Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A funder requires every grant-funded manuscript to be posted on a preprint server at submission.
- Is an instance
An institution rewards researchers for preprint deposit independently of the journal eventually selected.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A funder accepts only published OA articles, providing no recognition for preprint deposit.
- Not an instance
An author posts a preprint after journal publication has already provided OA, defeating the rationale.
Editorial commentary
Plan U is a 2019 proposal, not an adopted funder policy, that argues the simplest and lowest-cost route to immediate open access is for funders to require grantees to post a preprint — in an approved server such as bioRxiv, medRxiv, or arXiv — at or before the point of journal submission. It was set out in Richard Sever, Michael Eisen, and John Inglis, "Plan U: Universal access to scientific and medical research via funder preprint mandates," PLOS Biology, 4 June 2019 (DOI 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000273). Sever and Inglis co-founded the bioRxiv and medRxiv preprint servers; Eisen is a longtime open-access advocate and a co-founder of PLOS itself.
How it differs from Plan S
Unlike Plan S, Plan U does not constrain where or how a paper is ultimately published — a Plan U-compliant author can still submit to any journal, including a closed-access one, under any business model. What it guarantees is that an openly licensed manuscript already exists, deposited in a preprint server, from the moment the work is first shared with the community — making immediate green open access to the un-typeset version universal by mandate, rather than by voluntary author choice, without needing to negotiate publisher-by-publisher OA licensing terms the way Plan S’s model largely does.
Status
Plan U remains a proposal rather than a coordinated funder mandate on the scale of Plan S; it has not been adopted as a named, cross-funder policy framework the way cOAlition S has been. Individual funders and institutions have moved toward mandatory preprint deposit as a condition of funding independently and to varying degrees, but CASRAI is not aware of a funder that has formally adopted "Plan U" by that name as its policy. A reader assessing a specific funder’s requirements should check that funder’s own current preprint policy directly rather than assuming Plan U-style adoption.
References
- Sever R, Eisen M, Inglis J. "Plan U: Universal access to scientific and medical research via funder preprint mandates." PLOS Biology 17(6): e3000273 (2019). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000273.
Also known as
Plan U
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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