Funders committed to Plan S should no longer fund transformative agreements and journals after 2024
The open-access initiative Plan S has confirmed that its members do not intend to fund transformative publishing arrangements after 2024.
Under the global initiative, research funders are requiring the researchers they support to make resulting papers openly available immediately and in accordance with various other requirements.
One of the Plan S principles set out after its 2018 launch was that the participating funders would support transformative arrangements only until the end of 2024. Such arrangements include agreements with publishers and journals to support a mix of subscription and open-access content but with a gradual shift towards the latter.
The group of participating funders, called Coalition S, confirmed on 26 January that it would keep this timeline in place, meaning that “as a principle, its members will no longer financially support these arrangements after 2024”.
It said that continuing to support transformative arrangements after 2024 “would significantly increase the risk that these arrangements will become permanent and perpetuate hybrid open access”, which the group has “always firmly opposed”.
Coalition S said it would make exceptions as individual members “may still choose to financially participate in transformative agreements beyond 2024 as part of their respective national strategies”, and would flag such situations when they arise.
The group also said it would direct its efforts “to more innovative and community-led open-access publishing initiatives that aim to deliver full and immediate open access in a shorter timeframe”, and would encourage the development of fully open-access agreements between research institutions and publishers.