KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Plan S architects cOAlition S have released the results of a global consultation on their latest open access proposal, “Towards Responsible Publishing”.
- Broad support exists for preprint posting, permissive licensing, and open peer review, while challenges remain around incentives, infrastructure, and implementation.
Earlier this year, cOAlition S welcomed the findings of a consultation with global stakeholders on their “Towards Responsible Publishing” (TRP) proposal. A detailed report reveals broad support for aspects such as preprint posting, the use of permissive licences, and open peer review, yet challenges remain.
The proposal
Originally published last year, TRP builds on the principles of Plan S, which calls for the academic community to move towards “full and immediate” open access. cOAlition S proposes to reform academic publishing away from “highly inequitable” funding models, such as subscription charges and (over time) article processing charges (APCs), towards a scholar-led publishing ecosystem. These principles are aimed at allowing authors to decide when and what to publish.
The consultation
Over 11,600 respondents contributed to the consultation, including:
- 440 responses to an initial stakeholder feedback survey
- 72 focus group participants
- 11,145 responses to an online global researcher survey.
The report acknowledges that low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) were underrepresented in the initial stakeholder feedback survey data. To mitigate this, the report authors solicited 10 organisational feedback letters from LMICs.
Key findings
There was general support across regions and academic disciplines for:
- preprint posting, to increase research transparency
- permissive licensing, albeit with some concerns that open licence adoption is imposed by funders rather than the academic community
- open peer review (where reports are published alongside a published article), with a preference for reviewer anonymity.
Despite this support, the traditional journal ecosystem remains dominant, with researchers reliant on journal indexes and impact factors when deciding where to publish. The report suggests that researchers in LMICs may be more dependent on these metrics currently. Along with inequities in relation to APCs, this could lead to TRP being seen as an imposition by wealthier nations.
There was general support across regions and academic disciplines for preprint posting, permissive licensing, and open peer review.
The way forward
The report suggests that cOAlition S should pursue a phased approach to implementing TRP goals:
- Short term: encourage preprint posting and open licensing
- Medium term: promote open peer review
- Long term: reform incentives at a global scale to encourage open access publishing, and reallocate resources from legacy funding models towards scholar-led publishing infrastructure
cOAlition S aim to publish a full response to the findings by the end of 2024.
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