What is the plan 'Plan S' to make it possible to read all scientific research free of charge on the publication date?

by DariuszSankowski

An agreement " cOAlition S " that enables scientific research to be read free on the publication day was announced by the European Commission (EC) and 11 research funding agencies in Europe. Among the research funded by research grant agencies in 11 countries that concluded agreements, publications published after 2020 are required to be published on open access journals and open access platforms.

Accelerating the transition to full and immediate Open Access to scientific publications
(PDF file) https://www.scienceeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/cOAlitionS_Preamble.pdf

Science Europe - cOAlition S
https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/

11 EU Nations Just Kicked Off a Plan to Make Public Science Free For All of Us
https://www.sciencealert.com/europe-accelerates-sweeping-overhaul-make-all-science-free-2020-open-access-coalition-plan-s

Radical open-access plan could spell end to journal subscriptions
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06178-7

EU and national funders launch plan for free and immediate open access to journals | Science | Business
https://sciencebusiness.net/news/eu-and-national-funders-launch-plan-free-and-immediate-open-access-journals

cOAlition S responds to research that public organizations such as " UK Research and Innovation ", " Science Foundation Ireland " and " Research Council of Norway " receive subsidies "Instant open access is possible and anyone can freely re- To publish under the license that you can use or distribute materials ". This policy will be enforced from January 2020 in Australia, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK.

cOAlition S is an agreement to achieve the goal of " (PDF file) Plan S " announced in July 2018. Plan S is based on one principle that "studies that have received public grants published after 2020 must be published on open access journals or open access platforms."

Robert-Jan Smits of EC said, "Responsibilities are held by the funders to publish the research, they are key, they answer to Science | Business interview. Also, Mr. Carlos Moedas, EC, research, science and innovation committee, plans S as a real agreement in the real world, making it possible for other organizations to openly access articles in the same way We look forward to the move to publish at.

It has been done for some time that publishers who publish papers for a fee have bad information flow in scientific research. The battle of publishers is still going on with publishers who are trying to make scientific research more open, such as a pirate site "Sci-Hub" that makes free scientific papers more than 60 million readable.

What kind of person is Alexandra Elbakian, who created the sci-phi pirated site "Sci-Hub"? - GIGAZINE

Mr. Smits said, "In 20% of the papers we can quickly access full text in Europe, this number was" 15% "15 years ago at this pace" receive public funds by 2020 We can not achieve the goal of making the research open and free ", and seems to have launched cOAlition S because we thought that" fundamental boost "is necessary for open access.

Under Plan S, the investor pays the publication fee "publication processing fee" to the publisher in the form of advance money and guarantees that the article is accessible for free for eternity. The publisher side is asked not to form "provide open access by option" but a form of "completely open". Also, the copyright is attributed to the author, not the publisher.

Plan S is a request from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2017 that "the paper that was funded must not be" released free of charge in half a year or a year "but readily available for free" I am drafted on what I did. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation puts the researcher's papers that we have funded so far in the immediate accessible state in 2014, and even some of the charities supporting British medical research are similar Efforts are being made.

Anyone can instantly access the researcher's papers that the Bill Gates Foundation has provided so far - GIGAZINE

According to Mr. Smits, Quality Control is also carried out in Plan S, and publication in top journals posting high-quality papers will be done as before but on the other hand it will be away from magazines that do not do much peer review It is seen as deaf. Also, for some prominent academic journals such as Nature and Science, researchers are likely to be unable to post papers due to policy issues. Movement of boycotting publication of papers in paid academic journals such as Nature has already spread among researchers of artificial intelligence, and the reason is understood by reading the following article.

Why are thousands of AI researchers boycotting the publication of papers in academic journals such as Nature? - GIGAZINE

Regarding the concept like Plan S, there is also strong opposition from publishers, and there is a strong concern that hybrid type services such as "becoming free after a certain period of time and becoming readable by a toll plan until then" will be prohibited I will. Hybrid type services are on the rise, and in the survey in 2016 it accounts for 45% of the total.

Plan S is in the planning stage, the EC itself has not yet signed. Peter Suber of the Harvard Open Access Project and Jeremy Farrar of The Wellcome Trust support the plan S, but some research institutes leading the European scientific community, such as Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, etc., have also been signed There is no state. However, Mr. Smits predicts that the idea of ​​Plan S will be incorporated into the terms of the grant in the future.

Also, David Sweeney of Research England says, "Unless the publisher's reaction is fully understood, it can not calculate how much the investor will pay for open access," the idea is " It is not about the publishing model. " Stan Gielen of the Netherlands Institute for Scientific Research also stated, "This is a major transition to open science and" How to measure the quality of science and researchers "will change," and beyond the existing publishing industry's economy I am doing it.