Sarah Richardson, Group Editor, Research Professional News

Two-and-a-half years after the idea of Plan S was unleashed on the research world, it’s finally being put into practice. The open-access initiative, first publicly mooted by a group of European research funders back in July 2018, kicked off in January—but controversy around its implementation hasn’t gone away.

In the words of Coalition S—the international consortium of research organisations promoting the initiative—Plan S “requires that, from 2021, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant open access journals or platforms”.

Research Professional News has published a primer on the initiative for those who (perhaps wisely) have not followed all the twists and turns of its formation.

In reality, there is some leeway for funders which support Plan S on how they introduce its policies. Some are requiring that from the start of the year papers from grantees are immediately open access, while others will apply the rule only to researchers awarded grants from 2021 onwards.

Still others—such as the UK’s public research funder, UK Research and Innovation—are still working up their revised open-access strategies. UKRI says any changes to its existing policies will come into effect in 2022.