Open Access: Plan S

Plan S, an initiative of cOALition S, was launched in September 2018 with the goal of achieving full and immediate open access to publications. cOAlition S comprises a group of research funders that has committed to implementing Plan S, and aims to accelerate the transition to a scholarly publishing system characterised by immediate and free online access to scholarly publications.

To date, the list of funders that support cOAlition S includes Science Foundation Ireland, European Commission, UK Research & Innovation, WHO and Wellcome Trust.

There are three main routes to Plan S compliance:

• Publication in fully open access journals or platforms
• Deposit of Versions of Record (VoR) or Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in open access repositories without embargo and licensed with CC BY or CC BY SA (or CC BY SA ND on a case by case basis) . This is possible under the Plan S Rights Retention Strategy.
• Publication in ‘hybrid’ journals (i.e. open access within a subscription journal) only under transformative agreements or for transformative journals

cOAlition S created the Rights Retention Strategy to enable authors to exercise the rights they have on their manuscripts to deposit a copy of the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in a repository, immediately on publication, and to provide open access to it with a CC-BY License or similar.

The AAM, is the copy of the article, after peer review, but before publication. The Research Repository UCD is an example of a place where the AAM can be deposited.

To make the process easier, cOAlition S have created a pre-submission letter and covering letter template to be used either before submission or when first submitting a manuscript. Both templates assert the author’s right to deposit a copy of the AAM in an repository, under a CC-BY license.  They can be edited as necessary. The templates are available below along with a user guide.

Visit the cOAlition S website to find out more about using their Rights Retention Strategy.