Final Plan S guidance published by cOAlition S

On 31 May 2019 the updated implementation guidance of Plan S was published. Plan S requires that all publications resulting from research that is funded by research funders participating in cOAlition S will be published Open Access. In the Netherlands the Dutch Research Council (NWO), including ZonMW, has joined cOAlition S and will implement Plan S from 2021 onwards.

Transition to open access

The main goal of Plan S is to promote the transition to Open Access. For the first time a large group of funders has joined forces to include Open Access as a requirement in their policies. The requirements for new funding applications will take effect from 2021. Funders may determine themselves if the requirements also apply to earlier applications, of which the resulting articles will be published in 2021 and later.

Several routes

When Plan S comes into force, all publications based on research funded by cOAlition S signatories must be published with an open licence, with authors or institutions retaining their copyright. Researchers will be able to comply with the requirements of Plan S in several ways: by publishing in journals that are entirely Open Access, by publishing Open Access in toll access journals which are part of transformative deals or by making their article Open Access available immediately upon publication via an institutional or subject-specific repository. The latter route offers the option to keep publishing in access toll journals which are not part (yet) of the transformative deals, anyway until 2024. However, in that case any article processing charges (APCs) must be paid by the institution. In most cases these costs can be charged to the research funds.

More information

You will find the final guidance on the site of cOAlition S. Please contact your contact person at the university library or check the open access page on the library website if you would like further information.

You can find an overview of repositories in the Netherlands on the national scholarly portal NARCIS, where you can also find the open access output of Dutch research organisations.