{"id":3405,"date":"2019-06-19T09:00:17","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T12:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/?p=3405"},"modified":"2019-06-24T08:18:51","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T11:18:51","slug":"open-access-plans-s-t-u-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/2019\/06\/19\/open-access-plans-s-t-u-so-far\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Access Plans \u2014 S, T, U, so far"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Jan\nVelterop<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Image adapted from the original, by vectorpouch<\/a>.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In a few earlier posts1,2<\/sup>, I have\nmentioned, and commented on, Plan S. In September of 2018, immediately after\nPlan S was presented, Tim Vines published a post on The Scholarly Kitchen3<\/sup> in which he\nargues that Plan S, based on funding open access with Article processing Fees\n(APCs) should be scrapped and instead, OA should be financed by submission\nfees. He called his idea Plan T (I guess because T follows S in the alphabet).\nIt is an old idea, but a valid one. I have for a long time been in favor of\nsubmission charges. After all, getting a paper reviewed and accepted in a\njournal is like doing an exam, to get a driver\u2019s licence, for instance. One has\nto pay for such an exam, whether or not one passes or fails. Tim Vines uses the\nexample of a dental check up in his post. You don\u2019t just pay if the dentist\nfinds a cavity to fill or a tooth to extract. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For publishers, moving to a submission fee\nbased business model carries with it a significant first-mover disadvantage. I\nam reminded of the phenomenon in the 1960s and 70s of authors abandoning\nsociety-run journals and flocking to commercial ones, partly because of\nsocieties levying page charges and commercial journals presenting researchers\nwith free publication options (free to authors, that is). Tim Vines seems\nrather optimistic of his Plan T having a good chance of success, given, as he\nexpects that \u201chaving submission fees paid directly by funders would also\nsignificantly mitigate the first-mover effect, and helpfully the direct payment\nof publication fees is already part of Plan S.\u201d3<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am less optimistic. Not because I believe\nthat funders would refuse to pick up the bill, but for another reason: what a\nsubmission fee would do, is oblige a publisher to guarantee carrying out proper\npeer review and truly justifying any rejection. That is something many\npublishers may not \u2013 possibly cannot \u2013 do, or are most uncomfortable doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, on to the next letter in the alphabet: Plan\nU. The same day that Tim Vines\u2019 post was published, Richard Sever (of Cold\nSpring Harbor Publishers and bioRxiv) reacted by firing off a tweet which said:\n\u201cPlan U: just mandate preprint deposition and let a downstream ecosystem of\noverlays\/journals with various business models evolve in response to community\nneeds. Side benefit: speeding up science massively\u2026\u201d4<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now we\u2019re talking. This is entirely in line with what I proposed in 2015 [in a blog post]5<\/sup>. At first, Plan U appeared on a web site, planu.org<\/strong>, which was anonymous, undated, and doesn\u2019t exist anymore. However, on June 4th, 2019, a formal article entitled \u201cPlan U: Universal access to scientific and medical research via funder preprint mandates\u201d6<\/sup> appeared in the journal PLOS Biology. There is no reason whatsoever why this Plan U should not take off, although it may initially go slowly, given the usual inertia in the scientific community at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plan U offers science communication everything it needs. Rapid sharing of research results via preprints, without the sometimes high cost of APCs; options of obtaining peer review and formal journal publication afterwards. And the latter, which can be expensive, only if and when necessary for funding or career development. It even may make the differences between open access and subscription journals fairly irrelevant for the dissemination of research results, as an open access version of every article will in any way be guaranteed via the preprint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes<\/h3>\n\n\n

1. VELTEROP, J. Plan S \u2014 and Article Processing Charges (APCs) [online]. SciELO in Perspective<\/em>, 2018 [viewed 19 June 2019]. Available from: https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/2018\/11\/27\/plan-s-and-article-processing-charges-apcs\/<\/a><\/p>\n

2. VELTEROP, J. Is a dramatic boost to open access imminent? I think so! [online]. SciELO in Perspective<\/em>, 2019 [viewed 19 June 2019]. Available from: https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/2019\/02\/13\/is-a-dramatic-boost-to-open-access-imminent-i-think-so\/<\/a><\/p>\n

3. VINES, T. Plan T: Scrap APCs and Fund Open Access with Submission Fees [online]. The Scholarly Kitchen<\/em>, 2018 [viewed 19 June 2019]. Available from: https:\/\/scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org\/2018\/09\/20\/plan-t-scrap-apcs-and-fund-open-access-with-submission-fees\/<\/a><\/p>\n

4. SEVER, R. [social network]. In: @cshperspectives<\/em> [online]. Twitter, September 20, 2018 [viewed 19 June 2019]. Available from: https:\/\/twitter.com\/cshperspectives\/status\/1042721777540100096<\/a><\/p>\n

5. VELTEROP, J. Science (which needs communication) first, careers (which need selectivity) later [online]. SciELO in Perspective<\/em>, 2015 [viewed 19 June 2019]. Available from: https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/2015\/10\/29\/science-which-needs-communication-first-careers-which-need-selectivity-later\/<\/a><\/p>\n

6. SEVER, R., EISEN, M. and INGLIS, J. Plan U: Universal access to scientific and medical research via funder preprint mandates. PLOS Biology<\/em> [online]. 2019, vol. 17, no.6, e3000273 [viewed 19 June 2019]. DOI: 10.1371\/journal.pbio.3000273<\/a>. Available from: https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosbiology\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pbio.3000273<\/a><\/p>\n

References<\/h3>\n

POYNDER, R. The Open Access Interviews: Jan Velterop [online]. Open and Shut?<\/em>, 2012 [viewed 19 June 2019]. Available from: https:\/\/poynder.blogspot.com\/2012\/02\/open-access-interviews-jan-velterop.html<\/a><\/p>\n

SEVER, R. [social network]. In: @cshperspectives<\/em> [online]. Twitter, September 20, 2018 [viewed 19 June 2019]. Available from: https:\/\/twitter.com\/cshperspectives\/status\/1042721777540100096<\/a><\/p>\n

SEVER, R., EISEN, M. and INGLIS, J. Plan U: Universal access to scientific and medical research via funder preprint mandates. PLOS Biology<\/em> [online]. 2019, vol. 17, no.6, e3000273 [viewed 19 June 2019]. DOI: 10.1371\/journal.pbio.3000273<\/a>. Available from: https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosbiology\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pbio.3000273<\/a><\/p>\n

VELTEROP, J. Is a dramatic boost to open access imminent? I think so! [online]. SciELO in Perspective<\/em>, 2019 [viewed 19 June 2019]. Available from: https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/2019\/02\/13\/is-a-dramatic-boost-to-open-access-imminent-i-think-so\/<\/a><\/p>\n

VELTEROP, J. Plan S \u2014 and Article Processing Charges (APCs) [online]. SciELO in Perspective<\/em>, 2018 [viewed 19 June 2019]. Available from: https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/2018\/11\/27\/plan-s-and-article-processing-charges-apcs\/<\/a><\/p>\n

VELTEROP, J. Science (which needs communication) first, careers (which need selectivity) later [online]. SciELO in Perspective<\/em>, 2015 [viewed 19 June 2019]. Available from: https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/2015\/10\/29\/science-which-needs-communication-first-careers-which-need-selectivity-later\/<\/a><\/p>\n

VINES, T. Plan T: Scrap APCs and Fund Open Access with Submission Fees [online]. The Scholarly Kitchen<\/em>, 2018 [viewed 19 June 2019]. Available from: https:\/\/scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org\/2018\/09\/20\/plan-t-scrap-apcs-and-fund-open-access-with-submission-fees\/<\/a><\/p>\n

External link<\/h3>\n

Plan S and cOAlition S <https:\/\/www.coalition-s.org\/<\/a>><\/p>\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

About Jan Velterop<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Jan Velterop (1949), marine geophysicist who became a science publisher in the mid-1970s. He started his publishing career at Elsevier in Amsterdam. in 1990 he became director of a Dutch newspaper, but returned to international science publishing in 1993 at Academic Press in London, where he developed the first country-wide deal that gave electronic access to all AP journals to all institutes of higher education in the United Kingdom (later known as the BigDeal). He next joined Nature as director, but moved quickly on to help get BioMed Central off the ground. He participated in the Budapest Open Access Initiative. In 2005 he joined Springer, based in the UK as Director of Open Access. In 2008 he left to help further develop semantic approaches to accelerate scientific discovery. He is an active advocate of BOAI-compliant open access and of the use of microattribution, the hallmark of so-called \u201cnanopublications\u201d. He published several articles on both topics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Things do seem to be moving in Open Access (OA). First there was Plan S, proposed by science funders in the European Union, then a proposal to fund OA from submission fees rather than article processing charges, (perhaps flippantly) called Plan T, and now, in alphabetical sequence, Plan U. All three have strong merits, but Plan U has the best chance of succeeding and offers the most to the scientific community. …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":3413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[63,33,18,62,48,7],"class_list":["post-3405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","tag-article-processing-charge-apc","tag-communication-policy","tag-open-access","tag-preprint","tag-research-funding-agency","tag-scholarly-communication"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3405"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3419,"href":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions\/3419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.scielo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}