5 Years after the introduction of Plan S, the new proposal aims to build on the established principles of the original plan: making all research results openly available to the research community. In this spirit, the coalition proposes to rework dominant publishing models.
The proposal states that the publishing process may significantly, and, according to the coalition, “needlessly” delay publication, as well as peer review and quality control may “hide the efforts and insights of peer reviewers”. Finally, it identifies “editorial gatekeeping” – the burden of substantial revisions, and high rejection rates for early career researchers – as a major issue. It lists five proposed principles along the lines providing more agency to authors over publishers – calling for not letting the latter block scholars from disseminating their work during research, as well as community-based quality control.
However, the coalition aims to refine the proposal by further investigating the research community’s needs, identify potential issues and unintended consequences, as well as assessing “scholarly communication infrastructure” to see to what extent can it support this proposal. To this end, cOAlition S called for a public consultation, from November 2023 until, foreseeably, April 2024, inviting academic stakeholders and researchers from within and outside cOAlition S to contribute.
In 2019, during the release of the original Plan S, EuChemS released a position paper on the proposal, and later acknowledged that a number (albeit not all) of EuChemS comments were considered.
