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“Plan S is the boldest advance since the first days of Open Access when BioMed Central, the first OA publisher and PubMed Central, the OA repository were launched. We at F1000 Group support it fully.”

Vitek Tracz, founder of BioMed Central and Chairman of F1000 Group

Much is being written about the bold cOAlition-S plan (Plan S) to require research funded by 11 major public funders across Europe to be published using immediate Open Access (OA) and under the most open Creative Commons licence (CC-BY).  Much of the commentary about this plan has been very supportive, but as with all bold plans, some are worried about its unintended consequences. Here we aim to address some of the frequent issues of concern around aspects relating to Plan S.

We at F1000 Group are strong supporters of Plan S and its mission to push towards universal adoption of immediate-access OA. As we have seen over the past 20 years, simply maintaining the current mixture of different forms of OA with toll/subscription access (TA) has produced sluggish OA growth, and a confusing plethora of funder, institutional and journal policies that are challenging for researchers and others to navigate.

OA – is primarily for readers and users

The central goal of Open Access is the availability of research findings to all without unnecessary restrictions and delays, so the research can be used and have impact – closed access slows down the ability for others to use and build upon research findings that may exist. Embargoes only benefit publishers and typically have the largest impact on the very group of researchers who are already underserved by poor access to the latest technology and materials, thereby causing even greater inequality.

Many of the criticisms of Plan S do not seem to focus on this essential goal, but rather on the current confused state of OA options that compromise this goal and increase the overall cost. Thus, the clear requirements as stated in Plan S will significantly simplify the way OA is implemented.

Academic freedom?

Other criticisms focus on possible effects from the point of view of researchers as authors (rather than as readers and users of research) and the so called ‘academic freedom’ restrictions. But current ‘academic freedoms’ are somewhat of a myth, because the existing entrenched system of deciding on funding, promotions and tenure depends more on where you publish, than on what you publish and how your work has value to others. Hence, authors have to try to publish their work in the small subset of journals that are most likely to help their careers.

This scramble to publish the ‘best’ results in the ‘best’ journals causes many problems, including the high cost of such a selective process in these ‘high-impact’ journals, the repeated cost (both actual and time cost) of multiple resubmissions trying to find the ‘right place’ for the publication in the journal hierarchy, and the high opportunity cost.  This, combined with the high proportion of TA journals and the highly problematic growth of hybrid journals not only significantly increases cost, but compromises the goal of universal OA to research results – one of the greatest treasures the society can have and should expect.

We believe that if Plan S is implemented with the strong mandate it currently suggests, it will be a major step towards the goal of universal OA to research results and can greatly reduce overall costs in the scholarly communication system – which will itself bring benefits to researchers as authors and as users of research and indeed increase academic freedom.

Beyond Plan S

Researchers, funders and institutions do of course need tools and services to identify important research contributions and better approaches can be used to support research and researcher assessment, a key objective of DORA.

We at F1000 have already been working hard to provide alternatives to quantitative citation-based research indicators, through our F1000Prime service. This aims to provide insights into the value, use and potential impact of research focussing on the individual contribution rather than the publication venue, and there are many other new experiments being developed and tested. These activities can and should be done post publication, and we hope many of the current leading journals, as well as academic societies, will develop such recommendation services, choosing research that has most potential interest and value for different purposes and for different audiences from all that is published, not just what is submitted to them.

We are working with many research funders, institutions and researchers themselves on developing other new measures of impact assessment that do not need to rely on the venue of publication. These would sit on top of the open research publishing platforms that we developed that many major research funders have now adopted. Importantly, the model used by these platforms empower authors to publish what they want, when and how they want, providing true academic freedom.  It also provides immediate OA to all findings for everyone and at low cost through a transparent post publication peer review model – see Open Research Central.

On most of our publication platforms, authors are saved the burden of finding article processing charges as they are paid directly by the funders. We are now working with many groups to try and develop broader central mechanisms to fund the important and essential open communication of new research findings, thereby removing the financial burden from both authors and readers, as intended by Plan S. Together we need to bring efficiencies to the process of scholarly publication and leave academics free to focus on doing and sharing their research as and when most appropriate, for the benefit of science and society.