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In the three years since its announcement, Plan S, an initiative dedicated to making scientific research publicly available, has attracted new members, including international organizations and government funding agencies from around the world. A number of researchers question the global impact of Plan S’s implementation, however, raising concerns that its stringent open-access mandates have contributed to an increase in associated publishing costs that could potentially cut into research budgets and exacerbate inequalities that already exist in science publishing.
Plan S is a set of requirements drafted in September 2018 by a newly formed group of 11 national funding agencies across Europe collectively dubbed cOAlition S and supported by the European Commission and, initially, the European Research Council. The group aims to end the reign of paywalls and promote a transition to a fully open-access publishing model in science.
Traditionally, scientific journals have been sustained by subscriptions ...
