A coalition of European national research institutes' bold plan to divert the researchers it funds away from publishing results in journals that collect subscription fees would face a tougher path in the US. This was the consensus of a law and policy panel assembled February 7 by the Association of American Publishers at its annual professional and scholarly publishers conference, reports market research firm Simba Information.
The panel cited differences between the states and Europe in history, law, process and a current US policy that clearly acknowledges the role of publishers and the need for commercial innovation.
In September 2018, 11 national funding agencies across Europe got creative with the shift key dubbing themselves cOAlition S. Much like the name's flip on cap convention, the group plans to flip conventions in the scholarly research publishing industry by mandating that all research it funds be published in journals where all articles are available for free. The group also proposes that its members place caps on the fee a journal can collect upfront in exchange for publishing an article openly on the web.
High impact journals across many fields operate under a hybrid model where any individual article can be published on an open access basis with payment of an article processing charge (APC), but other articles are locked behind paywalls and available only to institutions that pay hefty subscriptions.
The stance against hybrid journals has softened since the September announcement, but any exception or alternative the coalition has brought forth has an expiration date in a not-too-distant, subscription-free future. A price cap on APCs also remains a key element of the plan.
The coalition's plan was not developed with open public comment and recounted how hearings and open comment have been a staple of how US open access policy has evolved going back to the early 2000s.
Current US policy dates to a February 22, 2013 White House policy statement in support of open access to federally funded research output, including published scholarship and datasets. The memorandum, officially issued by the director of the Executive Office of Science and Technology, requires that every federal agency with R&D expenditures of over $100 million develop a plan to support increased public access to federally funded research.
The US policy statement included language recognising that publishers provide valuable services including the coordination of peer review that are essential for ensuring the high quality and integrity of scholarly publications.
Even if Plan S proponents show up and make a convincing argument, it is hard to see a path for any policy change given the current political upheaval in Washington and the looming Presidential campaign cycle.
It also appears as if some of Plan S support in Europe is coming from associated educational ministries and institutions, but not always the key funding body. Out of 43 possible signatories, only 11 signed on initially. Since the initial announcement, two additional national funders and three charitable foundations - the Wellcome Trust in the UK, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in the US, and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond in Sweden - have joined the coalition.
Even if the plan does not come to pass in the UK and the US, there is enough funding and individual researchers bound to it that publishers need to prepare for compliance strategies.
Brought to you by Scope e-Knowledge Center, a trusted global partner for digital content transformation solutions - Abstracting & Indexing (A&I), Knowledge Modeling (Taxonomies, Thesauri and Ontologies), and Metadata Enrichment & Entity Extraction.
