Open science and research

Plan S

Plan S is an open access initiative launched by the EU Commission and Science Europe. At its core is the objective that, in calls starting from 1 January 2021, all scholarly articles resulting from public research funding must be published in open access journals or on open access platforms.
Plan S logo

This page discusses Plan S requirements in general. The content of the page is likely to change as the situation progresses.

Plan S  has two primary goals:

  1. to make paywalled publications that result from publicly funded research accessible to everyone and

  2. to implement open access without unreasonable costs. 

What does Plan S mean in practice?

Plan S means that researchers funded by the Coalition S partners need to follow Plan S principles. In practice there are three ways of publishing articles open access (Source: Guidance on the Implementation of Plan S ): 

  1. Open access journals or platforms 

  2. Transformative agreements and journals 

  3. Manuscript route (Rights Retention Strategy)

    • Immediate open access and Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY) for the author accepted manuscript (AAM) by:  
      • publishing article in a subscription journal behind the paywall, and 
      • sharing the AAM in a trusted repository (e.g. ACRIS in Aalto University) immediately after publication with CC BY license

Please note:

  • Only few publishers (e.g. ACM and AAAS) allow the combination of both CC BY license and zero-embargo for author accepted manuscripts (AAMs). 
  • Publishers usually offer the option of publishing the article gold open access or via transformative agreements to comply with Plan S principles. Authors are always encouraged to check publishers’ Plan S compliant options before submitting their papers. 

Funders' open science requirements

Research funders want to promote open science and research, which is why they set requirements for the openness of research publications and data they are funding. European Commission (EC) and Research Council of Finland (former Academy of Finland) are participating in the open access initiative Plan S, which affects the open access and open data requirements in calls starting in 2021.

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Contact information

For any questions, please don't hesitate to contact Open Science and ACRIS team at [email protected].

An image describing the benefits of open access (for example findability, impact, visibility, higher citation rates, compliance with grant rules, value for taxpayers)

Open Access Publishing

Open access to publications ensures that scientific publications are accessible to everyone free of charge.

Open science and research
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