{"id":240,"date":"2019-04-05T10:46:26","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T10:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/?p=240"},"modified":"2019-04-05T10:46:26","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T10:46:26","slug":"plan-s-what-is-it-and-how-might-it-affect-me-as-an-author-publishing-in-journals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/2019\/04\/05\/plan-s-what-is-it-and-how-might-it-affect-me-as-an-author-publishing-in-journals\/","title":{"rendered":"Plan S: What is it and how might it affect me as an author publishing in journals?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Have you heard of Plan S yet?\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a huge amount already written online* regarding the proposed Open Access policy of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coalition-s.org\/10-principles\/\">Plan S<\/a> (which could be adopted by UKRI and other big funders from January 2020) giving an indication as to the strong views and potential for having a greater impact on individuals even more than existing OA policies \u2013 in a nutshell, big changes are on the way for academic publishing.\u00a0 Indeed, Wellcome Trust have already aligned the principles to their <a href=\"https:\/\/wellcome.ac.uk\/news\/wellcome-updating-its-open-access-policy\">new OA policy for 2020<\/a>.<br \/>\n<em>(*<a href=\"https:\/\/scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org\/2019\/02\/11\/with-thousand-of-pages-of-feedback-on-the-plans-s-implementation-guidance-what-themes-emerged-that-might-guide-next-steps\/\">Lisa Hinchliffe\u2019s summary<\/a> on Scholarly Kitchen is an oft cited and quick way to get an overview of the different arguments).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>If you are new to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coalition-s.org\/\">cOAlition S<\/a> (a coming together of various funding bodies such as the EU, Wellcome, UKRI for example) and the brave new world of Plan S, then what follows is a simple guide to the proposals.\u00a0 Bear in mind that feedback from the sector was invited until Friday 8th February and we are currently awaiting the outcome of this consultation period to see whether the original principles remain intact.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tell me what it is<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Policy statement key principle:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter 1 January 2020 scientific publications on the results from research funded by public grants provided by national and European research councils and funding bodies, must be published in compliant Open Access Journals or on compliant Open Access Platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What this means is that all research outputs arising from funding from the cOAlition partners needs to be <em>immediately<\/em> open access.\u00a0 OA is of course nothing new (see the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org\/\">Budapest Initiative<\/a> now 18 years old), but the architects of Plan S are emphasising the need for faster progress to be made.<\/p>\n<p>There are 10 additional principles:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cAuthors retain copyright of their publication with no restrictions. All publications must be published under an open license, preferably the Creative Commons Attribution Licence CC BY. In all cases, the license applied should fulfil the requirements defined by the Berlin Declaration.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Authors who publish Gold OA usually licence their work CC BY (this is current UKRI policy) which puts the copyright with the author and allows for re-use.\u00a0 However, authors who publish behind a paywall and wish to make their manuscript OA via a repository (Green OA) are often bound by publishers\u2019 copyright policies with regards to embargos, licences and the fact that the publisher now owns the copyright.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So, what about Green OA under Plan S?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As an author, you do not have to sign the Copyright Transfer Agreement if you do not accept the restrictions imposed by a publisher.\u00a0 For example, any current EU grant holders are required to ensure a \u2018green\u2019 OA publication has an embargo period of no longer than 6 months.\u00a0 To help authors publish in journals with embargo periods that exceed 6 months, the EU has developed a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.openaire.eu\/what-about-copyright-and-open-access\">Licence to Publish template<\/a> which can be used by authors to negotiate a shorter embargo period with publishers instead of signing the CTA.\u00a0 This is a valid way for your publisher to continue to promote and protect your work whilst also allowing authors to retain copyright and meet funder policies.\u00a0 We are also monitoring sector-wide initiatives such as the <a href=\"http:\/\/ukscl.ac.uk\/\">UK-Scholarly Communications Licence<\/a> which could be explored as a mechanism to potentially deliver 0 embargos<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThe Funders will ensure jointly the establishment of robust criteria and requirements for the services that compliant high quality Open Access journals and Open Access platforms must provide.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Clear guidelines will help the Library to monitor compliance on behalf of the university.\u00a0 These guidelines should also ensure that \u2018predatory\u2019 publishing companies are denied opportunity to profit.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cIn case such high quality Open Access journals or platforms do not yet exist, the Funders will, in a coordinated way, provide incentives to establish and support them when appropriate; support will also be provided for Open Access infrastructures where necessary.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Publishers are expected to deliver \u2018transformative\u2019 new business models \u2013 Plan S is meant to be a shake up of the status quo, not just more money for APCs.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cWhere applicable, Open Access publication fees are covered by the Funders or universities, not by individual researchers; it is acknowledged that all scientists should be able to publish their work Open Access even if their institutions have limited means.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At UoP, this statement aligns with our current position.\u00a0 APCs are paid from the UKRI block grant to eligible authors.\u00a0 When funds diminish, we use the Green route.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cWhen Open Access publication fees are applied, their funding is standardised and capped (across Europe).\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>APCs can vary hugely, from a few hundred to a few thousand and possibly Plan S\u2019s aim is to bring some regulation to the market.\u00a0 This statement could either mean a cap on individual APCs as charged by publishers or a cap on the funding received by grant holders\/institutions to pay for the APCs.\u00a0 If the latter, then this is simply what we are subject to at the moment with our UKRI grant.\u00a0 It is not enough to cover all publications so we also use the Green route.\u00a0 If the former, at first glance a cap on expensive APCs would be welcome, although there is some doubt as to whether the cap is on the amount of funding that could be used to pay for an individual APC or if the publisher would be required to lower the price.\u00a0 This could cause some issues for us as an institution if we were required to \u2018make up the difference\u2019 to pay an APC.\u00a0 cOAlition S is to commission an independent study on APC costs.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThe Funders will ask universities, research organisations, and libraries to align their policies and strategies, notably to ensure transparency.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The university\u2019s current OA policy is aligned with REF which also meets UKRI and most other funders\u2019 main requirements.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThe above principles shall apply to all types of scholarly publications, but it is understood that the timeline to achieve Open Access for monographs and books may be longer than 1 January 2020.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Whilst OA books may seem less of a focus at present, particularly as our focus at UoP lately has been on the REF2021 exercise where the OA policy is limited to articles &amp; conference papers, OA books is not a new area:\u00a0 Any Wellcome researcher publishing books has been expected to publish OA for some time now.\u00a0 In addition, Research England has already indicated that they expect the next <a href=\"https:\/\/re.ukri.org\/blog\/open-access-and-monographs\/\">REF round (2027) to include books in its OA policy<\/a> so new business models for book publishing will be needed fairly rapidly considering the next REF census period will be from 2021.\u00a0 There have been several <a href=\"https:\/\/scholarlycommunications.jiscinvolve.org\/wp\/2018\/10\/25\/open-access-briefing-oa-monographs-in-the-uk\/\">JISC projects<\/a> and a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.universitiesuk.ac.uk\/policy-and-analysis\/research-policy\/open-science\/Pages\/open-access-monographs.aspx\">UUK group<\/a> looking at what is needed to deliver a sustainable OA book model.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThe importance of open archives and repositories for hosting research outputs is acknowledged because of their long-term archiving function and their potential for editorial innovation.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are some stringent technical requirements for repositories to be Plan S compliant. Our repositories team are looking into what this might entail for PEARL.\u00a0 Green is the sustainable way to deliver Open Access and technological improvements in future should reduce the manual burden for researchers:\u00a0 the workflows are there e.g. JISC have been developing <a style=\"letter-spacing: 0.05em\" href=\"https:\/\/pubrouter.jisc.ac.uk\/\">Publication Router<\/a><span style=\"letter-spacing: 0.05em\"> for some time &#8211; a service which would enable repositories to automatically ingest manuscripts from publishers instead of authors needing to deposit.\u00a0 They are currently in talks with Elsevier and it is hoped that this will gain some real traction soon.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThe \u2018hybrid\u2019 model of publishing is not compliant with the above principles.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2018Hybrid\u2019: a subscription\/paywalled journal that accepts payment for individual OA articles.<\/p>\n<p>Although payment of Article Processing Charges for Gold OA in Hybrid journals would no longer be compliant, authors could still publish in hybrid journals behind a paywall as long as the publisher allows a 0 embargo, permits CC-BY licencing and the author retains copyright.\u00a0 This is not something very new &#8211; publishers such as Royal Society, Emerald and some Sage titles have a 0 embargo.\u00a0 So, it will be interesting to see if the other big publishers agree to follow suit.\u00a0 Publishers have certainly had many years of operating within OA funder mandates and so time to adjust and consider their policies\u2026so this shouldn\u2019t be too radical a concept for them. This is where the Licence to Publish comes into its own.<\/p>\n<p>Elsevier have developed a new type of journal to get around the restriction on Gold OA in Hybrid journals \u2013 introducing the \u2018mirror\u2019 journal business model!\u00a0 Its hybrid journals now have a sister or \u2018mirror\u2019 journal which publishes the OA articles leaving the subscription articles in the original.\u00a0 The new mirror journals have their own ISSNs and are \u2018separate\u2019 journals but they have the same title bar an \u2018X\u2019 at the end e.g. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.journals.elsevier.com\/journal-of-hydrology-x\">Journal of Hydrology<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.journals.elsevier.com\/journal-of-hydrology-x\">Journal of Hydrology X<\/a> and they also share an editorial board.\u00a0 cOAlition S responded firmly that this was Hybrid by another name and is NOT compliant with Plan S.<\/p>\n<p>In a maximum 3 year transition period, publishing Gold OA in hybrid journals will still be permitted if the journal has signed up to a \u2018transformative\u2019 agreement to achieve compliance in future.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThe Funders will monitor compliance and sanction non-compliance.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Library currently reports back to UKRI on APC expenditure and we are also checking through the REF Open Access compliance for UoAs.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What impact will Plan S have on Society publishers?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Some UoP staff are involved in society presses and there has been some concern raised from these quarters about Plan S potentially affecting the revenue that is used to support society endeavours such as conferences and supporting Early Career Researchers etc.\u00a0 In a joint statement, the Association for Learned Society Publishers and funders <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationpower.co.uk\/news\/#learned_society_publishers\">released this news alert<\/a> detailing the appointment of consultants, Information Power, to explore sustainable business models for learned societies in a Plan S world.\u00a0 Findings are due in July.<br \/>\nIn addition, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jisc.ac.uk\/blog\/implementing-plan-s-a-welcomed-announcement-08-nov-2018\">JISC have stated<\/a> that negotiating transformative open access agreements is a priority focus and they are actively approaching some smaller society presses to identify sustainable and simplified routes to compliance.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Finally, there\u2019s also a bit about Responsible Metrics\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Although this is not shouted about in the main principles, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coalition-s.org\/why-plan-s\/\">in the pre-amble there is a mention about journal metrics<\/a> and the \u2018misdirected reward system\u2019 which puts emphasis on \u2018wrong indicators\u2019 e.g. Journal Impact Factor, resulting in pressure on academics to publish in prestige journals that do not allow public sharing of work.\u00a0 cOAlition S therefore commits to \u2018revising the incentive and reward system of science\u2019 and cites <a href=\"https:\/\/sfdora.org\/\">DORA<\/a> as a starting point for these discussions.\u00a0 DORA is the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment and a central tenet is that the output not the venue of publication should be assessed when considering the intrinsic merit of the work.\u00a0 There is also the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/bibliometrics-the-leiden-manifesto-for-research-metrics-1.17351\">Leiden Manifesto<\/a> which sets out principles for conducting assessment of research responsibly.\u00a0 Many universities in the UK have publicly signed up to one of these pledges.<\/p>\n<p>Wellcome Trust have explicitly incorporated Responsible Metrics into their <a href=\"https:\/\/wellcome.ac.uk\/sites\/default\/files\/wellcome-open-access-policy-2020.pdf\">new policy<\/a> (point 8) with the statement, \u201cAll Wellcome-funded organisations must publicly commit to this principle.\u201d\u00a0 At UoP we do not yet have a Responsible Metrics policy or position statement but watch this space, as this will be something to develop in the near future to support our staff and is a blog post for another day\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>What next?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Library will continue to monitor communications from cOAlition S and the wider discussions and debate around Plan S.\u00a0 We are happy to try and answer any questions you may have and we can take out some points for discussion to any research groups who want to hear more.<\/p>\n<p>This is a fast moving and changing picture with an ambitious policy launch of January 2020.\u00a0 We will keep a watching brief on this area and aim to keep researchers updated as the changes affect UoP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you heard of Plan S yet?\u00a0 There\u2019s a huge amount already written online* regarding the proposed Open Access policy of Plan S (which could be adopted by UKRI and other big funders from January 2020) giving an indication as to the strong views and potential for having a greater impact on individuals even more&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/2019\/04\/05\/plan-s-what-is-it-and-how-might-it-affect-me-as-an-author-publishing-in-journals\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Plan S: What is it and how might it affect me as an author publishing in journals?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,10,44,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funding","category-oa","category-ourresearch","category-public-engagement","category-ukri","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/240"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":242,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}