Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A funder joins cOAlition S and aligns its OA mandate with Plan S principles within 18 months.
- Is an instance
An author uses the Journal Checker Tool to confirm a venue is compliant before submission.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Claiming Plan S compliance without aligning institutional or funder policy to the ten principles.
- Not an instance
Joining cOAlition S in name only without implementing the rights-retention requirement.
Editorial commentary
cOAlition S was announced on 4 September 2018 by 11 European national funders and the European Commission. It has grown to include funders from outside Europe (notably the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) and major charitable funders (Wellcome Trust, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as observer). Members commit to aligning their open-access policies with the Plan S principles. The coalition is governed by a Coordinator (Johan Rooryck since 2021) and produces guidance on price transparency, rights retention, transformative arrangements and the Journal Checker Tool that authors use to test compliance.
Current direction: Towards Responsible Publishing
Since 2023, cOAlition S’s primary forward-looking initiative has been “Towards Responsible Publishing” (TRP), reframing the coalition’s goal away from an APC/transformative-agreement-centred gold-OA model toward funder support for scholar-led, non-APC “diamond” publishing free to authors and readers. cOAlition S consulted publicly on TRP from November 2023 to April 2024, published the findings, and is incorporating that feedback into revised proposals — an active, evolving direction, not a finished mandate.
End of financial support for transformative arrangements
Plan S originally treated transformative agreements and Transformative Journals as one of three compliance routes, alongside publishing in a fully OA venue or repository deposit, on the understanding they were a time-limited bridge to full and immediate OA. cOAlition S set 31 December 2024 as the end of that transition window: member funders no longer financially support publishing under transformative arrangements after that date, reasoning that continued funding risked making hybrid OA permanent. Individual funders may still fund transformative agreements beyond 2024 as part of their own national strategy; such exceptions are published on coalition-s.org rather than assumed.
Governance and compliance tools
Compliance is anchored in guidance the coalition maintains directly: a price-transparency framework for APC components, a Rights Retention Strategy letting funded authors keep the rights to self-archive under CC BY regardless of a publisher’s default policy, and the Journal Checker Tool, which lets an author confirm whether a journal/funder/institution combination is Plan S-compliant.
References
- coalition-s.org, “Towards Responsible Publishing” and consultation findings.
- coalition-s.org, “cOAlition S confirms the end of its financial support for Open Access publishing under transformative arrangements after 2024” (Jan 2023).
Also known as
Coalition S
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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