Royal Society sets five-year plan for open-access transition

Journals will seek Plan S approved ‘transformative’ status before flipping to full open access

The Royal Society has set out a plan to “flip” its research journals to open access over the next five years, as it moves to comply with growing pressure to step away from traditional subscription journals.

In a 13 May announcement, the learned society said its council has committed to moving the journals Biology Letters, Interface, Proceedings A and Proceedings B to a fully open-access model when 75 per cent of their articles are being published open access. At the moment, around 40 per cent of papers the society publishes are open access.