Plan S requirements go into effect this month, Science writes, noting there are many ways scientists can fulfill its open-access mandates.
The Plan S initiative, developed by Science Europe, a coalition of European funding agencies, launched in 2018 to push for scientific research to be freely available upon publication. The initiative has garnered the support of additional countries as well as of research-funding charities like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.
As Science notes, there are a number of ways researchers can meet the initiative's open-access requirements, such as paying a fee to make an article open-access or depositing an article into an open-access repository. But those fees can be high, it adds. Springer Nature recently announced that its fees for open-access publishing in the Nature family of journals would run €9,500 (US $11,390), though it is examining lower fees of €4,790 for a few journals including Nature Genetics.
Science adds that Plan S has also spurred new agreements between research institutions and publishers, such as between Project Deal, a group of German libraries and research institutes, and publishers like Wiley and Springer Nature.