Published on: 22/06/2020 - Updated on: 22/06/2020

The Plan S requirements for price transparency state “When Open Access publication fees are applied, they must be commensurate with the publication services delivered and the structure of such fees must be transparent” [Principle 5].

By operating a no-fee model, there is no Plan S requirement to make your pricing openly available. Such publishers may choose to make their pricing data available.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

cOAlition S funders commit to the following for their grantees:

• Financial support for Open Access publication fees – such as article processing charges (APCs) – for peer reviewed articles in fully OA journals (or fully OA publishing platforms) that fulfil the Plan S requirements.
• Funders do not support the ‘hybrid’ model of publishing. However, as a transitional pathway toward full OA within a clearly defined timeframe, funders may contribute financially to OA publishing under transformative arrangements; check your individual funder’s conditions. If you are based at a higher education institution, your library may offer advice.
• Check with your individual funder to find out whether they cover other publication charges that are not related to OA such as page, colour, image or submission charges.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

cOAlition S funders only financially supports the publication fees incurred by researchers benefitting from their own grants, and cannot commit to paying the publication fees of other researchers.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

How the charge is divided is left to the discretion of the PI/researchers/institutions involved, in line with the rules of their funder.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

Where a piece of research has been supported by several grants and possibly several funders, all of these should be acknowledged. How the charge is divided is left to the discretion of the PI/researchers/institutions involved, in line with the rules of their funder.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 04/06/2020

No.

• Publishing in a fully OA journal or on an OA platform is only one of the three routes to compliance with Plan S. Not all of the routes to OA require the payment of an OA fee.
• As a second option, you could publish in a subscription journal (pure subscription or hybrid) and make a copy of your article (either the Author Accepted Manuscript or the Version of Record) immediately available OA via a repository under a CC-BY licence.
• Finally, as a third option, you could publish OA in a journal that is under a transformative arrangement. For full details see Part II of the Plan S Implementation Guidance.
• If you are based at a higher education institution your library may be able to advise.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

cOAlition S supports a number of strategies to encourage subscription publishers to transition to Open Access. We call these approaches ’transformative arrangements’, for which there are currently three strategies: Transformative Agreements, Transformative Journals, and transformative model agreements.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 04/06/2020

Transformative agreements are those contracts negotiated between institutions (libraries, national and regional consortia) and publishers that transform the business model underlying scholarly journal publishing, moving from one based on toll access (subscription) to one in which publishers are remunerated a fair price for their open access publishing services. (Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges, ESAC)

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 22/06/2020

Many journals and publishers, especially smaller society presses, are not currently engaged in Transformative Agreements. Transformative Agreement model contracts aim to facilitate new transformative mechanisms for such publishers. See also the transformative agreements toolkit developed by Information Power as part of the SPA-OPS project

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

In cases where the researcher publishes in a subscription journal that is covered by a Transformative Agreement, to which they have access, it is fully compliant with Plan S. As always, this is under the condition that the Plan S requirements for publication venues are fulfilled (see in Part II of the Guidance). To clarify: If a Transformative Agreement has been concluded between a publisher and a consortium of institutions, then, if a researcher at one of those institutions who is funded by a cOAlition S funder publishes an article in a journal that is included in the Transformative Agreement, this article would be compliant.
However, if another researcher supported by a cOAlition S funder, who is based elsewhere that is NOT covered by the Transformative Agreement, publishes in the same journal, then to comply with the Plan S requirements the researcher must make a copy of the article (either the Author Accepted Manuscript or the Version of Record) available in immediate OA via a repository (under a CC BY licence).

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 22/06/2020

Plan S is part of a wider open science movement, looking to accelerate the transition to providing research results in Open Access. Hybrid OA (i.e., OA option within a subscription journal) has been part of that transition towards full OA.

• One reason cOAlition S funders do not support the hybrid model is the reality of double payments, where a single journal provides the publisher with a revenue stream both from full subscriptions as well as from APCs.
• Another reason is that although hybrid journals were perceived as a bridge, by which publishers could move their model away from subscriptions and toward open access, the reality is that this has not happened. In short, hybrid journals have demonstrably failed as a viable transitioning strategy toward full Open Access. After more than a decade, cOAlition S funders have seen little evidence of this transition to full OA actually occurring for these titles. cOAlition S funders require a clearly defined end to hybrid status to ensure a full transition to OA, so that the partial transition resulting from hybrid does not continue indefinitely.
• So far, publication charges for hybrid OA articles have been higher than charges for OA articles in fully OA journals. cOAlition S funders are keen to make prices more transparent and to keep charges to a sustainable level for the future.
• cOAlition S will fund publication charges in journals that offer an OA option until 31st Dec 2024 providing the journal is part of a transformative arrangement. cOAlition S funders will not pay for OA publication via an OA option within a subscription journal (i.e., hybrid via a transformative arrangement) beyond 31st December 2024. Transformative arrangements are expected to be temporary transitional solutions towards full OA, and must move to full OA for cOAlition S funds to continue to be used to pay publishing charges for these journals from 2025.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

The Plan S implementation guidance makes it clear that if a researcher publishes in a subscription journal that is NOT part of a ‘transformative arrangement’, to fulfil the requirements of Plan S they must make a copy of the article (either the Author’s Accepted Manuscript or the Version of Record) available in immediate OA (no embargo) via a repository under a CC-BY licence.
cOAlition S funders will not fund APCs in such hybrid journals and encourages institutions to adopt a similar position.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

A Transformative Journal is a subscription/hybrid journal that is committed to transitioning to a fully OA journal. In addition, it must:

• gradually increase the share of OA content and
• offset subscription income from payments for publishing services (to avoid double payments).

To apply for Transformative Journal status complete the cOAlition S online form

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

We believe that one of the most promising instruments to help subscription journals to transform to full and immediate open access is through Transformative Agreements, such as Read and Publish Agreements. Many countries and consortia of research institutions are supporting Transformative Agreements, often inspired by the invaluable work of the Open Access 2020 initiative.
By way of example, the Read and Publish deal negotiated between Wiley and Jisc Collections in the UK will see 100% of UK-authored articles published in Wiley journals – around 9,000 papers a year – being made OA by 2022. Similarly, in Sweden, the Bibsam Consortium agreement with Elsevier, valid from 1 January 2020, gives researchers and students access to over 2000 Elsevier journals, and allows for all Swedish-authored research articles to be published in OA.
These agreements are “transformative” in the sense that funds formerly used to pay for subscriptions are redirected to pay for OA services. It is the sum of an increasing number of agreements, negotiated with publishers around the globe, that will bring about the transition to full and immediate OA.
Recognising that a fundamental principle of these transformative arrangements is that they are temporary and transitional, where cOAlition S members provide funding to support publication fees of journals covered by such arrangements, this funding will cease on the 31 December 2024.
However powerful we think Transformative Agreements are in the transition to full and immediate OA, there may be occasions when such agreements may not be the optimal way to facilitate a transition to full OA. Examples may include a society journal which doesn’t have the resource to negotiate Transformative Agreements (which tend to be negotiated at the country or institution level) and/or that wishes to provide a Plan S-aligned OA publishing option for all its authors, irrespective of their location (and whether they are based in a country which has a history of negotiating read and publish agreements or not).
For these journals, we have developed the “Transformative Journal” framework.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

One of the overarching principles of Plan S is its commitment that funders do not support the hybrid model of publishing. One reason for this is the reality of double payments, where a single journal provides the publisher with a revenue stream both from full subscriptions as well as from APCs.
Another reason is that although hybrid journals were perceived as a bridge, by which publishers could move their model away from subscriptions and towards open access, the reality is that this has not happened. Indeed, data from the Open Access Directory shows that out of Wiley’s stable of 1600 journals, just eight have moved from toll access to open access; for Elsevier, with their collection of more 2200 titles, the number of journals which have flipped is just seven. In short, hybrid journals have demonstrably failed as a viable transitioning strategy towards full Open Access.
Transformative Journals differ considerably from hybrid journals in the following ways:

• They make an explicit commitment to transition to Open Access.
• They meet transition KPI’s (key performance indicators) year-on-year.
• They formulate explicit policies to avoid double payments.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

In progressing toward full and immediate Open Access, a Transformative Journal will need to demonstrate an annual increase in the OA proportion of at least 5% in absolute terms and at least 15% in relative terms, year-on-year. Growth in OA proportions will be assessed either on a rolling 3-year historic basis or each calendar year.
It must also commit to flip to full Open Access as soon as possible, and in any event once 75% of the research content is published open access.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

In the draft version of the criteria for Transformative Journals, cOAlition S specified that a journal had to flip to fully Open Access by 2024. This requirement has been removed from the final version. However, we continue to require publishers to actively commit to transitioning to a fully Open Access journal and in any event to make this flip no later than when 75% of the research content is published open access. cOAlition S has also made it clear that funding for Transformative Journals will cease at the end of 2024, at which time we will also end support for other types of Transformative Arrangements, such as Read and Publish agreements. The feedback from the consultation indicated that the “flipping OA target” was the most problematic aspect of the model proposed. We listened to this feedback and adjusted this KPI, in line with some of the publisher feedback. As we want to encourage scholarly publishers to move to a fully Open Access world, and at the same time provide publishing options for researchers which do not rely exclusively on the repository route (“green OA”), relaxing this requirement was deemed to be the most pragmatic approach and one we hope publishers will embrace.

For more on Transformative Journals click here .

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

As stated in the Guidance to the Implementation of Plan S, cOAlition S members may, but are not obliged to, provide funding to support publication fees of journals covered by transformative arrangements, such as Transformative Journals.
Where cOAlition S members provide funding to support publication fees of journals covered by such arrangements, this funding will cease on 31 December 2024.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

No. We acknowledge that there are multiple business models that can support Open Access publishing. In moving away from a subscription model, a Transformative Journal does not necessarily have to transform to an APC-based model. The transition could also represent a transformation to non-APC based OA – for example, through financial support of subsets of articles (as in SCOAP3), or via a “Subscribe to Open” model, as used by Annual Reviews.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

We recognise that journals publish a wide range of article types, including research articles, editorials, reviews, letters, commentaries etc. A Transformative Journal will need to offer authors the opportunity to publish their primary, original research articles Open Access. Costs associated with non-primary research content can be met through subscriptions or other means.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

We would expect publishers to offer the relevant negotiating body the opportunity to include Transformative Journals in any future Transformative Agreement, as soon as it is practicable to do so. A decision whether to do so would, of course, reside with the negotiating body.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

We would, in line with the Plan S Implementation Guidance, encourage such journals to offer waivers. If a waiver is not provided, and the researcher (or their funder or institution) is unable to fund the publication fee, the publisher must permit the author to make a copy of the Author Accepted Manuscript or the Version of Record available through a repository without embargo and with an open licence (CC BY), in line with the Plan S requirements.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

If you would like one of your journals to be considered as a Transformative Journal, please complete the form here.
The application will be reviewed by the cOAlition S secretariat. A response, indicating whether your application has been accepted, will be made within four weeks of the date of submission. Journals that are afforded Transformative Journal status will be listed on the cOAlition S website .

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

If you are funded by a cOAlition S funder and the particular funder’s guidelines already support Plan S practices, the funder and the institution will normally provide funding for covering costs associated with OA. However, cOAlition S funders only financially support the publication fees of their own grantees, and cannot commit to paying the publication fees of other researchers.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 02/06/2020

Check with your individual funder to find out whether and under what conditions they cover non-APC publication charges such as page, colour, image, and submission charges.

Published on: 19/05/2020

Transformative Agreements may vary between countries and institutions, and will result in partial and uneven OA until the journals included ‘flip’ to full OA. The flip to payment for ‘publish’ or other OA model must be universal to align with Plan S. cOalition S funders will not pay partial (hybrid) OA charges beyond 31st December 2024.

Published on: 19/05/2020 - Updated on: 22/06/2020

cOAlition S funders will pay publishing charges as explained in their policies. They will only pay for ‘hybrid’ OA for articles in journals with transformative agreements and only until end of December 2024.