Plan S
‘Those who hold the purse can change the system’
Robert-Jan Smits gave an impassioned update – and defence – of Plan S at APE 2019 in Berlin
S
mits, the Special Envoy of the European Commission for Open Access and Innovation, European
Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), European Commission, Brussels, opened his plenary presentation with a joke, asking the audience if there was anyone who had not heard of Plan S before. Unsurprisingly, his request was met with silence. Summing up the latest developments on Plan S, Smits explained that there have already been a plethora of codes of conduct, principles and declarations, and ‘a lot of talk since 2002’, but that globally there is still a long way to go until full and immediate OA is achieved. On a global scale, 12.4 per cent of journals published in 2012 were open access; by 2016 it had only increased to 15.2 per cent (although the percentage of pure subscription journals had dropped from 49 per cent to 37 per cent. Smits continued: ‘This is why I was appointed by President [Jean-Claude] Juncker, to come up with policy suggestions to change the situation once and for all. I am very privileged to be able to focus only on this particular subject. ‘I discovered quite quickly why the move
to full open access has been so slow, and who holds the key to the solution. This is a group of players who have not really taken responsibility over the last 30 years: the funders; the ones who hold the purse. The one who holds the purse can change the system.’
Plan S is based on the very simple principle, that if you get a grant from any member of cOAlition S, you can only publish in high-quality open access journals or platforms. Smits said it is a very simple principle, backed up by 10 straightforward points. The key is that authors should retain
18 Research Information April/May 2019
Robert Jan-Smits
“What really impressed… was the range of reactions from individual scientists around the world”
copyright alongside a CC-BY licence. Smits continued: ‘So where do we stand
today? Before summer 2018 some 11 funding agencies agreed to Plan S; on 4 September we went public, and since then other charitable foundations, such as the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation have come on board. Many of us were surprised when, just before Christmas, China announced that it would also go open access and would support Plan S. ‘Zambia is also on board as the first
African country, and discussions are ongoing with India, USA, with Latin America, and others. This is the only way to flip the system globally – if cOAlition S becomes big enough to put sufficient pressure on the current business models.’ He said that, on the day Plan S was made public in September, it received 70,000
tweets, and 120,000 tweets the next day. They were not just from Europe, he added, but from all around the world: ‘I was really surprised how many people responded, and how much people knew about it. Of course, Elsevier reacted immediately by saying: “If you want to get information for free, go to Wikipedia”. This was a reaction that I remember quite well.’ Smits said there was a lot of support
from industry associations, but what really impressed him was the range of reactions from individual scientists around the world. To be fair, he said, there has been some criticism on the detail, and many debates around the developments: ‘I understand a lot of the criticism, for example that from small learned societies. A lot of these societies want to transfer to open access, but they don’t know how, and they need help. They will get my help. The second group I would categorise as fake news, and then there is a third type, which I would describe as more demagogical. This type might claim Plan S will damage academic freedom, or it will put an end to global science co-operation, or Plan S will lead to poor peer review and more predatory journals. These criticisms have been taken on board, but I feel they were meant to destabilise the debate and the system.
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