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cOAlition S welcomes ARL’ s alignment with Plan S Principles

29/03/2021

cOAlition S applauds the goal-setting of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), which came as a reaction to the recent publish-and-read agreement between the University of California and Elsevier.

In particular, ARL sets out 5 goals that Research Libraries are pursuing in their negotiations with academic publishers: “(1) reducing the burden of publishing fees (article-processing charges, or APCs) for authors and instead making an institutional commitment to pay those fees; (2) expanding access to research produced at the institution; (3) making the scholarly communication ecosystem more equitable; (4) supporting scholars’ research needs, such as rights retention and machine access to scholarship; and (5) containing or driving down costs.”

cOAlition S is pleased to note that these goals are in full alignment with the 10 principles of Plan S. Increasing immediate access to research is the overarching goal of cOAlition S. Shifting the burden of APCs from authors to institutions and/or funders is enshrined in our Principle 4: “Where applicable, Open Access publication fees are covered by the Funders or research institutions, not by individual researchers”. A commitment to a more equitable scholarly communication ecosystem where costs are driven down is formulated in our Principle 5 regarding transparent fees and prices. Similarly, cOAlition S’s Principle 10 seeks a more equitable assessment of research outputs. Scholars’ research needs in terms of rights retention are addressed by the cOAlition S Rights Retention Strategy, and machine access to scholarship is ensured by our technical guidance and requirements.

Johan Rooryck, cOAlition S Executive Director, commented: “cOAlition S is looking forward to collaborating with ARL and other like-minded organisations in working towards these common goals.”