In 2018, eleven national research funding organisations, including the National Science Centre, announced the launch of the cOAlition S initiative. Its aim is to bring about full and immediate open access to publicly funded scientific publications.
Initially, only European organisations belonged to the coalition. It now also includes agencies from North America, Africa and the Middle East.
The key objectives of Plan S:
Initially, it was intended that the provisions would be fully in place by 2020, but the deadline has slipped – the implementation of Plan S to 2021. This gives researchers and publishers time to adapt to the changes and research funding agencies time to modernise their openness policies. The current provisions of Plan S also extend the scope of transformational agreements that govern the transition from a paid subscription to an open model.
Repositories in Plan S
One of the guidelines of Plan S is to make publications available in a green way model, i.e. through repositories. It has been assumed that all publications funded by grants awarded by cOAlition S members that are not made available in open journals or on open platforms will have to be made available without restriction in repositories registered with OpenDOAR and compliant with OpenAIRE guidelines.
