sponsor of the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2019 offers this insight into the
impact of PlanS on the industry.
“Starting
from January 1, 2021, all scholarly publications that result from research
funded by public grants or private grants must be published in Open Access
Platforms or Journals, or made available in Open Access Repositories without
any embargo period.”
Gaining
momentum and attracting feedback from researchers, publishers, funding
organizations, and others involved in scholarly publishing, Plan S has been a
topic of global debate since its launch in September 2018 and has led to a
revised version released by cOAlition S on 31 May 2019.
If
successfully implemented, Plan S will allow unrestricted use and access to
publicly funded research and redefine the ways scholarly publications are
published, read, and shared. Are you ready for this change?
The
absence of a detailed structure and steps to achieve the desired outcome brings
forth a lot of confusion. Various technical aspects of Plan S, including
publications and transition agreements, are not well defined. Though Plan S
implementation is supported by various organizations like the European Research
Council (ERC) and other funding bodies, some publishers believe that it’s an
impractical solution with no robust guidelines. This leaves researchers with
meager or no additional financial support, and many publishers are concerned
about the impact on future revenue.
A
collective observation of the feedback and comments received on the Plan S
implementation guidance reveals that individually and organizationally many
support Plan S’ goals. Agreeing to the broader perspective, publishers across
the globe are prepared to create a sustainable and “open accessible” scholarly
publication system.
So
what does it mean for different stakeholders?
The
noble cause of making publicly funded research freely available to the public
is generally feasible for researchers who are supported by grants for their
research and allied expenses. However, it has been noted that not all research
streams are uniformly assisted by funding agencies, and thus burdening the
publishers of less funded streams even further.
Publishers
have major concerns about the prohibitions by Plan S against publication in
hybrid journals and various other subscription models. This occurs as a major
downside, especially for small- and medium-sized scholarly publishers. They
anticipate that the projected revenue loss will have a more debilitating
effect. Additionally, it increases the
need, to put it in its best light, to innovate in terms of finding sources of
additional revenues for publishers already struggling to make ends meet.
With an objective to
establish publishing and content sharing in the era of OA, platform providers
offer solutions that cater to the entire publishing life cycle. These platforms
are flexible and agile, and can be customized to suit the requirements of
modern publishers. Backed by an innovative and knowledgeable approach, these
solutions offer customer-centric interfaces and superior operational experience
to publishers and authors. As an example, with guidelines, processes, and
pricing in a transparent Platform as a Service environment, APC’s pricing can
be kept transparent as authors pick and choose from the authoring services and
tools affordable to them.
About MPS
Limited
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mpsltd
See the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing
Finalists lightning session at our Annual
Conference on 11-13 September, where the winners will be announced.
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