An explosion of openness is about to hit scientific publishing

By A.B.

MANY scientists have championed the idea that publicly-funded research should be openly available to all, not locked away in pricey journals. This “open access” ethos has made significant gains over the years. Yet most journal articles are still accessible only to those able to pay the hefty subscription—to the detriment of the diffusion of knowledge in society.

That may now change. On September 4th science agencies from 11 European countries—including Britain, France and the Netherlands—signed up to “Plan S”. This radical initiative requires the scientists they fund to publish their work in open-access journals or freely-accessible websites by 2020. Strikingly, the plan bars scientists from publishing in what is today around 85% of periodicals, including some of the most venerable, such as Nature and Science.

Plan S was forged under the aegis of Science Europe, an umbrella group of European research funders. Those agencies will need to change the terms of grants so that from 2020, researchers who receive funds will have to adhere to the open-access conditions.

The announcement and speed with which the policy takes effect has delighted open-access advocates—and blindsided academic publishers. The policy “potentially undermines the whole research publishing system,” said Springer Nature, which publishes more than 3,000 journals, including Nature. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which publishes Science, issued a statement saying that “implementing such a plan, in our view, would disrupt scholarly communications, be a disservice to researchers and impinge academic freedom.”

Plan S not only prohibits publication in subscription-based journals but also “hybrid” ones after a short transition period. The hybrid journals make research papers free to read if the authors pay an up-front fee (with a subscription required by readers to access other papers).

If the content of the journals is free, how do open access publications pay their costs? After all, the bills add up, including administrative work, publishing (in print or digitally), marketing, distribution (for print) and in particular, organising the peer-review process that is essential for quality. Under the open-access model, the fees are reversed: scientists pay to have their research published. The costs range from nothing to several thousand pounds per paper. On the other hand, a large university can expect to pay over a million pounds in subscription charges each year for a collection of journals.

A particularly contentious plank of Plan S is that the publication fees for open-access journals are to be capped across Europe. An exact figure has yet to be set. Nevertheless, the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers, which represents 145 publishers, warned that any price cap risks “undermining quality”. The AAAS said a wholesale switch from subscriptions to open access would be “unsustainable” for the group.

Whether the agencies that have signed up to Plan S will heed such warnings remains to be seen. Academic publishers have long defended their business model by citing the many ways in which they defend the integrity of the scientific record.

Yet there are signs that these arguments may now get short shrift. Marc Schiltz, the president of Science Europe, which coordinated Plan S, took a muscular stance. “Monetising the access to new and existing research results is profoundly at odds with the ethos of science” he wrote in a document outlining the rationale of the plan. The subscription-based model of publishing should be “terminated,” he added.

Horizon Europe, the European Union’s seven-year, multi-billion-euro research programme kicking off in 2021, is likely to have similar strictures on publication. Robert-Jan Smits, the European Commission’s open-access envoy who helped to lead the efforts on Plan S, is travelling to America in October, where he will lobby agencies to sign up to the plan.

If he is successful, the era of the subscription scientific journal, which began with the publication in 1665 of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions, may come to an abrupt end. As for the “S” in the plan’s name, Mr Smit says it stands for “science, speed, solution, shock”.