European Open-Access Initiative Delayed Until 2021

European research agencies have announced that Plan S, an effort to make research funded by them openly accessible on publication, will not be implemented until 2021 to allow researchers and publishers more time to adapt to the new publishing model.
Coalition S, a coalition of European research funding organizations, had released guidance on implementing Plan S in November 2018. Earlier this year, high profile journals, such as Nature and Science, had indicated that it was not possible for them to comply with the open access model in the timeframe allowed for the transition. Prestige journals also argued that their internal costs of publishing were very high and complying with the fully open-access model would compromise the quality of their publications.
In response to these concerns, the coalition decided to delay the implementation of Plan S by a year and has announced key revisions to the initial policy to allow for more flexibility. Plan S initially proposed to commission an independent study to determine a “fair” processing fee that publishers can charge and establish a potential cap on the costs involved in quality assurance, editing, and publishing. Under the revised policy, funding organizations will not immediate cap the cost of publishing a paper in an open-access journal. However, journals would need to be transparent about publishing costs.
Funders have also altered the rules for hybrid journals, which publish some papers behind a paywall but char...

Source: Public Policy Reports - June 10, 2019 Category: Biology Authors: AIBS Source Type: news