An increasing number of research funders now attach a condition to their grants that catches many authors by surprise: the resulting publications must be made openly available, immediately, with no embargo. The most influential of these mandates is Plan S, and its mechanisms — particularly its rights retention strategy — change what an author can and cannot sign away to a publisher. This is a matter of knowledge equity as much as compliance, because immediate open access determines who can read publicly funded research; it belongs to the knowledge-equity domain. The companion explainer on what Plan S is sets out the background; this article is the practical version, and the guidance on funder requirements is the natural next stop.
What Plan S requires
Plan S was launched in 2018 by cOAlition S, a consortium of research funders, and its core principle is short: with effect from its start date, all scholarly publications resulting from research funded by participating funders must be made immediately open access — with no embargo period — under an open licence. The emphasis on immediate is the heart of it. Many traditional arrangements allowed open access only after a delay of six, twelve, or more months; Plan S removes that delay for funded work. The default open licence the coalition asks for is Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY), which permits reuse with attribution, though some other CC licences may be permitted in defined circumstances.
It is worth being precise about scope. Plan S binds authors funded by participating funders; it is not a universal law of publishing. But because the participating funders include major national and charitable research funders, a large and growing share of researchers are affected, and the practical reach is wide.
The three compliant routes
cOAlition S recognises more than one way to satisfy the mandate, and an author generally has a choice of route:
- Publish in an open-access venue. Publish in a fully open-access journal or platform that makes the article immediately available under a compliant licence. Where such a venue charges an article processing charge, some funders provide funds to cover it; many compliant venues, including diamond open-access journals, charge nothing at all.
- Publish in a subscription journal and self-archive (the green route). Publish in a subscription or hybrid journal but deposit the author’s accepted manuscript in a repository, made openly available immediately on publication under an open licence, with no embargo. This is where rights retention becomes essential, because subscription publishers have traditionally required exactly the embargo that Plan S forbids.
- Publish under a transformative arrangement. Publish in a journal covered by a transformative agreement that is recognised as a route toward full open access, within the timeline cOAlition S has set for such arrangements.
The rights retention strategy
The route that most changes an author’s habits is the second, and the mechanism that makes it work is the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS). The problem it solves is a contractual one. Historically, on acceptance an author signs a publishing agreement that transfers copyright, or grants an exclusive licence, to the publisher — after which the author no longer has the right to make the accepted manuscript openly available without embargo. The RRS reverses the order of operations.
Under the strategy, the author attaches a notice to the manuscript at submission declaring that, as a condition of their funding, a CC BY licence is applied to the author accepted manuscript (and any earlier versions), and that this prior licence takes precedence over any later agreement with the publisher. Because the licence is asserted before the publishing contract is signed, the author retains the right to deposit the accepted manuscript openly and immediately, regardless of what the publisher’s standard agreement says about embargoes. In effect, the funder’s open-access condition is converted into a right the author keeps rather than a right they sign away. Many funders provide standard wording for the submission notice and require it as a grant condition.
What an author actually has to do
- Check whether your funder is part of cOAlition S — or imposes an equivalent immediate-open-access mandate — before you choose where to submit. The requirement attaches to the funding, so identify it early.
- Choose a compliant route. An immediate open-access venue, the green self-archiving route with rights retention, or a recognised transformative arrangement — whichever fits your paper and your funder’s terms.
- If using the green route, apply the rights retention notice at submission. This is the step that preserves your right to self-archive without embargo; applying it after signing the publishing agreement is too late. Use your funder’s prescribed wording.
- Deposit the accepted manuscript in an appropriate repository, openly available on publication under the required licence, with the correct version and metadata.
- Record the funding and licence in the metadata — including the funder, the grant, and the licence — so that the output’s open-access status and its link back to the award are machine-readable.
Why this is a knowledge-equity question
Open-access mandates are sometimes treated as mere administrative compliance, but their purpose is substantive: research paid for by the public, or by charitable funders acting in the public interest, should be readable by the public — by clinicians, by policymakers, by researchers at institutions that cannot afford large subscriptions, and by readers in countries where paywalls are an insurmountable barrier. Immediate open access, under a licence that permits reuse, is what makes funded knowledge genuinely available rather than nominally published. That is why the topic sits in the knowledge-equity domain rather than being filed away as paperwork: the mandate is an equity instrument with a contractual mechanism.
Where shared vocabulary fits
“Plan S”, “rights retention”, “accepted manuscript”, “embargo”, “CC BY”, and “transformative agreement” are used inconsistently and are easily confused, and a misunderstanding about which version may be deposited, or when, can put an author out of compliance without their realising it. A shared, federated vocabulary that defines these terms precisely — and points back to cOAlition S and the licence stewards — is what lets open-access guidance from one funder be understood alongside another’s. Supplying that definitional layer is the role the CASRAI dictionary is designed to play; the relevant terms sit in the knowledge-equity domain.
