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cOAlition S invites qualified providers to develop a Plan S Journal Checker tool

07/02/2020

cOAlition S publishes today, 7 February 2020, an Invitation to Tender (ITT) for the development and maintenance of a Journal Checker Tool. This tool will support researchers who receive funding from cOAlition S members to identify publishing venues (journals or platforms) that enable compliance with Plan S. We require the Journal Checker Tool to be available for use from November 2020.

To ensure there is no further delay to the implementation of Plan S, cOAlition S is adopting an iterative approach to determining publishing venues aligned to Plan S. This is in recognition that some elements of the Plan S Implementation Guidance are yet to be fully implemented (such as price transparency). Therefore, the initial focus will be on identifying publishing venues that meet the following Plan S requirements:

a) Offer a route to compliance, as set out in Implementation of Plan S
b) Offer a CC-BY option to all researchers working under a Plan S policy
c)  Allow the author to retain copyright

All other requirements relating to compliance, such as the journal displaying its commitment to adhering to the COPE guidelines or the journal providing transparent pricing, will be added to the compliance tool iteratively during 2021. The inclusion of these additional requirements will be widely communicated to all relevant communities.

Important dates and information

The full statement of requirements for the development and maintenance of a Journal Checker Tool is available within the ITT pack (pdf, docx). Individual organisations or consortia with relevant experience and expertise are invited to respond before Monday, 6 April 2020 at 09:00 CET. Funding to support the development and maintenance of this tool is available for a 3-year period in the first instance.

A Q&A webinar will be held on Wednesday 4 March 2020, 14:00 CET. Interested individuals are invited to register here.

For more information about the tender process, you may contact us at info@coaltion-s.org.

Did you miss the webinar on the Journal Checker Tool?
You can download the Q&As here