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Research funders sharpen requirements for Open Access
On 31 May 2019, the final Plan S guidance was published. Plan S is developed by a group of European research funding agencies to accelerate the transition to Open Access. Plan S requires all publications from research funded by public grants, to be published Open Access.
The following are the main requirements of Plan S:
- All publications from research funded after 1 January 2021 by funders participating in Plan S must become Open Access (OA) immediately, that means without embargoes.
- To enable reuse of knowledge, all publications need to have a CC BY or CC BY-ND license.
How to comply?
Researchers can comply with the new requirements by several routes:
- Publishing in fully Open Access journals (Gold OA).
- Publishing Open Access in subscription journals (Gold Hybrid OA) is allowed only in journals that are part of a transformative agreement, such as the big deals of VSNU.
- Self-archiving the ‘author’s accepted manuscript’ in an institutional or disciplinary repository, immediately upon publication (Green OA). This route gives the option to publish in subscription journals, at least until 2024. To comply with Plan S, most publishers still need to change their copyright policies by eliminating embargoes and copyright transfers.
Plan S in the Netherlands
In the Netherlands, the Dutch Research Council (NWO), including ZonMW, will implement Plan S. The Plan S requirements will take effect for calls published as of 1 January 2021. The European Commission and ERC are also expected to implement Plan S in their research funding programmes, such as Horizon Europe.
Plan S at WUR
Stay up-to-date with the developments on Open Access publishing by joining the WUR intranet group.
Practical information on Open Access publishing is also available at our website. You can use the WUR Journal browser to choose journals to publish your articles Open Access.