Plan U was proposed by Brian Nosek, John Inglis and Richard Sever in 2019. It argues that the simplest, lowest-cost route to immediate OA is to require funded researchers to post preprints in approved servers (bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv, SSRN) at or before journal submission. Unlike Plan S, Plan U does not constrain venue choice for the final published version; it ensures that an openly licensed manuscript exists from the moment research is shared. Several funders (Howard Hughes, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, ASAPbio supporters) have moved in this direction.
References
- Nosek BA, Inglis CJ, Sever R 'Plan U: Universal access to scientific and medical research via funder preprint mandates' PLOS Biology 2019.