Open Access

On 4 September 2018, cOAlition S – a group of national research funders, supported by the European Commission and the European Research Council – launched a new Open Access (OA) publishing initiative called Plan S, which came into effect on 1 January 2021. It aims to accelerate the transition towards full and immediate Open Access to research publications by committing to the following:

"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'. 

What are the key points of the Plan?

​​​​​​Plan S is built on a framework of 10 principles, supported by implementation guidance. These documents (revised following a public feedback exercise) include the following key points: 

• Authors or their institutions to retain copyright of their publications. Please see more information about the University of Derby's position on Rights Retention here. 
• Funders will not support publication in hybrid (or mirror/sister) journals unless such journals commit to changing their business model within a clearly defined timeframe from subscription access to Open Access. From the 31 December 2024, cOAlition S will no longer financially support transformative agreements or transformative journals. Instead, funders will direct their efforts to innovative and community-led Open Access publishing initiatives such as the Diamond model of OA. 
• Plan S principles apply to all scholarly publications. From 2nd September 2021, this includes long form publications such as the scholarly monograph. Rather than to decree a uniform policy on OA books, cOAlition S have decided to formulate a set of recommendations regarding academic books – in line with Plan S principles – that all cOAlition S organisations will seek to adopt within their own remits and jurisdictions. 

• Authors to publish under an open licence, preferably the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. For further information on how this works for subscription journals, please see Rights Retention Strategy. 
• Funders may opt to standardise or cap the reimbursement of OA publication fees if the fees charged by publishers are deemed unreasonable.
• Funding agencies will monitor compliance and sanction non-compliant beneficiaries/grantees. In a worst case scenario, this could result in the agency failing to provide future funding. 

cOAlition S principles also include a commitment to changing the academic reward and incentive system by supporting the principles of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) that research should be assessed on its own merits rather than on the basis of the venue in which the research is published. The University is a signatory of DORA and the Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). 

cOAlition S has committed to undertaking 9 priority actions which are ongoing. 

UKRI, a founding member of cOAlition S, has reviewed its OA policy to align with Plan S principles.

cOAliton S has stated its intention to review the requirements, effects and impact of Plan S by the end of 2024. 

Further help and support

Please read the FAQs on the Plan S website. These will be regularly updated to reflect questions arising from the research and publishing communities. 

If you have any additional questions or comments about Plan S (including how it might affect your research publications), please email UDORA@derby.ac.uk or get in contact with Repository and Open Access Librarian, Holly Limbert.