Academic publisher SAGE Publishing has released a Statement on Plan S. The signatories of Plan S seem frustrated by the pace of transition to open access (OA). However, SAGE believes that the hybrid option is a crucial element in the transformation, as long as it is underpinned by meaningful local and global offsetting polices and liberal Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) archiving policies. While the global publisher does not view hybrid OA as an end in itself, it has an important role to play in the transformation of less well-funded disciplines.
Over the last decade, SAGE has supported the growth of OA publishing, and has been active in the community being one of the only two publishers to engage in the EC-funded Study of Open Access Publishing in 2007, were a founding board member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association in 2008, and launched SAGE Open, the first broad-spectrum OA journal in the social and behavioural sciences in 2010. SAGE has always positioned itself to provide OA solutions to the market as and when our various stakeholders require them - editors, authors, societies, library customers and funders.
Indeed, as a response to a growing demand, SAGE has created high-quality Gold OA publishing outlets and provided instruments to deliver OA in their subscription journals today, through zero embargo archiving, and tomorrow, through meaningful transition mechanisms.
While SAGE is not disputing the core principle of Plan S, that in the long term hybrid should not be compliant, but would encourage the signatories to facilitate a long transition period, as long as a meaningful and transparent transition plan is in place.
The full statement is here https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/sage_publishing_-_plan_s_implementation_guidance_feedback_0.pdf
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