cOAlition S funding has shifted decisively since 31 December 2024, when the funder consortium ended financial support for transformative agreements and transformative journals. Its 2026–2030 strategy, overseen by newly appointed Director Curt Rice and new Host Secretariat OPERAS, now channels funder money toward diamond open access publishing, repository infrastructure, and community-led scholarly communication rather than publisher-negotiated read-and-publish deals.
cOAlition S is an international consortium of research funding and performing organisations — including UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the European Commission, and the Wellcome Trust — that jointly implements Plan S, the 2018 commitment requiring immediate open access to publicly funded research.
- What is cOAlition S and why does its funding matter?
- Why did cOAlition S stop funding transformative agreements?
- Where is cOAlition S redirecting its funding in 2026?
- What role do diamond open access and repositories play?
- Answer-first questions on cOAlition S funding
- What does this mean for institutions and publishers?
What Is cOAlition S and Why Does Its Funding Matter?
cOAlition S was formed in September 2018 by a group of national and international research funders to accelerate the transition to full and immediate open access. Its members set grant conditions that publicly funded research must appear in compliant open-access journals, platforms, or repositories without embargo.
Because member funders collectively control billions in annual research budgets, where cOAlition S chooses to direct compliance-related funding acts as a market signal for the entire scholarly publishing sector — publishers, repositories, and diamond OA platforms all reposition around it.
Why Did cOAlition S Stop Funding Transformative Agreements?
Transformative agreements — bundled contracts that shifted library subscription spending toward publisher open-access fees — were originally accepted by cOAlition S as a temporary bridge toward full open access. That bridge has now been formally withdrawn.
From 31 December 2024, cOAlition S no longer financially supports transformative agreements or transformative journals. Funders instead direct their efforts to innovative, community-led open-access publishing initiatives such as the diamond model of OA, according to cOAlition S’s own implementation guidance, as reflected in university open-access policy guides including the University of Derby Library’s Plan S guidance.
- Transformative agreements were judged to prolong hybrid open access rather than complete the transition to full OA.
- cOAlition S’s 10 Principles, in effect since 2021, require CC BY licensing and repository-based immediate access as compliance routes that do not depend on publisher subscription bundles.
- Funders retain rights-retention strategies and the Journal Checker Tool as the primary compliance mechanisms once transformative-agreement subsidy ends.
Where Is cOAlition S Redirecting Its Funding in 2026?
cOAlition S’s 2026–2030 strategy — adopted alongside the appointment of Curt Rice as Director and OPERAS as the coalition’s new Host Secretariat — reorients funder effort toward digital publishing infrastructure and community-owned models rather than publisher-negotiated deals.
Two developments anchor this redirection. First, the Bengaluru Roadmap and Action Plan on Diamond Open Access, the outcome document of the 3rd Global Summit on Diamond Open Access held in Bengaluru, India, sets out coordinated funder and infrastructure commitments to diamond OA at global scale. Second, cOAlition S’s own Plan S Annual Review 2025 documents the consortium’s compliance monitoring and priority-action progress as it winds down transformative-agreement support.
| Funding mechanism | cOAlition S status | Effective date |
|---|---|---|
| Transformative agreements / transformative journals | Financial support ended | 31 December 2024 |
| Diamond open access journals and platforms | Priority investment area | 2026–2030 strategy |
| Institutional and subject repositories | Core compliance route (immediate deposit, no embargo) | Ongoing since 2021 |
| Rights retention / CC BY licensing | Required compliance mechanism | Ongoing since 2021 |
What Role Do Diamond Open Access and Repositories Play?
Diamond open access is a publishing model in which neither authors nor readers pay fees, with costs instead covered by funders, institutions, or consortia — distinguishing it from the article-processing-charge model that underpins most transformative agreements.
Repositories remain the other pillar of cOAlition S’s redirected funding: Plan S has, since 2021, treated immediate deposit in open-access repositories as a fully compliant route in its own right, independent of any publisher agreement. As transformative-agreement subsidy disappears, funders are directing new investment toward the shared infrastructure — hosting, discovery, preservation — that diamond OA platforms and repositories both depend on.
Answer-First Questions on cOAlition S Funding
What is Plan S?
Plan S is an open-access publishing mandate launched in September 2018 by cOAlition S, requiring that publications from publicly funded research be published immediately in compliant open-access journals, platforms, or repositories. It has applied to funded research outputs since 1 January 2021.
Who are the cOAlition S funders?
cOAlition S funders are an international consortium of national and supranational research funding and performing organisations, including UKRI, the European Commission, and the Wellcome Trust. Membership is open to funders willing to adopt the coalition’s ten Plan S principles and reporting requirements.
What is diamond open access?
Diamond open access is a scholarly publishing model where neither authors nor readers pay to publish or read, with operating costs met instead by funders, universities, or library consortia. cOAlition S now names diamond OA a priority destination for redirected funding.
Why did cOAlition S stop funding transformative agreements?
cOAlition S judged that transformative agreements risked entrenching hybrid open access rather than completing the shift to full OA. Support ended on 31 December 2024, with funding redirected to community-led, non-APC publishing models instead.
What Does This Mean for Institutions and Publishers?
Research offices and libraries that built compliance workflows around transformative-agreement read-and-publish deals now need parallel routes: repository deposit tracking, rights-retention templates, and diamond OA discovery for their researchers’ target venues.
Publishers reliant on transformative-agreement revenue face a shrinking subsidy pool and should expect continued funder pressure toward CC BY licensing and embargo-free repository deposit as the default compliance path. Institutional research-administration teams should treat this as a funder-policy planning item, not a publishing-office footnote, when reviewing grant terms and reporting obligations. Understanding these shifts in context sits alongside broader research administration practice, and definitions of related terms are collected in the CASRAI research administration dictionary.
Looking ahead, the 2026–2030 strategy signals that cOAlition S funding decisions will increasingly be judged on infrastructure outcomes — repository capacity, diamond OA sustainability, and equitable access — rather than publisher-agreement coverage, a shift research offices should build into multi-year OA budget planning now rather than after the next Plan S annual review.
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