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Communication on Plan S

11/07/2018

A plan to decisively advance towards the Open Access of scholarly publishing by 2020 was the topic of discussion at a meeting yesterday between Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, and Marc Schiltz, President of Science Europe. The plan, currently called ‘Plan S’, was jointly developed by Science Europe, a group of heads of national research funding organisations, and Robert-Jan Smits, Senior Advisor on Open Access within the European Political Strategy Centre at the European Commission (EC). It foresees that from 1 January 2020, all scholarly publications resulting from public research funding must be published in Open Access journals or on Open Access platforms.

“All EU Member States are committed to making all publicly funded research Open Access by 2020, but we need to accelerate progress towards this objective. I therefore very much welcome this initiative by national research funders and Science Europe to work together with the European Commission to move forward collectively” Commissioner Moedas stated during the meeting, held at the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) in Toulouse.

Marc Schiltz said after the meeting: “I fully subscribe to Commissioner Moedas’ ambitious vision for Open Science. The open and unrestricted flow of research data and publications is a constitutive element of Science that is currently hindered by publication paywalls. Science Europe has been at the forefront of promoting Open Access since 2013 and we wish to see more progress. I believe that now is the right moment to take a decisive and concerted step towards full Open Access and I’m happy that numerous Science Europe Member Organisations have committed to join forces. I’m also very glad that the plan has received the public support of Frédérique Vidal, the French Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation. I thank the Commissioner for his support since having the EC and Horizon Europe as part of this concerted effort is crucial in order to unlock Europe’s research from behind paywalls once and for all.”

Following the meeting, the details of ‘Plan S’ are being finalised and will be publicly released when ready.

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