Effective Research Publishing: Open Research & Open Access: Rights, Licensing and Plan S

Key Takeaway: elimination of embargoes and the use of open licensing to make research freely available upon publication

Plan S is an initiative devised by Science Europe to ensure delivery of full and immediate Open Access (OA) for funded research publications. The implementation framework is supported by a group of international research funders called cOALition S and came into force on 1 January 2021.  

Plan S Principles and Implementation

Plan S applies to all peer-reviewed publications that are based on results from research funded fully or partially by cOAlition S members. In addition, the right to reuse the article is subject to an open licence (usually the Creative Commons Attribution licence) that grants the reader the right to reuse all or parts of it without having to seek additional permission, subject to appropriate attribution of the original source.

A list of organisations endorsing Plan S and working on implementation include the European Commission, Wellcome, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, World Health Organisation and more. The UKRI Plan S aligned policy is expected in late Spring 2021.

Routes to Plan S compliance:

1. Authors should retain copyright of their work using a Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0 licence. A CC-BY-SA or CC0 licence are also acceptable. 
   • To ensure publishers are aware of these requirements cOALition S have given notice to publishers about new grant conditions and expect them to modify publishing agreements for cOALition S organisations. 
2. Plan S funded researchers can publish in a fully open access journal or platform. Charges may apply.
3. Plan S funded researchers can publish in any hybrid (subscription + open access mixed model) or subscription journal as long as a deposit of the author accepted manuscript (AAM) is made in a repository without an embargo.
   • You can select a journal which has a zero embargo policy or utilise the rights retention 'prior licence' strategy. Plan S provide a journal checker tool or use Sherpa Romeo.
   • Authors are encouraged to identify the prior licence requirement for the AAM at the time of submission.  Add a text statement to indicate that any AAM from the submission is already licensed CC-BY. Example statement “This work was funded by [funder name] [grant number] For the purpose of Open Access the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.” 
4. Publication in a ‘hybrid’ journal under a transformative agreement or a transformative journal where the journal is taking steps to become fully OA. Under this model the Version of Record (VOR) will be made open access and the author will not need to make use of their right to share the AAM in a repository.
   • A list of open access transformative publisher agreements available to Swansea University researchers is available from the Publisher OA Deals and Discounts resource. You may be able to publish in journals without incurring an Article Processing Charge (APC).
   • From 2024 Plan S funders will stop funding APCs in hybrid journals. 
   • APCs must be transparent and commensurate with the publication services delivered. 

Plan S Rights Retention Strategy Resources

PLAN S - Rights and Licences

  Plan S Journal Checker Tool

  FAQ - About cOALition S and Plan S

Authors are strongly encouraged to retain specific rights to self-archive published works. As the creator of a work, copyright is normally your own property unless you transfer it to another party or it is owned by your employer.  The SHERPA/RoMEO database provides clear summaries of standard copyright agreements for publishers and links to detailed policies on publisher websites.

'Open licence' means a licence that permits anyone to freely access, use, modify, and share the licensed material for any purpose. This may include licences conformant with the Open Definition that are commonly used for scholarly works and datasets, such as the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY); Open Government Licence (OGL) for public sector information; and Open Source licences typically used for software source code, such as the Apache License 2.0 or the GNU General Public License (GPL). 

Creative Commons, has a number of model licences which authors can apply ‘as given’ or adapted to their requirements.  The licences contain these elements:

• Attribution (BY) - You must credit the licensor of the work.                 
• Non Commercial (NC) - You can only use the work for non-commercial purpose.                 
• No Derivatives (ND) - You may not create adaptations of the work.                 
• Share alike (SA) - You may create adaptations of the work, but these must be under the same licence as this work.   
• Free of all copyright restrictions (CC0) - This is the most liberal licence and means no copyright is reserved.

These licences are commonly found on Open Access research outputs, and can help you share your work while protecting its integrity. The licenses have a layer of Legal Code, a 'human readable' Commons Deed and a 'machine readable' element for software to understand. The symbol that generally appears at the bottom of a research output will look something like this: