launched by cOAlition S, a group of 16 research-funding bodies across Europe, including UKRI.  The number of funders signed up to it has since grown to 25, including the Wellcome Trust and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The European Research Council and the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
signed up but later withdrew. 

Will researchers still be able to publish in the journals they want to?

Not necessarily. It depends on the OA policy of the journals and on where your funding comes from. To publish research funded by cOAlition S members, journals must comply with Plan S.   

In the longer term, cOAlition S will not permit publication in ‘hybrid’ journals, even though an individual paper could still be OA.  The exception to that rule is where the journal’s subscription content is made immediately available, without embargo (and under a Creative Commons licence permitting re-use as well as access), in an open repository.  The jury is still out on whether libraries will continue to subscribe to journals if their content is simultaneously made freely available elsewhere.  This and other business models for a transition to Plan-S-compliant OA are outlined in this discussion paper from the consultancy Information Power.  A blog piece from Information Power focuses on the implications and options for learned societies. 

Although funders like the British Heart Foundation and the National Institute of Health have not joined cOAlition S, Research England (the former HEFCE) is part of UKRI, so to be included in REF submissions, articles will presumably have to be published in journals that comply with Plan S.   

The funders will monitor compliance and sanction non-compliant grant-holders. 

What has the response to Plan S been?

Since Plan S was announced, three major information-gathering and consultation exercises have been carried out (although remarkably little has been heard from the researchers themselves).  As a result of pushback in these and other discussions, some of the more contentious requirements of Plan S were relaxed in a revised implementation plan and some unintended consequences avoided. It is clear that cOAlition S are willing to listen, up to a point.  The start for compliance was put back from January 2020 to January 2021 and the deadline for total compliance from the end of 2023 to the end of 2024. As a further concession, between those dates, hybrid journals will be considered Plan-S-compliant if they are on a transitional pathway to complete OA as part of a Transformative Arrangement.  

Where do The Society’s journals fit into all this?

The Journal of Physiology and Experimental Physiology, although currently still hybrid journals (Physiological Reports was born fully OA), have Plan-S-compliant Transformative Arrangements in most of the countries where the cOAlition S funders are based.  This is through read-and-publish agreements negotiated by Wiley, our publishing partner, with national consortia of libraries like Jisc in the UK.  

Before submitting your paper for publication in The Journal of Physiology or Experimental Physiology (or any other journal), you can make sure that the journal is compliant for authors at your institution, reporting research paid for by your cOAlition S funder.  Plan S’s Journal Checker Tool is very simple to use. 

What does it mean for The Society and its Members?

Plan S acknowledges the key role played by academic societies in their respective disciplines: “The coalition members view Learned Societies as an essential component of the scholarly infrastructure”.  It commits to support societies in the transition of their journals to OA, although without much detail about what form that support will take.  

Because the surplus from its journal publishing allows The Society to pursue its charitable activities, any impact of Plan S on journal economics is hugely significant to us. cOAlition S recognises that there is already enough money in the academic library system to allow a transition to OA if the flow of funds is re-directed, and the Wiley read-and-publish deals show that an orderly migration is achievable, even if some details have yet to be worked out.  

There are unanswered questions too for the members as scientists.  Most importantly, would collaboration on research become less attractive if Plan S prevented researchers outside Europe from publishing in some of the leading journals?  

Despite such questions, 67% of respondents to the Wiley annual membership survey (across many societies) wanted societies to provide more OA publishing. 

What is The Society doing?

The Society will continue to stay abreast of developments, to analyse their impact (Plan S is a standing item on the Council meeting agenda) and to keep the membership informed.  It will also ensure that the journals themselves are positioned for a successful transition to OA.  Our firm belief is that service to authors and quality of content will continue to be the keys to success. 

Plenty has been written about Plan S and its potential impact, from a range of viewpoints.  A good starting point is cOAlition S’s own website https://www.coalition-s.org/.