cOAlition S Welcomes its First African Member and Receives Strong Support from the African Academy of Sciences

cOAlition S is pleased to announce the participation of its first African research funder and welcomes the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) of Zambia to the coalition. The African Academy of Sciences (AAS) has also expressed crucial support to Plan S.

cOAlition S now has members in Europe, North America, and Africa. Plan S has received further support in the Middle East and Asia, with particular support by China.

NSTC is the main public research funding body in the Republic of Zambia and supports Zambian scientific research with two funds: the Strategic Research Fund (SRF) and the Science and Technology Innovation Youth Fund (STIYF).

AAS endorsed Plan S in a statement issued in January and Dr. Felix Dapare, President of AAS, added “We commend your courage and that of your colleagues in offering a vision of the world in which results are distributed to be built upon for the benefit of mankind.”

“We are using knowledge to solve global challenges and consequently Plan S, which provides immediate access to scientific results, needs to be a global initiative” said Robert-Jan Smits, EU Special Envoy for Open Access and one of the initiators of Plan S. “That is why we are delighted that NSTC, as representatives of the African research community, have joined cOAlition S and that AAS strongly supports the plan.”

Marc Schiltz, President of Science Europe and co-initiator of Plan S, added that “the aim of Plan S is to remove paywalls that hinder access to knowledge. This is particularly relevant in regions where resources for research are scarce. cOALition S can learn a good deal from African funders who have launched their own Open Research Platform and thereby managed to reduce their dependency from the anachronistic subscription model of scholar publishing.”

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