Is Plan S reinventing open access

Is Plan S Reinventing Open Access? A Closer Look.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

For decades, academic publishing has been relying on a strange yet workable system in which researchers hand over their work for free, peer reviewers volunteer their time, and institutions pay exorbitant subscription fees to access the publications. It’s a business model so bafflingly profitable for a few large publishers that you have to admire the sheer audacity of it. 

Enter open access, the movement that said, “Hold up, if public money funds the research, the public should be able to read the results.” Open access has been a slow-burn revolution, but it’s been a bit fragmented. We have gold, green, diamond, and hybrid open access. The whole spectrum of access methods can feel more like a confusing rainbow than a clear path forward.

In 2018, a consortium of national and international research funders, collectively known as cOAlition S, launched Plan S. The “S” is often joked to stand for “shock,” and that’s precisely what it delivered. Plan S is a radical policy mandating that, with effect from 2021, all scholarly publications resulting from research funded by its members must be published in open access journals or platforms or immediately made openly available in repositories without any embargo. 

This wasn’t just another polite suggestion but rather a non-negotiable decree from some of the world’s most significant research funders. This article will dive deep into what Plan S is, how it differs from traditional open access, and whether its hard-line approach is genuinely a reinvention of the movement or simply the necessary muscle the open access ideal always lacked.

Open Access Before Plan S

Before Plan S stormed onto the scene, open access had already achieved significant, albeit messy, traction. The foundational principle of making research free and immediate was universally agreed upon by advocates, but the implementation strategies were varied, leading to a complex ecosystem. Understanding this pre-Plan S world is essential to grasping the magnitude of the new initiative.

The primary models of open access were (and still are) gold and green. Gold open access sees the final, published version of an article made immediately and permanently open access on the journal’s website. This is often funded by an Article Processing Charge (APC), paid by the author, their institution, or their funder. The rise of gold open access led to the proliferation of fully open access journals, many of which are well-respected. 

However, it also gave birth to the controversial hybrid open access journal, which is a traditional subscription journal that offers an option for authors to pay an APC to make their specific article open access. This “pay-to-read, pay-to-publish” model, dubbed “double-dipping,” was a cash cow for major publishers and a major sticking point for open access proponents, as it did little to reduce subscription costs for libraries.

Green open access, on the other hand, involves the author depositing a version of their manuscript, usually the peer-reviewed, accepted manuscript (or ‘post-print’), into an institutional or subject repository. While this is free for authors and readers, it was often hobbled by publisher-imposed embargo periods, typically 6 to 12 months, during which the article remained locked behind the paywall. This delay, while perhaps understandable from a publisher’s business perspective, fundamentally undermined the principle of immediate open access. 

Even with open access growth (around 25–30% of scholarly articles were estimated to be openly accessible by the early-to-mid 2010s,) the subscription model dominated, with a handful of commercial publishers controlling over half the market. Hybrid open access faced criticism for double dipping (charging both subscriptions and article fees) without fully transitioning to open access, while delayed green open access relied on embargoes that preserved subscription revenue streams. These dynamics kept the system tilted toward for-profit publishers.

The Core Principles and Radicality of Plan S

Plan S is not merely a request for more open access. It’s a strict regulatory framework that aims to force the immediate transition to full open access for all publicly funded research. It’s a power move, leveraging the substantial financial weight of its cOAlition S members, which include the Wellcome Trust, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and many of Europe’s major national research councils. The plan is built on ten principles, but a few stand out as particularly radical, setting it apart from the existing, more passive open access policies.

The most controversial and transformative principle is the immediate open access requirement, effective from 2021. This means zero embargo, i.e., no more waiting six months or a year for an article to be unlocked in a repository. If the research is funded by a cOAlition S member, the resulting paper must be openly available the moment it is published. This directly targets the green open access model’s biggest weakness. Coupled with this is the explicit rejection of the hybrid open access model. 

Funds from cOAlition S members cannot be used to pay APCs for publication in hybrid journals unless those journals are covered by an approved “Transformative Arrangement” and commit to flipping to full open access within a short period. This is a deliberate attempt to defund and dismantle the dual-revenue hybrid model, which open access advocates viewed as a barrier, not a bridge, to full openness.

Furthermore, Plan S mandates that authors retain copyright to their publications, granting a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) to the content. The CC BY license is the most permissive, allowing maximum reuse and remixing, which is a true embodiment of the “open” ideal. Previously, authors often transferred copyright to the publisher, limiting their ability to share their own work. 

By requiring copyright retention, Plan S puts power back in the hands of the researchers. These non-negotiable principles, backed by financial power, elevate Plan S from a policy to a genuine market intervention, fundamentally altering the calculus for every publisher that wishes to continue publishing work from cOAlition S-funded researchers. It is less of a gentle nudge towards open access and more of a financial ultimatum.

The Three Routes to Compliance

Plan S, for all its strictness, does not force a single publishing model. It provides three distinct pathways for researchers to be compliant, demonstrating a pragmatic recognition that one size never fits all in a global scholarly ecosystem. These routes are designed to cover the major existing open access models while ensuring they meet the stringent, immediate access and licensing requirements.

The first, and most straightforward, is the open access journal or platform route. This involves publishing in a journal or on a fully open platform registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and applying the necessary CC BY license immediately upon publication. This path champions the established, legitimate gold open access model. 

The second route involves transformative arrangements with subscription journals. This is the temporary lifeline thrown to publishers of hybrid journals, allowing them to remain compliant if they commit to “transforming” their business model from subscription-based to full open access. These arrangements, such as “Read & Publish” deals where an institutional fee covers both reading the paywalled content and publishing open access for their authors, are time-limited. The journal must transition to full open access eventually. This provides a structured, if accelerated, path for traditional publishers to flip their journals without immediate financial collapse.

The third route, often referred to as the open access repository or green open access route, is where Plan S delivers its killer blow to traditional publishing practices. An author can publish in a subscription journal, provided the publisher allows the author to deposit their Accepted Manuscript (AM) in an open repository with zero embargo and under a CC BY license. To ensure this, cOAlition S members require grant recipients to apply a prior right or license to the AM, an author-side policy that overrides any subsequent publisher agreement that might restrict immediate green open access. 

This so-called Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) is a clever workaround to the old problem of publisher embargoes, essentially leveraging the funder’s contract to ensure immediate open access, even if the final published version is behind a paywall. This route maintains the importance of institutional and subject repositories, a cornerstone of the green open access philosophy, while eliminating the delay that made it a suboptimal option in the past.

Challenges, Criticisms, and Unintended Consequences

Any initiative as ambitious and prescriptive as Plan S is bound to face significant pushback and criticism, and this one is no exception. While its proponents herald it as a necessary catalyst, critics point to several substantial challenges, ranging from philosophical disagreements to practical implementation nightmares.

One major point of contention is the prohibition on APC funding for hybrid journals. While the intention is to dismantle the double-dipping model, many smaller society publishers rely on hybrid revenue to support their non-open-access activities, such as society meetings, training, and advocacy. For these publishers, the sudden withdrawal of APC income, even with the transformative agreement option, can be an existential threat, potentially leading to consolidation. They are forced to sell their journals to larger, commercial publishers who have the capital to manage the transition. 

There is a real fear that Plan S, in its quest for open access, could inadvertently favor the largest players in the publishing industry. Furthermore, the emphasis on the CC BY license, while maximizing openness, is considered too permissive by some in the humanities and social sciences (HSS). They prefer more restrictive licenses like CC BY-NC (Non-Commercial) or CC BY-ND (No Derivatives) to protect against commercial exploitation or misuse of their work.

Another major challenge is the potential for an uneven global impact. Plan S originated primarily in Europe and is backed by a coalition of funders primarily from the Global North. Researchers in the Global South, or those from institutions with limited funding, may not be recipients of cOAlition S grants but are still subject to the changing publishing landscape. If the dominant model shifts heavily toward an APC-based gold open access, researchers without institutional funds to cover the APC could face new barriers to publishing in prestigious, now compliant, journals. 

While Plan S mandates waivers for low-income countries, the concern is that this could be a complex administrative hurdle that doesn’t fully address the underlying equity issue. The global scholarly community is deeply interconnected, and a policy of this magnitude in one major funding area inevitably creates ripple effects that must be carefully managed to avoid creating new forms of exclusion.

Plan S and the Future of Scholarly Communication

Beyond the immediate compliance issues, the true significance of Plan S lies in its role as a forcing mechanism that shapes the very future of scholarly communication. It has accelerated the transition to open access in a way that years of gentle advocacy never could, forcing both the academic community and the publishing industry to rethink their fundamental roles.

The emphasis on price and service transparency is a crucial long-term trend Plan S is driving. One of its principles requires that when APCs are charged, they must be commensurate with the publication services delivered, and the cost structure must be transparent. This push for transparent pricing is a direct response to the opaque, often arbitrary, pricing models that have long characterized the subscription market. By demanding that publishers justify their costs, Plan S is attempting to introduce genuine market dynamics into an industry that has operated largely outside of them. This is leading to the development of initiatives like the Journal Comparison Service (JCS), which aims to provide data on APCs and services to inform the market.

Perhaps the most exciting, though still embryonic, impact is the indirect boost to diamond open access. Diamond open access refers to journals that are free for both the author (no APC) and the reader (no subscription), often supported by institutions, societies, or government grants. While Plan S is typically associated with APC-based gold open access due to its transformation agreements, the principles explicitly support non-APC models and have spurred conversation and investment in diamond open infrastructure, such as the DIAMAS project in Europe. 

The ideal of a truly open, equitable, and community-owned publishing system is best embodied by diamond open access. By putting such immense pressure on the commercial models, Plan S has created a space for these non-profit alternatives to gain prominence and seek sustainable, community-driven funding.

Conclusion

So, is Plan S truly reinventing open access, or is it merely giving the existing models a much-needed kick in the pants? The answer, as is often the case in publishing, is a bit of both. Plan S did not invent the concept of open access. That honor belongs to the Budapest, Berlin, and Bethesda Declarations of the early 2000s. It didn’t invent the various open access models or the CC BY license. 

However, Plan S has fundamentally reinvented the implementation and enforcement of open access. By coupling the open access ideal with significant financial clout and a set of non-negotiable mandates (zero embargo, copyright retention, and the defunding of the hybrid model), it has transformed open access from a desirable, voluntary goal into an unavoidable reality for a massive segment of global research. It’s an aggressive, market-disrupting strategy that has forced publishers to change their business models faster than they ever intended. 

The conversation is no longer about if we should have open access, but how fast and under what terms we achieve it. The next decade will show whether the system settles into a new, more equitable equilibrium or if the pressures of Plan S lead to other, perhaps unforeseen, publishing dynamics.

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