Periodic Reporting for period 2 - OA-Advance (BUILDING ON THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF PLAN S TO FURTHER ADVANCE OPEN ACCESS AND SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION)
Berichtszeitraum: 2024-09-20 bis 2025-12-19
The European Commission has made great strides in pushing for a more open scholarly publishing system in the past 15 years, and Open Access to publications is now mainstreamed into the European Commission research funding framework. The EC has been supporting a consortium of research funders called cOAlition S that have adopted an Open Access mandate for recipients of their funding called Plan S, which required cOAlition S grantees to publish all peer-reviewed articles resulting from their grant funds in open access (OA). In the five years since Plan S was published, cOAlition S has grown from 12 founding members to 28 and the Plan S Principles have been implemented in the participating funders’ policies. We are now in a position to evaluate the first five years of Plan S and cOAlition S, and reflect on lessons learned and the road ahead.
The OA-Advance project will contribute to strengthening cOAlition S as an instrument to advance the European Commission’s and participating funders’ shared vision to deliver full and immediate OA. It will work to achieve this by assessing the impact of Plan S through an independent review, and by providing recommendations on how to build on the achievements of Plan S to support a new vision for the future of scholarly publishing.
The OA-Advance project will contribute to strengthening cOAlition S as an instrument to advance the European Commission’s and participating funders’ shared vision to deliver full and immediate OA. It will work to achieve this by assessing the impact of Plan S through an independent review, and by providing recommendations on how to build on the achievements of Plan S to support a new vision for the future of scholarly publishing.
The Reporting Period 1 covers 19 September 2023-18 September 2024, which was mainly dedicated to Work Package 1: Monitoring of the Impact of Plan S, and some early communications activities under Work Package 2.The main deliverable D.1.1 of this WP, the final report entitled "Galvanising the Open Access Community", was published on 15 October 2024. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13738479(öffnet in neuem Fenster)
The main findings of the report:
• Plan S has opened new avenues for achieving full and immediate Open Access, successfully placing Open Access high on policymakers’ agendas and bringing publishers to the negotiating table with institutions.
• The Plan S rights retention strategy had potentially game-changing effects, and institutions have since adopted into their own Rights Retention Policies.
• cOAlition S has a significant role in the current momentum around Diamond Open Access, and in raising awareness of the inequities of article-based charges publishing models.
• It is too early to fully assess Plan S’s quantitative impact, as many policies only took effect in 2021 or later, and they recommend revisiting the study in 5-10 years.
• Observing the significant progress in the push towards full and immediate Open Access since Plan S was first announced and the influential role of the alliance of research funders, it is recommended to continue cOAlition S beyond 2025.
• There is more work to do to reach the research community and include more funders from the Global South.
The second part of the grant supported the work leading to the development of the new cOAlition S strategy 2026-2030.
The main findings of the report:
• Plan S has opened new avenues for achieving full and immediate Open Access, successfully placing Open Access high on policymakers’ agendas and bringing publishers to the negotiating table with institutions.
• The Plan S rights retention strategy had potentially game-changing effects, and institutions have since adopted into their own Rights Retention Policies.
• cOAlition S has a significant role in the current momentum around Diamond Open Access, and in raising awareness of the inequities of article-based charges publishing models.
• It is too early to fully assess Plan S’s quantitative impact, as many policies only took effect in 2021 or later, and they recommend revisiting the study in 5-10 years.
• Observing the significant progress in the push towards full and immediate Open Access since Plan S was first announced and the influential role of the alliance of research funders, it is recommended to continue cOAlition S beyond 2025.
• There is more work to do to reach the research community and include more funders from the Global South.
The second part of the grant supported the work leading to the development of the new cOAlition S strategy 2026-2030.