Few Open Access Journals Are Compliant with Plan S

Abstract

Much of the debate on Plan S seems to concentrate on how to make toll-access journals open access, taking for granted that existing open access journals are Plan S-compliant. We suspected this was not so and set out to explore this using Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) metadata. We conclude that a large majority of open access journals are not Plan S-compliant, and that it is small publishers in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) not charging article processing charges (APC) that will face the largest challenge with becoming compliant. Plan S needs to give special considerations to smaller publishers and/or non-APC based journals.

The DOAJ Spring Cleaning 2016 and What Was Removed—Tragic Loss or Good Riddance?

“…The findings in [23] show the same pattern that small publishers publishing non-APC journals are the ones most likely to have problems, as this study does. As commented on in [26] most journals are published either by very small, or very large, publishers-with little in-between.…”

“…Publisher size is not in itself a sign of quality and competence, but analyses show that there is a connection. Both in this study and in [23], one sees clear connections between publisher size and the ability to fulfill technical demands. Hence, it is of interest to look at publisher size and various indicators of technical competence, and-in this case-whether journals were kept or lost.…”

“…On the other hand, dubious publishers charge APCs; their business model is to make authors part with their money without the journal actually delivering the quality assurance services paid for-a "predatory" publisher not charging an APC would be meaningless. Our recent article [23] clearly indicates that charging an APC gives a journal a better chance of satisfying technical criteria.…”

Plan S y ecosistema de revistas españolas de ciencias sociales hacia el acceso abierto: amenazas y oportunidades

“…Inicialmente se analizaron los requisitos del Plan S en su primera versión (septiembre de 2018), que equivalían a 16 indicadores de cumplimiento o no cumplimiento (1/0). El primer análisis se llevó a cabo entre febrero y mayo de 2019 por parte de cuatro evaluadores previo consenso de las limitaciones y eliminación de las ambigüedades de los criterios, en la línea de otros trabajos publicados (Frantsvåg;Strømme, 2019). El 31 de mayo de 2019 los requisitos fueron actualizados (tabla 1).…”

Plan S in Latin America: A precautionary note

“…Nevertheless, we applaud the recent update on the original Plan, prompted by the more than 600 responses of the research community during an "open consultation" [22]. These questionings attenuated some of the requirements of the first version of the initiative [23], such as that very few of the current Open Access journals are compliant with Plan S [24], and that APC based journals are better positioned to comply with Plan S. In our opinion, some advances in the updated version of Plan S, outlined in the recent Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) report, are: (i) the recognition of repositories as comparable to Open Access journals and other platforms; (ii) the right of authors and/or institutions to retain copyright at no extra cost; (iii) a commitment to assess research outputs based on their intrinsic value; (iiii) the extension of the deadline to implement the Plan from 2020 to 2021 [23].…”