EUA issues detailed response to Plan S amid milestones in Open Access

EUA has presented a comprehensive response to the “Plan S” consultation launched by Science Europe. Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing launched in 2018 by an international group of research funders (Coalition S). EUA has a special interest in Plan S as it complements the Association’s efforts on Open Access to scholarly publications.

“EUA supports Plan S as a major step forward in making publicly-funded research articles and books immediately and freely available ,” said Professor Jean-Pierre Finance, Chair of the EUA Expert Group on Science 2.0/Open Science. “Plan S also calls for copyright retention by authors and transparency of costs and prices of research publishing services, which have been main objectives of EUA’s work since 2008. ”

While fully supporting Plan S, and in order to bring about systemic changes to the scholarly publishing system, EUA stresses that the effective implementation of Plan S requires further efforts from Coalition S and more collaboration with stakeholders such as universities.

Meanwhile, at the global level, the 14th Berlin Open Access Conference (December 2018), organised through the OA2020 initiative, gathered support from 170 participants from 37 countries on five continents to push forward the full transition to Open Access. In the final conference statement, participants highlighted their commitment to immediate Open Access, copyright retention by authors and transformative agreements between consortia and scientific publishers.

In this vein, Projekt DEAL in Germany, initiated by the German Rectors’ Conference, has recently concluded an agreement with Wiley, following the “publish and read” model in which fees are paid by institutions - not for subscriptions but for Open Access publishing services.

In addition to its efforts towards improving the conditions for Open Access to scholarly information, EUA believes that research assessment reform holds the key to increasing transparency and facilitating the transition to Open Access and Open Science. Current practices are too often dominated by journal-based metrics, which create serious biases and reinforce publishers’ dominant position.

EUA and its Expert Group on Science 2.0/Open Science have engaged in the search for more accurate, transparent and responsible approaches based on the Association’s commitment in the EUA Roadmap on Research Assessment in the Transition to Open Science. EUA is working to gather and share information through a survey and to start a dialogue between stakeholders by organising a workshop on the topic on 14 May 2019 in Brussels.