Update on Plan-S for DIAS Open Access Week briefin

Drury, Luke O'Connor

English

DIAS Access to Institutional Repository

 1Universal Declaration of Human Rights 2Current Status of Plan-SLuke DruryOpen Access Week 2019BackgroundPlan-S launched on 4 Sep 2018. Backers form the group cOAlition-S.S for Science, Shock or Smits?First set of draft implementation guidelines released on 27 Nov 2018 for consultation.Over 600 responses from 40 countries leading to significantly revised guidelines being published on 31 May 2019 - moving goalposts! 3Very clearly driven at start by Robert-Jan Smits (open access envoy of the European Commission) until March 2019.First implementation plans drawn up under aegis of  John-Arne Røttingen (RCN) and David Sweeney (UKRI).Professor Johan Rooryck from Leiden is new Open Access Champion of cOAlition-S (chief editor of Glossa).Supported by network of “ambassadors”.Governance is embedded in Science Europe and chaired by the President, currently Mark Schiltz. 4 5 6Presentation by Neil Jacobs,  interim programme manager for Plan-S, at the Porto Open Science Fair. 7 8 9Welcome and pragmatic changesOriginal time scale was always too rushed (shock?)There was a clear bias towards Gold OA funded by Article Processing Charges (APCs) in first version.Requirements for a compliant repository were ridiculous and amounted to a description of how PubMedC works - would have ruled out arXiv for example.First version was very Euro-centric and STEM oriented (and, speaking as a physicist, life-sciences biased). 10 11 12Communication is essentialPlan-S will fail if it does not get acceptance by the research-performing communities.Still frightening levels of ignorance among working scientists funded by cOAlition-S members!Science is global - this cannot be a Europe-only initiative (but can be Europe led).Latin America in particular has a very interesting alternative model. 13“Transformative” agreementsBasically flip journals from “pay to read” to “pay to read and write”.  Project DEAL in Germany paradigmatic example.Are they really transformative?Raise many complex issues - public procurement, price transparency, budget allocations etc.Personally quite sceptical.  Main problem is that they simply entrench the existing power structures of big research institutes and big publishers.Not much prospect of a “transformative” deal for Ireland (even if that was desirable) - we are too small. 14 15Currently under Project DEAL the effective APC for publication in a Wiley journal is about €2,750.What happens if you are a Privatgelehrter (they still exist)? 16Important developmentThe Confederation of Open Access Repositories will work with cOAlition-S to support repositories to be Plan-S compliant.Probably best route for Ireland (certainly the cheapest) - most organisations have institutional repositories.Only Irish member of COAR at moment is DRI (annual membership is only €750). 17 18Step back a bit…In one sense Plan-S has been a success already - debate about Open Access has been revitalised and almost nobody is opposed to the principle.Moral case is irrefutable and can even be argued as a human right (the universal declaration does explicitly mention the right to participate in scientific and cultural activities).The question is how to get from where we are to where we want to be - how much disruption is necessary, desirable, unavoidable?Also where do we actually want to be? 19 20https://publications.europa.eu/s/m7GnSome personal thoughtsNot widely recognised that in many ways the most transformative part of Plan-S is the radical change in copyright that it enforces.If authors or their institutions retain copyright under a creative commons licence much of the monopoly power of the commercial publishers is gone.It is a false dichotomy to present the “somebody has to pay” argument as “pay to read” or “pay to write” - perfectly possible to have a third party pay and in many ways preferable in avoiding perverse incentives.Are we about to see an evolutionary change in scholarly communication or a disruptive technology shift?  Interesting parallels to rise of Linux and open software in the IT sector. 21ConclusionWe live in interesting times - look at University of California and Elsevier for example!Science as a global public good is needed more than ever if we are to address the SDGs and tackle fake news and disinformation.The current European and North American publishing system is not fit for purpose - academia needs to take back control from commercial interests.My money is on preprint archives combined with new models of peer review as the future, but who knows? 22 23Lunch - but no cupcakes!

Plan-S update

http://dair.dias.ie/1062/1/DIAS%20Plan-S%20Update.pdf

Plan-S update

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DIAS Access to Institutional Repository