CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: european commission plan s open access

  • ACM Open Access vs Plan S: 2026 Compliance Check

    ACM open access is now the default, not an option: since 1 January 2026 the Association for Computing Machinery publishes all journals, conference proceedings and magazines under a fully open-access model, replacing its previous hybrid Read & Publish arrangement. Under the CC BY licence, zero-embargo release and author-retained copyright that now apply across the ACM Digital Library, the model satisfies cOAlition S’s Plan S licensing, immediacy and rights-retention requirements — closing a compliance gap that existed while ACM operated as a transformative agreement.

    ACM Open is the Read & Publish framework through which participating institutions pay a fixed annual fee, based on their average publishing output over the previous three years, in exchange for unlimited open-access publishing by their corresponding authors and full institutional read access to the ACM Digital Library.

    What is ACM open access?

    As of 1 January 2026, ACM transitioned every journal, magazine and conference proceeding in the ACM Digital Library to full open access, removing the mixed subscription/hybrid model that had applied since the ACM Open programme launched in 2020. The ACM Digital Library itself was split into two tiers on the same date: a free Basic edition giving open access to ACM’s full published corpus, and a paid Premium edition adding discovery tools, usage metrics, citation management and the ACM Guide to Computing Literature.

    Institutional participation still runs through ACM Open, ACM’s Read & Publish framework. Corresponding authors at a subscribing institution publish an unlimited number of open-access articles without paying an article processing charge (APC) directly; the institution instead pays one fixed annual fee tied to its historical publishing volume. Authors at non-participating institutions can still publish open access but may be liable for an APC.

    What does Plan S actually require?

    Plan S is the funder-driven open-access mandate coordinated by cOAlition S, a consortium of national and charitable research funders including UKRI, Wellcome and members of the European Research Council network. It sets three non-negotiable conditions for compliant publication, in force since the policy’s 2021 implementation date:

    • Licensing — the published article must carry a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence, or an equivalent that permits free reuse, as a default condition.
    • Immediacy — there can be no embargo period; the Version of Record, or an accepted manuscript carrying the same licence, must be open at the moment of publication.
    • Rights retention — authors, not publishers, must retain the rights needed to comply, formalised in cOAlition S’s Rights Retention Strategy (RRS), which lets funded authors apply a CC BY licence to their accepted manuscript regardless of the publisher’s own copyright terms.

    cOAlition S also phased out support for hybrid and transformative-journal routes: funding for APCs in hybrid subscription journals was withdrawn after 2024, meaning publishers relying on transformative agreements needed to complete a full flip to open access to remain straightforwardly fundable under Plan S.

    Does ACM Open satisfy cOAlition S requirements?

    Measured against each Plan S condition, ACM’s current model clears the bar directly rather than through a transitional workaround. The table below maps ACM’s terms to the three cOAlition S requirements.

    Plan S requirement ACM Open / ACM Digital Library position
    CC BY licence by default CC BY is the default licence under ACM Open; authors may select an alternative Creative Commons licence such as CC BY-NC-ND where a funder permits it.
    No embargo (immediacy) Zero embargo — the Version of Record is openly accessible in the ACM Digital Library at the point of publication for every ACM title.
    Author/institution rights retention ACM ceased requiring copyright transfer from authors; authors grant ACM a non-exclusive licence to publish rather than assigning copyright, satisfying the Rights Retention Strategy.
    Sustainable, transparent cost model ACM Open’s Read & Publish fee is fixed for the agreement term and based on three-year historical output, giving institutions a predictable APC-equivalent cost.

    The practical effect for a cOAlition S-funded computer scientist is that publishing in an ACM venue no longer requires checking whether a specific journal is “transformative” or tracking an embargo clock — the open-access, CC BY, zero-embargo position now applies uniformly across the ACM catalogue.

    What happened to ACM’s transformative agreements?

    Before the January 2026 flip, ACM Open operated as a transformative agreement: a Read & Publish deal under which subscription revenue was gradually redirected toward open-access publishing, with the expectation that the journal portfolio would eventually convert fully to open access. UK higher-education institutions negotiated ACM Open terms through Jisc, whose subscriptions catalogue still lists the prior “ACM OPEN Journals 2023-2025” agreement as the precursor arrangement that libraries used to budget for the transition.

    ACM’s own SIGGRAPH leadership signalled the scale of this shift well in advance: in a June 2024 community Q&A, ACM SIGGRAPH chair Jonathan Aldrich stated that ACM anticipated 60-65% or more of authors would already be covered by institutional open-access agreements by the time of the full transition, with the remainder needing an author-paid or waiver route. That anticipated coverage gap is precisely what the January 2026 full flip was designed to close, since every article — not just those from ACM Open institutions — is now open access regardless of the author’s institutional agreement status.

    What this means for institutions and researchers

    For research administrators tracking funder compliance, ACM’s flip removes a recurring due-diligence step: computer-science output published with ACM no longer needs an individual title-by-title check against a cOAlition S-approved transformative journal list, because the requirement is now met at the publisher level. Institutions still weighing whether to join ACM Open should note that the Read & Publish fee is separate from open-access compliance itself — declining to subscribe does not make an ACM article closed, but it may shift APC liability onto individual authors or their grants.

    For authors publishing under UKRI, Horizon Europe or other cOAlition S-aligned funder mandates, the practical takeaway is that ACM venues can now be selected on scholarly merit without a separate compliance audit — a meaningful simplification for research administrators supporting authors across computing, information systems and related interdisciplinary fields.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is ACM open access?

    ACM open access refers to ACM’s publishing model, under which, as of January 2026, all ACM journals, conference proceedings and magazines are freely accessible with no reader-side subscription barrier. Authors retain copyright and publish under a CC BY licence by default, typically funded through their institution’s ACM Open Read & Publish agreement rather than a per-article fee.

    Is ACM open access free for readers?

    Yes. The ACM Digital Library’s Basic edition gives free, open-access reading of ACM’s full published corpus. A separate paid Premium edition exists, but it adds discovery and analytics tools rather than gating access to the research articles themselves.

    Does ACM’s open-access model satisfy Plan S?

    Yes. ACM’s default CC BY licence, zero-embargo release of the Version of Record, and author rights retention policy together meet all three of cOAlition S’s core Plan S conditions, without relying on a transformative-agreement exception.

    What licence does ACM Open use?

    ACM Open’s default licence is CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution), which permits free reuse with attribution and satisfies cOAlition S’s licensing requirement. Authors may request an alternative Creative Commons licence, such as CC BY-NC-ND, where their funder’s terms allow it.

    Looking ahead

    ACM’s move puts one of computing’s two dominant scholarly publishers — alongside IEEE, which retains a hybrid subscription model for most titles — fully inside the Plan S compliance perimeter without caveats. For funders and institutions monitoring discipline-specific open-access uptake, ACM’s flip is a useful signal that field-specific societies can complete a full transition to open access while keeping a Read & Publish fee structure recognisable to library budgets. Research administrators supporting computer-science authors should update internal compliance checklists to reflect that ACM no longer requires case-by-case verification against transformative-journal criteria.

  • Plan S Wikipedia vs cOAlition S: What Changed

    Plan S is an initiative for open-access science publishing, launched in September 2018 by cOAlition S, a consortium of research funders. Wikipedia’s article on Plan S is broadly accurate on the initiative’s origins and ten principles, but its most-cited figures on transformative agreements, rights-retention uptake, and coalition membership are frozen between 2021 and 2023 — and the article makes no mention of cOAlition S’s own Strategy for 2026-2030, published in November 2025.

    Plan S is the requirement, backed by cOAlition S funders, that peer-reviewed research they fund be made immediately and freely available in a compliant open-access journal, platform, or repository, without embargo, under an open licence.

    What does Wikipedia say about Plan S?

    Wikipedia’s “Plan S” article opens by describing the initiative as a consortium of national research agencies and funders from twelve European countries, requiring that publicly funded research be published in open repositories or fully open-access journals by 2021. It correctly identifies cOAlition S as the coordinating body and lists the ten founding principles set out in the original implementation guidance.

    The article also notes real, later developments: the extension of the compliance deadline from 2020 to 2021, the Rights Retention Strategy, an October 2023 proposal to explore publishing models without author-facing fees (“diamond” open access), and a 2024 Gates Foundation policy shift described as not fully aligned with Plan S. This shows the page is edited, not abandoned — but the edits are sparse and several core figures have not been touched in years.

    Where the Wikipedia article holds up

    Several elements of Wikipedia’s account remain a fair summary of Plan S as it was designed. The ten principles — author copyright retention, standardised and capped publication fees, funder-level monitoring of compliance, and the explicit statement that hybrid open-access journals do not satisfy the key principle — match the original guidance released by the Science Europe-coordinated task force on 27 November 2018.

    The licensing detail is also accurate: compliant articles must carry a CC BY 4.0 licence, or alternatively CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC0, and journals must meet baseline peer-review standards consistent with guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and listing in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). None of this has changed, and Wikipedia states it correctly.

    Where the record is stale

    The gaps are concentrated in exactly the areas that move fastest: funding mechanics, uptake statistics, and coalition scope. The table below sets Wikipedia’s wording against cOAlition S’s own published record.

    Wikipedia’s claim Current cOAlition S position Source
    Transformative agreement contracts “may not last beyond 2023” cOAlition S confirmed in January 2023 that member funding for transformative arrangements would continue but cease entirely on 31 December 2024, with no new agreements accepted after 30 June 2023 cOAlition S, “cOAlition S confirms the end of its financial support for Open Access publishing under transformative arrangements after 2024”
    Rights Retention Strategy uptake given “as of October 2021 … over 500 works” No comparable running total has been added since; the Strategy remains active guidance with no current uptake figure cited on the page cOAlition S Rights Retention Strategy guidance (ongoing)
    Lede describes cOAlition S as funders “from twelve European countries” Membership and policy alignment now extends beyond that founding European core, as the article’s own later reference to the Gates Foundation’s 2024 policy shift illustrates cOAlition S member list; Wikipedia “Plan S” article, “Policy changes by member organizations” section
    No mention of a forward strategy beyond 2023-24 developments cOAlition S published its Strategy for 2026-2030 in November 2025, setting three strategic priorities across two implementation phases cOAlition S, “cOAlition S Strategy for 2026-2030”

    None of this makes the Wikipedia article wrong about what Plan S was. It makes the article an increasingly incomplete guide to what Plan S is now — a distinction that matters for anyone citing it in a policy brief, grant compliance note, or institutional guidance document.

    What cOAlition S’s 2026-2030 strategy adds

    cOAlition S’s Strategy for 2026-2030, published in November 2025, is the most authoritative recent statement of where the coalition is heading, and it is entirely absent from Wikipedia’s coverage. The strategy sets three strategic priorities: reinforcing the foundations for full, immediate, and equitable open access to peer-reviewed articles; supporting the digital infrastructure that underpins open access; and exploring financially sustainable and equitable publishing models while tracking their outcomes.

    Implementation runs in two phases. Phase one (2026-2027) concentrates on foundational work, digital infrastructure, and member services. Phase two (2028-2030) is intended to deepen work on sustainability and equity, subject to review of phase-one outcomes by the Leaders Group. This phased structure directly supersedes the transitional, 2018-2023 “transformative agreement” framing that still anchors Wikipedia’s implementation section.

    • Three strategic priorities replace the earlier single-minded focus on the 2021 compliance deadline.
    • A defined two-phase timetable (2026-2027, then 2028-2030) gives institutions a planning horizon Wikipedia’s article does not mention.
    • Financial support for transformative arrangements ended on 31 December 2024, closing a funding route Wikipedia still frames as open until “2023”.

    Common questions

    What is Plan S in open access?

    Plan S requires that peer-reviewed publications resulting from research funded by cOAlition S members be made immediately open access on publication, with no embargo, under an open licence such as CC BY 4.0. Authors must retain copyright. The requirement applied to grants awarded from 1 January 2021 onward.

    What are the five pillars of Wikipedia?

    Wikipedia operates on five pillars: it functions as an encyclopedia, is written from a neutral point of view, offers free content anyone can use or edit, expects civility among editors, and has no firm rules. Those norms explain why fast-moving funder guidance, like Plan S’s, can lag behind primary sources between volunteer edits.

    What this means for institutions and publishers

    Research administrators, library staff, and publishers who cite Wikipedia’s Plan S article as a compliance reference should treat it as a starting point, not a current-state document. Anyone advising on plan s open access obligations should verify funding-route and deadline details directly against cOAlition S’s guidance pages before applying them to a grant, agreement, or institutional policy — particularly anything touching transformative agreements, which stopped receiving cOAlition S funding at the end of 2024, not 2023.

    This pattern is not unique to Plan S. Fast-moving standards and funder mandates routinely outrun general-reference encyclopedia coverage, which depends on volunteer editors noticing and sourcing each change. The practical fix is straightforward: use Wikipedia to orient, then confirm operative dates, funding rules, and current strategic priorities against the originating body’s own published guidance.

    For related standards and terminology used across research administration, see CASRAI’s open research dictionary and the research administration pillar.

  • PMC Open Access Subset vs Plan S: Not the Same

    The PMC Open Access Subset and Plan S are not the same thing. The PMC Open Access Subset is a licensing classification inside PubMed Central (PMC) that flags which archived articles carry reuse-permitting licences for text mining and redistribution. Plan S is a funder mandate from cOAlition S that requires immediate open access publication of funded research. One is a repository filter; the other is a compliance requirement — and confusing them leads authors to think a PMC listing satisfies a funder’s open access policy when it may not.

    The PMC Open Access Subset is the portion of PubMed Central’s full-text archive made available under Creative Commons or similar licences that permit reuse beyond reading, including text mining and redistribution. This distinction — repository versus mandate — is the source of a persistent mix-up among authors preparing to comply with funder open access requirements.

    What Is the PMC Open Access Subset?

    The PMC Open Access Subset is maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It contains articles and preprints made available under machine-readable licences — Creative Commons or similar — that permit reuse beyond simple reading access.

    NLM groups the subset into three licence tiers:

    • Commercial Use Allowed — CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-ND licences
    • Non-Commercial Use Only — CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-NC-ND licences
    • Other — no machine-readable licence, no licence, or a custom licence, with restricted redistribution on the PMC Cloud Service

    As of the NIH’s most recent update, the subset spans well over 3.4 million journal articles and preprints, retrievable via the PMC FTP Service, Cloud Service, OAI-PMH Service, or BioC API. Not every article in PMC belongs to the Open Access Subset — many PMC-hosted articles remain under standard copyright and are excluded from bulk text-mining retrieval.

    This is a critical, frequently missed distinction: PMC itself (the archive) and the NIH Public Access Policy (which mandates deposit of NIH-funded manuscripts into PMC) are separate from the Open Access Subset (the licensing classification). An article can be freely readable in PMC under the Public Access Policy while still sitting outside the Open Access Subset, because it lacks a reuse-permitting licence.

    What Is Plan S?

    Plan S is a funder-driven open access initiative launched in September 2018 by cOAlition S, a coalition of national and international research funders including UKRI, Wellcome, and members of the European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme. It requires that peer-reviewed publications arising from funded research be made immediately and fully open access, with no embargo period.

    Under Plan S principles, compliant publication routes include:

    • Publishing in a fully open access journal or platform
    • Publishing in a subscription journal while depositing the accepted manuscript in an open access repository immediately on publication (the “Rights Retention Strategy”)
    • Publishing on an open access platform or in a repository that meets cOAlition S technical requirements

    cOAlition S states that authors or their institutions should retain copyright, and that a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence is the preferred licence type. Compliance is assessed against funder-specific policy terms, not against any single repository’s inclusion criteria.

    PMC Open Access Subset vs Plan S: Key Differences

    The clearest way to separate these two is by function: a repository classification versus a funder policy. The table below sets this alongside a third commonly conflated mechanism — the United States’ federal public access requirement — since UK and international researchers frequently encounter all three in the same compliance conversation.

    Feature PMC Open Access Subset Plan S US federal public access mandate
    Nature Repository licensing classification Funder policy mandate Federal agency policy (via OSTP)
    Governing body National Library of Medicine (NIH) cOAlition S funders Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)
    What it governs Reuse rights of archived articles Where/how funded research is published Timing of public access to federally funded research
    Embargo position Not applicable — licence-based, not time-based Zero embargo required from 2021 Zero embargo required by 31 December 2025 (OSTP’s 2022 Nelson Memo)
    Geographic scope Global archive, US-hosted Primarily European and international funders United States federal agencies
    Enforcement mechanism None — it is a content filter, not a compliance check Funder grant conditions Agency public access plans

    The overlap that causes confusion: research funded under Plan S can end up in the PMC Open Access Subset if it carries a qualifying licence, but Plan S compliance is judged by the funder against its own policy terms, not by whether NLM has classified the article into the subset.

    Does Plan S Compliance Require the PMC Open Access Subset?

    No. Plan S does not name the PMC Open Access Subset as a compliance route. cOAlition S funders accept publication in a compliant journal, an institutional or subject repository meeting technical requirements, or immediate deposit of the accepted manuscript under an approved licence. PMC is one possible repository destination for biomedical research, but Plan S compliance is assessed by licence terms and embargo length, not by NLM’s internal subset classification.

    Authors publishing biomedical research funded by a cOAlition S member should check the funder’s own open access policy and, separately, confirm whether their institution or publisher will additionally deposit the manuscript into PMC. These are two distinct actions that happen to intersect for US-relevant biomedical literature, not one unified process.

    Common Questions

    What is PMC open access?

    PMC open access refers to the PMC Open Access Subset, the portion of PubMed Central archived under licences — typically Creative Commons — that permit reuse, including text mining and redistribution. It is not a funder policy; it is a licensing classification applied to specific articles already deposited in PMC.

    Are PMC and PubMed the same?

    No. PubMed is a database of citations and abstracts, while PMC (PubMed Central) is a full-text archive of biomedical journal articles. Both are maintained by the National Library of Medicine, but PubMed indexes metadata, whereas PMC stores the complete article text, of which only a subset carries reuse licences.

    Is PMC free to use?

    Yes, reading PMC articles is free. However, reuse rights differ by article: NLM states that PMC provides long-term preservation and free reading access, but text mining or redistribution beyond fair use requires the article to carry a qualifying licence within the Open Access Subset — free-to-read is not the same as free-to-reuse.

    Implications for Authors and Institutions

    For authors, the practical takeaway is definitive: satisfying a funder’s Plan S obligation and appearing in the PMC Open Access Subset are two separate compliance checks. Meeting one does not automatically satisfy the other. Institutional research administration teams tracking funder compliance should verify licence type, embargo length, and deposit location independently for each requirement, rather than treating “it’s in PMC” as proof of open access mandate compliance.

    For publishers and repository managers, the distinction matters for metadata accuracy: an article’s PMC Open Access Subset licence tag should be checked and communicated separately from any funder compliance statement attached to the same article.

    Looking ahead, the gap between these mechanisms is narrowing. The US federal government’s move toward zero-embargo public access by the end of 2025, alongside Plan S’s established zero-embargo requirement since 2021, signals convergence on immediate access as the global norm — even though the underlying legal and technical mechanisms (funder mandate versus repository licence versus agency policy) remain distinct and will continue to require separate verification.

  • cOAlition S’s 2020 Open Access Pledge: What It Actually Delivered

    cOAlition S did not make full open access a reality by its original 2020 deadline: the target date slipped to 1 January 2021, and universal compliance was never achieved. But six years on, funder-mandated open access rose to roughly 80% among cOAlition S members against a ~60% global average, and the coalition’s November 2025 strategy for 2026-2030 now formally retires the transitional tools — transformative agreements — that got it there.

    Coalition S making open access a reality by 2020 was the literal title of the press release that launched cOAlition S on 4 September 2018. Plan S is the funder-led policy framework, built around ten principles, that requires publications from participating funders to appear immediately in compliant open access venues. This article measures that founding pledge against the evidence cOAlition S itself has since published, including its 2023 Annual Review and its 2026-2030 Strategy.

    What did cOAlition S actually pledge in 2018?

    cOAlition S launched on 4 September 2018 as a consortium of national research funders, backed by the European Commission and the European Research Council, built around Plan S. The founding press release stated the commitment without qualification: “By 2020 scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants provided by participating national and European research councils and funding bodies, must be published in compliant Open Access Journals or on compliant Open Access Platforms.”

    That single sentence became the coalition’s defining test. It set an absolute deadline, a binary compliance standard, and no allowance for a phased transition. Eleven national funders signed at launch; the coalition’s own 2026-2030 strategy document now describes the founding cohort as twelve organisations, reflecting late additions before the ink dried.

    What has Plan S delivered since 2018?

    Plan S delivered a measurable, sustained rise in open access output among its funders, and it forced publishers to the negotiating table. It did not deliver the literal 2020 deadline, which the coalition itself extended by a year.

    According to cOAlition S’s Annual Review 2023, funders in the coalition have consistently maintained open access rates of approximately 80% for their supported research, compared with a global average of around 60%. An independent assessment, Galvanising the open access community: A study on the impact of Plan S (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13738479), credits cOAlition S with raising the profile of open access globally and pulling major publishers into transformative agreement negotiations they had previously resisted.

    Membership also grew far beyond the original European core. The coalition now counts 28 funders, spanning organisations in Europe, North America, Jordan, Zambia, South Africa and Australia, according to the cOAlition S Strategy 2026-2030 document.

    Where did the 2020 promise fall short?

    The 2020 deadline itself was the first casualty. Following sustained feedback from researchers and publishers, cOAlition S pushed implementation back to 1 January 2021, a full year after the date named in the founding pledge.

    Beyond timing, the mechanism used to hit the target created new problems. Plan S leaned heavily on Article Processing Charges and “read and publish” transformative agreements — deals in which institutions redirected subscription spending into publishing fees. This accelerated compliance but shifted cost from readers to authors, disadvantaging researchers at less-resourced institutions and smaller, society-run journals unable to negotiate comparable deals.

    • The original 1 January 2020 compliance date was never met as stated; it moved to 1 January 2021.
    • Compliance was achieved through paid publishing routes (APCs, transformative agreements) rather than the fee-free access the founding rhetoric implied.
    • cOAlition S formally ended financial support for transformative agreements and transformative journals from 31 December 2024, acknowledging the model’s limits.
    • Equity across regions and institution types remained unresolved, a gap the coalition’s own 2026-2030 strategy names directly.

    How does the 2026-2030 strategy change course?

    The cOAlition S Strategy 2026-2030, published 12 November 2025, is the coalition’s own evidence-based reckoning with the 2018 pledge. It does not claim victory; it explicitly reframes the goal around sustainability and equity rather than a single compliance date.

    The strategy sets three priorities, phased across an initial 2026-2027 period and a subsequent 2028-2030 period subject to review by the Leaders Group.

    Dimension 2018 founding pledge 2026-2030 strategy position
    Deadline 1 January 2020, unconditional No fixed date; phased two-stage implementation to 2030
    Membership 11-12 national funders plus EC/ERC support 28 funders across six regions
    Primary route Compliant OA journals/platforms, APC-driven Diamond OA, Publish-Review-Curate models, preprints
    Transformative agreements Actively funded as a transition tool Funding ended 31 December 2024
    Measured outcome Aspirational 100% compliance ~80% OA rate reported (2023 Annual Review) vs ~60% global average

    Science magazine characterised the new strategy as retreating from “strict requirements,” favouring alternatives to paywalled journals without an expressed goal of supplanting them entirely — a materially softer posture than the 2018 launch language.

    Common questions about Plan S’s track record

    Did Plan S achieve open access by 2020?

    No. cOAlition S extended its own deadline to 1 January 2021 after publisher and researcher feedback, and universal compliance was never reached. What Plan S did achieve was a sustained ~80% open access rate among its funders by 2023 — well above the global average, but short of the “full and immediate” pledge for all funded output.

    What happened to transformative agreements?

    cOAlition S stopped financially supporting transformative agreements and transformative journals from 31 December 2024. The 2026-2030 strategy redirects funder support toward diamond open access, Publish-Review-Curate models and preprints, treating transformative agreements as a transitional tool that had run its course rather than a permanent solution.

    How many funders belong to cOAlition S today?

    cOAlition S has grown from an initial 11-12 national funders in 2018 to 28 member organisations by 2025, now spanning funders in Europe, North America, Jordan, Zambia, South Africa and Australia, according to the coalition’s own 2026-2030 strategy document.

    What this means for funders, institutions and publishers

    Research funders modelling future open access mandates should treat the 2018-2020 episode as a case study in the gap between a compliance deadline and compliance reality. A hard date without an equity mechanism generates rapid but uneven adoption, concentrated among well-resourced institutions able to pay APCs.

    Institutions and research administration offices tracking funder mandates should note that transformative agreements are no longer a durable compliance route beyond 2024; budget planning should shift toward diamond and non-APC venues the 2026-2030 strategy now prioritises. Publishers, particularly smaller and society-run titles, gain a longer runway under the phased 2026-2027 and 2028-2030 structure than the original single-date ultimatum allowed.

    The verdict: catalyst, not completed reality

    cOAlition S’s 2018 pledge to make open access “a reality by 2020” was not literally kept. The deadline moved, the mechanism proved inequitable, and the coalition has now formally abandoned the tool that carried it furthest. What the pledge did deliver was momentum: an ~80% funder-level open access rate, a fourfold growth in membership, and a global policy conversation that persists into the 2026-2030 strategy. Judged as a compliance deadline, Plan S fell short. Judged as a catalyst for structural change in scholarly publishing, its six-year record is substantial, and its authors now say so themselves.

  • Diamond Open Access vs Gold Open Access in 2026

    Diamond open access vs gold open access comes down to who pays: diamond OA charges neither author nor reader, funded instead by institutions, funders, or learned societies, while gold OA typically requires an author-facing article processing charge (APC) to make the published version free to read. Since cOAlition S’s 2026-2030 strategy stopped funding transformative agreements and redirected support toward diamond models, authors now face a genuinely different set of funder incentives when choosing a route.

    Diamond open access is a scholarly publishing model in which a journal or platform makes the version of record freely available to readers immediately on publication, without charging authors any fee, because publication costs are covered by non-commercial funders, universities, or community consortia rather than by the researcher.

    What is the difference between diamond and gold open access?

    Gold open access “embraces both journals supported by APCs or by other means of funding,” according to the definition used across the scholarly-communications literature — it is defined by immediate, free-to-read publication, not by any single funding mechanism. In practice, most gold OA venues from commercial and society publishers do charge an APC, often running into thousands of pounds per article.

    Diamond open access is narrower and stricter: no author fee, no reader fee, ever. The 2021 Open Access Diamond Journals Study, commissioned by cOAlition S and Science Europe, found that diamond journals make up roughly 73% of all open access journals registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), yet account for only 8–9% of total OA articles published each year — most are small, discipline- or region-specific titles, with 54.4% publishing 25 or fewer articles annually.

    Feature Diamond open access Gold open access
    Author fee (APC) None Usually charged (commercial/hybrid publishers)
    Reader fee None None (once published)
    Typical funder Institutions, learned societies, government, consortia Author/institution APC, Read & Publish deals
    Ownership model Community-led, non-profit Often publisher-owned, for-profit
    Median cost per article (2021 study) ~$200 (in-kind + volunteer labour) Frequently £1,500–£3,000+ APC
    Regional strength Latin America (~95% of OA journals are diamond) Europe, North America (APC-funded)

    What did cOAlition S’s 2026-2030 strategy actually change?

    cOAlition S launched Plan S in 2018 with an ambitious 2021 compliance deadline for full, immediate open access. From 31 December 2024, cOAlition S stopped financially supporting transformative agreements and transformative journals — the “Read & Publish” deals that funders had previously used to help subscription publishers transition to gold OA. That withdrawal is the single biggest practical change for authors: funder money that once flowed toward APC-based Read & Publish deals is being redirected instead.

    The coalition’s 2026-2030 strategy, run in two phases (2026-2027, then 2028-2030), commits to “enhancing the focus on sustainable and equitable models, such as PRC, diamond open access and preprints” and explicitly names the dominance of APCs, book processing charges, and Read & Publish agreements as having “contributed to a growth in open access publishing but also led to increasing costs” — costs the coalition says fall hardest on researchers at less-resourced institutions.

    Coalition-wide infrastructure has followed the policy shift. The European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH) launched on 15 January 2025 in Madrid, offering diamond publishers a shared registry, guidelines, training platform, and publishing tools. This builds on the Horizon Europe-funded DIAMAS project (2022–2025) and the March 2022 Action Plan for Diamond Open Access, co-authored by cOAlition S, Science Europe, OPERAS, and the French National Research Agency (ANR).

    None of this abolishes gold OA. Independent tracking cited alongside the new strategy shows gold open access articles grew from 14% of publications in 2014 to 40% in 2024, while subscription-only access fell from 70% to 54% over the same decade — gold remains the largest single OA route by volume. What has changed is funder appetite for underwriting its APC costs through transformative deals.

    Which route should authors choose now?

    For most authors, the decision now turns on three questions: does a credible diamond venue exist in your field, does your funder mandate immediate OA with a specific route, and can you or your institution absorb an APC if gold is the only realistic option.

    • Funder mandate first. Check whether your funder is a cOAlition S signatory (e.g. UKRI, several Horizon Europe funders) and whether its post-2024 policy still counts a Read & Publish deal as compliant, or whether it now favours diamond/PRC routes and rights retention instead.
    • Field coverage. Diamond OA is strongest in humanities, social sciences, and Latin American-led research; it is thinner in high-volume STEM fields still dominated by commercial gold and hybrid titles.
    • Cost exposure. If no diamond venue fits, gold OA via an institutional Read & Publish deal (where one still exists) or the Rights Retention Strategy — depositing the author accepted manuscript under a CC BY licence regardless of the publisher’s OA status — remains a compliant fallback.
    • Journal vetting. Confirm DOAJ listing and peer-review standards before submitting to any unfamiliar diamond title; volume and prestige metrics vary far more widely across diamond journals than across established gold titles.

    Institutions and research administrators should treat this as a policy-tracking task, not a one-off decision: funder OA policies, APC caps, and diamond eligibility lists are being updated through the 2026-2027 phase of the cOAlition S strategy, and guidance that was compliant in 2024 may no longer be by the time a manuscript is accepted.

    What are the practical requirements and deadlines?

    The clearest hard deadline already passed: 31 December 2024 was the cut-off after which cOAlition S funders stopped paying into transformative agreements and transformative journal arrangements. Any Read & Publish deal negotiated after that date does not carry cOAlition S financial backing, though individual funders retain discretion over their own compliance rules.

    There is no equivalent single deadline forcing authors into diamond OA — the 2026-2030 strategy is a funding-and-infrastructure redirection, not a new mandate with a compliance date. Authors should check their funder’s current policy page rather than assume coalition-wide rules apply uniformly, since cOAlition S members retain latitude in implementation.

    Common author questions, answered

    What is the difference between gold and diamond open access?

    Gold open access makes the published article free to read immediately, usually funded by an author-facing APC. Diamond open access also gives immediate free reading but charges neither author nor reader, with costs instead covered by institutions, societies, or public funders.

    What does diamond open access mean?

    Diamond open access means a journal or platform publishes research with no fee to the author and no fee to the reader. It is typically community-led and non-profit, run by academic societies, universities, or consortia rather than commercial publishers, and is sometimes called “platinum” open access.

    What is golden open access?

    “Golden” open access is simply another name for gold open access — the model where the final, published version of an article is made freely readable on the publisher’s own platform immediately, most commonly funded through an article processing charge paid by the author or their institution.

    What is the difference between open access and gold open access?

    “Open access” is the umbrella term covering any route to free-to-read research, including green (repository self-archiving), gold, diamond, and hybrid models. Gold open access is one specific route within that umbrella: publication directly on the journal’s own platform, typically APC-funded.

    What this means for research administrators and institutions

    Institutional OA teams should expect three practical consequences: fewer new Read & Publish deals carrying funder co-financing, more DOAJ-listed diamond venues to vet for approved-journal lists, and a continued need to track funder-by-funder policy pages rather than treat cOAlition S guidance as one uniform rulebook.

    The direction of travel is clear even without a single deadline: cOAlition S investment is moving toward diamond and away from APC-financed transformative deals, while gold OA keeps growing in absolute volume via direct APC payment and Rights Retention. Authors who map their funder’s current policy — not the 2018 Plan S baseline — against real venue options in their field make the more durable choice.

    Research administration teams coordinating institutional OA compliance can find related definitions and workflow context in CASRAI’s research administration resources and the CASRAI Dictionary.

  • cOAlition S Funding 2026: Diamond OA Shift

    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?

    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.

  • Plan S Principles in 2026: Mandatory vs Relaxed

    Plan S principles remain fully in force in 2026: none of the original ten clauses has been formally withdrawn. What has changed is enforcement — the temporary carve-out for hybrid “transformative agreements” expired after 2024, and cOAlition S’s November 2025 Strategy for 2026-2030 now commits to rewriting the principles document itself for the first time since 2019.

    Plan S is the funder-driven open access mandate launched by cOAlition S on 4 September 2018, requiring that scholarly publications arising from participating funders’ grants be published immediately, without embargo, in compliant open access journals, platforms or repositories. This article works through each of the ten original principles in turn and states, clause by clause, what is still mandatory, what has been reinterpreted, and what has actually lapsed.

    What Are the Ten Original Principles of Plan S?

    cOAlition S describes Plan S as “one target and 10 principles.” The target is the immediate, embargo-free open access requirement; the ten principles, published in the 2019 Plan S Principles and Implementation guidance, set out how that target is delivered and governed.

    • Authors or their institutions retain copyright, under an open licence — preferably CC BY — consistent with the Berlin Declaration.
    • Funders develop robust criteria and requirements for compliant open access journals, platforms and repositories.
    • Funders coordinate to establish and support compliant venues and infrastructure where none yet exist.
    • Open access publication fees are covered by funders or institutions, never by individual researchers.
    • Funders support a diversity of business models, with fees kept transparent, proportionate and capped where applied.
    • Funders encourage governments, universities, libraries, academies and learned societies to align their own policies.
    • Monographs and book chapters follow a longer, separately negotiated timeline.
    • Funders do not support the “hybrid” subscription-plus-OA model, except transitionally through time-limited transformative arrangements.
    • Funders monitor compliance and sanction non-compliant grantees.
    • Funding and assessment decisions value the intrinsic merit of research outputs, not the journal, its impact factor, or the publisher.

    Which Plan S Principles Are Still Mandatory in 2026?

    Seven of the ten principles are unchanged and enforced exactly as written in 2019. Copyright retention, the requirement that funders (not authors) pay compliant fees, compliance monitoring and sanctions, and merit-based assessment of outputs rather than journal metrics all remain live obligations for cOAlition S’s 28 member funders — up from the twelve founding organisations in 2018, and now spanning agencies in Europe, North America, Jordan, Zambia, South Africa and Australia, per cOAlition S’s own Strategy 2026-2030 document.

    The Journal Checker Tool still operationalises the “robust criteria for compliant venues” principle for every submission, and the longer, separate timeline conceded for monographs and book chapters in 2019 remains unresolved and unchanged in 2026 — cOAlition S has not published a revised monographs timetable.

    Which Principles Have Been Relaxed, Tightened or Left Unresolved?

    No principle has been deleted outright. Two have shifted, and in the opposite direction to what is commonly assumed: the anti-hybrid clause has tightened, not loosened, and the fee-diversity clause has been reinterpreted toward non-APC models rather than relaxed.

    Principle 2019 wording (summary) 2026 status
    Copyright & CC BY Authors retain copyright; CC BY preferred Mandatory, unchanged
    Robust venue criteria Funders set criteria for compliant OA venues Mandatory; enforced via Journal Checker Tool
    Infrastructure support Funders coordinate to build missing OA venues Mandatory, strengthened (Strategic Priority 2)
    Funder-paid fees Fees paid by funders/institutions, not researchers Mandatory, unchanged
    Fee diversity & transparency Diverse business models; transparent, capped fees Reinterpreted toward diamond OA and PRC models
    Policy alignment Funders encourage institutional alignment Mandatory, unchanged
    Monographs timeline Longer, separate process for books Unresolved; no 2026 update published
    No hybrid model Hybrid banned, except transitional arrangements Tightened: transitional carve-out expired after 2024
    Monitoring & sanctions Funders monitor and sanction non-compliance Mandatory, unchanged
    Merit-based assessment Assess outputs, not journal metrics Mandatory, strengthened via assessment-reform links

    The “no hybrid model” principle is the clearest case of change, and it runs counter to a common misreading. cOAlition S confirmed on 26 January 2023 that financial support for open access publishing under transformative arrangements — the negotiated pathway that let hybrid journals count as compliant during a transition period — would end after 2024, with Transformative Journal support ceasing on the same date and no new applications accepted. That decision followed 2023 compliance reviews showing roughly two-thirds of registered Transformative Journals were not meeting their agreed open access growth trajectories. This closure predates and is separate from the newer 2026-2030 strategy; it is not a relaxation but the expiry of a deliberately time-limited exception, which makes the underlying anti-hybrid principle stricter in practice from 2025 onward.

    The fee-diversity principle has not been dropped either. Instead, the cOAlition S Strategy for 2026-2030, published 12 November 2025, commits under Strategic Priority 1 to “review and update the Plan S principles and implementation guides, including enhancing the focus on sustainable and equitable models, such as PRC, diamond open access and preprints.” Diamond open access refers to publishing venues that charge neither authors nor readers; PRC (“Publish, Review, Curate”) describes models — pioneered by platforms such as eLife — where papers are posted openly before formal peer review, then reviewed and curated in the open. Neither model existed at meaningful scale when the original fee-transparency principle was drafted in 2019.

    Answer-First Q&A on Plan S in 2026

    What are the 10 principles of Plan S?

    The ten principles cover copyright retention with CC BY licensing, funder-set venue criteria, infrastructure support, funder-paid fees, diverse and transparent fee models, policy alignment across institutions, a separate monographs timeline, a ban on hybrid publishing (except time-limited transitional arrangements), compliance monitoring with sanctions, and merit-based research assessment.

    Is Plan S still in effect in 2026?

    Yes. Plan S remains active and binding for cOAlition S’s 28 member funders, and the coalition’s Strategy 2026-2030, published November 2025, reaffirms the objective of full and immediate open access while committing to update — not abandon — the underlying principles document.

    What happened to Plan S’s transformative agreements?

    cOAlition S ended financial support for open access publishing under transformative arrangements, including Transformative Journals, after 2024, following a 26 January 2023 announcement. The transitional exception that let some hybrid venues count as compliant has therefore expired, tightening enforcement of the original anti-hybrid principle.

    What is diamond open access under Plan S?

    Diamond open access describes journals and platforms that charge no fees to either authors or readers. cOAlition S’s 2026-2030 strategy names diamond OA, alongside PRC models and preprints, as a priority area for its updated principles and implementation guidance.

    Implications and Outlook for Institutions and Publishers

    For research administration teams, the practical compliance checklist is largely stable: continue verifying venues through the Journal Checker Tool, ensure CC BY licensing and funder-paid fees are documented, and treat any residual “transformative agreement” listing as expired rather than compliant. Publishers still running hybrid titles without a diamond OA or PRC pathway face reduced routes to Plan S compliance now that the transitional carve-out has closed.

    The material open question for 2026-2027 is not whether Plan S survives, but how its updated principles document — due under Strategic Priority 1 of the 2026-2030 strategy — redefines “diverse business models” once diamond OA and PRC are formally written in. cOAlition S has structured its strategy in two phases, an initial 2026-2027 period followed by 2028-2030 priorities subject to Leaders Group review, so institutions should expect incremental guidance updates rather than a single rewrite. An independent study commissioned by cOAlition S, Galvanising the Open Access Community: A Study on the Impact of Plan S (Zenodo, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.13738479), credits the coalition with raising the profile of open access and bringing publishers to the negotiating table — the same leverage it is now applying to push the next generation of non-APC models.

  • Open Policy Finder: The Sherpa Romeo Successor

    Open Policy Finder is Jisc’s consolidated platform for checking publisher self-archiving rules and funder open-access requirements. It replaced Sherpa Romeo, Sherpa Juliet and Sherpa Fact with a single search interface in 2024, and it is now the standard first stop for research administrators running Plan S or rights-retention compliance checks. Search one journal or publisher and see accepted-manuscript deposit rules, embargo periods and funder mandates together, rather than cross-checking three separate Sherpa tools.

    Open Policy Finder is a free, Jisc-managed database that standardises open-access self-archiving and funder-policy information for thousands of publishers and major funders worldwide, built on the data and legacy of the Sherpa services founded in 2006 at the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Research Communications.

    What is Open Policy Finder?

    Open Policy Finder is an online platform, managed by Jisc, that aggregates and standardises open-access policies for publishers, journals, books and funders into one searchable index. It answers the question research administrators ask most often: which version of a manuscript — submitted, accepted or published — can be deposited in a repository, and after how long an embargo.

    The service traces its lineage to Sherpa Romeo, founded in 2006 at the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Research Communications and later transferred to Jisc. Rather than running Romeo, Juliet and Fact as three separate lookups, Jisc rebuilt them as one platform, launched under the Open Policy Finder name. Sherpa Romeo as a standalone service no longer exists; its URL now redirects to openpolicyfinder.jisc.ac.uk.

    According to Jisc’s published service profile, Open Policy Finder currently holds data on 3,503 global publisher open-access policies, including 28,000 journal-level policies, plus 178 major global funders’ open-access requirements. Its companion directory, OpenDOAR, separately tracks 5,868 institutional repositories worldwide, supporting global harvesting and aggregation of deposited outputs.

    How does Open Policy Finder differ from Sherpa Romeo?

    The core content is inherited from Sherpa Romeo, but the presentation and scope have changed substantially. Romeo was known for a colour-coded traffic-light system (green, blue, yellow, white) requiring a key to interpret; Open Policy Finder replaces this with plain-language labels — “Published,” “Accepted” and “Submitted” — describing which manuscript version a policy applies to, without needing a legend.

    Three previously separate Sherpa services are now unified behind one search box:

    • Sherpa Romeo’s publisher and journal self-archiving policies
    • Sherpa Juliet’s funder open-access policy summaries
    • Sherpa Fact’s journal-versus-funder compliance checking

    Open Policy Finder also extends coverage beyond what Romeo offered: it now includes open-access book policies searchable by publisher, and a dedicated Transitional Agreement look-up showing which “read and publish” or “publish and read” deals an institution holds and which journals they cover. Neither feature existed in the legacy Sherpa Romeo interface.

    How does it fit a Plan S / rights-retention compliance workflow?

    cOAlition S, the funder consortium behind Plan S, requires that funded research be made immediately open access on publication, either via a compliant journal/platform route or via self-archiving of the accepted manuscript under an open licence. Since 2021, cOAlition S funders and UKRI have applied a Rights Retention Strategy (RRS): authors declare, at submission, that any resulting accepted manuscript carries a CC BY licence, regardless of the publisher’s own self-archiving terms.

    This is precisely where Open Policy Finder earns its place in a compliance workflow. A research administrator checking whether a submission will satisfy a funder’s Plan S obligations needs three facts at once: the journal’s standard embargo, whether the publisher accepts a rights-retention statement or CC BY licence on the accepted manuscript, and whether the funder’s own policy overrides the journal default. Open Policy Finder’s unified record — journal policy plus funder policy in one view — replaces what used to require cross-referencing Sherpa Romeo and Sherpa Juliet separately, then manually checking Sherpa Fact for the funder-journal match.

    A practical compliance check typically runs as follows:

    1. Search the target journal or publisher in Open Policy Finder.
    2. Check the accepted-manuscript (“Accepted”) deposit terms and embargo length.
    3. Cross-reference the relevant funder’s policy (for example, a cOAlition S member or UKRI) shown in the same record.
    4. Check the Transitional Agreement look-up if the institution holds a read-and-publish deal with that publisher.
    5. Record the compliant route (repository deposit, RRS declaration, or agreement-covered gold OA) before submission, not after acceptance.

    What data and features does the platform cover?

    The table below summarises what changed between the legacy Sherpa suite and the current Open Policy Finder platform.

    Feature Legacy Sherpa suite (pre-2024) Open Policy Finder (current)
    Publisher/journal self-archiving policies Sherpa Romeo, colour-coded Included, plain-language labels
    Funder open-access policies Sherpa Juliet, separate search Included in the same record
    Funder–journal compliance check Sherpa Fact, separate tool Built into the unified search
    Open-access book policies Not covered Searchable by publisher
    Transitional Agreement look-up Not available Dedicated look-up tool
    Publisher policies indexed ~2,500 (Romeo, historic) 3,503, including 28,000 journal-level policies
    Funders indexed Fewer, via Juliet 178 major global funders
    Access model Free, web UI Free, web UI plus open API

    All Open Policy Finder data is published under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC-SA for most content), and the underlying dataset remains free to query via its open API — a design choice that lets institutional repository systems and compliance dashboards pull policy data directly rather than screen-scraping.

    Frequently asked questions

    How do I find open access journals?

    Search the journal or publisher name directly in Open Policy Finder to see its self-archiving and open-access route. For fully open-access titles specifically, cross-check the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which indexes journals that publish exclusively OA under a peer-reviewed quality standard.

    What is an open access policy?

    An open-access policy is a publisher’s or funder’s stated rule on how and when a research output may be made freely available — covering which manuscript version can be deposited, any embargo period, and licensing terms. Open Policy Finder standardises these policies into one comparable format across publishers and funders.

    Is Sherpa Romeo still available?

    No. Sherpa Romeo was retired as a standalone service when Jisc consolidated it with Sherpa Juliet and Sherpa Fact into Open Policy Finder in 2024. Its former web address now redirects to the new platform, and all of its publisher policy data has been migrated and is actively maintained there.

    Do I have to pay for open access?

    Not always. Many journals offer a free, no-cost “green” self-archiving route — depositing the accepted manuscript in a repository after an embargo — alongside a paid “gold” article processing charge (APC) route for immediate open publication. Open Policy Finder shows both routes, plus any Transitional Agreement that may waive the APC.

    What this means for research administrators

    For institutions running Plan S, UKRI or REF-linked open-access compliance checks, the consolidation into Open Policy Finder removes a genuine workflow inefficiency: three separate Sherpa look-ups have become one. Research administrators building institutional compliance guidance, submission checklists, or automated repository-deposit reminders should update internal documentation and any embedded links that still reference “Sherpa Romeo,” since the standalone service is discontinued.

    The open API is the detail most compliance teams should act on now. Because policy data can be queried programmatically, institutional repository platforms and CRIS systems can surface a journal’s current self-archiving terms directly inside the deposit workflow, rather than requiring staff to check a separate website — reducing the single biggest source of missed Plan S embargo deadlines: manual, one-off policy lookups that go stale between check and submission.

    As transitional agreements expand and funder rights-retention policies mature, expect Open Policy Finder’s funder-policy and Transitional Agreement data to become the reference layer that institutional research-administration systems query by default, in the way Sherpa Romeo’s colour codes once were for a previous generation of repository managers.

  • UKRI Open Access Policy vs Plan S: Differences

    UKRI’s open access policy requires immediate, zero-embargo access under a CC BY licence for research articles submitted from 1 April 2022 — a stricter, funder-specific implementation of the open access principles set out by cOAlition S in Plan S. Where Plan S sets the international baseline (immediate OA, CC BY, no hybrid-journal funding), UKRI applies it without exception for articles but allows a 12-month embargo for monographs, while the separate REF 2029 assessment policy permits embargoes of up to 12 months and non-CC-BY licences. The three frameworks are related but not identical, and conflating them is the single most common compliance error among UK grant holders.

    UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) is the umbrella body for the UK’s seven research councils, Research England and Innovate UK. UKRI’s open access policy is the funder mandate attached to grant terms and conditions; Plan S is the set of ten principles published by cOAlition S, the international funder coalition UKRI helped found in 2018; and the REF 2029 open access policy is a separate requirement tied to the UK’s national research assessment exercise, not to grant funding at all. Understanding which framework governs a given output is the first step to compliance.

    What is the UKRI open access policy?

    The UKRI open access policy applies to peer-reviewed research articles, reviews and conference proceedings with an ISSN that acknowledge UKRI funding and were submitted for publication on or after 1 April 2022. It requires immediate open access with no embargo period, under a CC BY licence, via one of two routes.

    • Route 1 (Gold OA): the publisher makes the final Version of Record open access on the journal platform.
    • Route 2 (Green OA): the author deposits the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in a repository, with no publisher embargo, under UKRI’s Rights Retention Strategy.

    A separate strand of the policy covers monographs, book chapters and edited collections, which applies to long-form works published from 1 January 2024. Unlike articles, long-form outputs may carry an embargo of up to 12 months, and UKRI provides a dedicated fund to cover book and chapter processing charges. UKRI’s own guidance, UKRI open access policy (published 6 August 2021), sets out the block-grant terms that fund Route 1 and Route 2 compliance for eligible research organisations.

    How does Plan S set the global baseline?

    Plan S is not a single funder’s policy but a coordinated commitment adopted by cOAlition S, the international group of funders — including UKRI, Wellcome and the European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme — that agreed to a shared open access baseline. cOAlition S announced Plan S in September 2018 and moved full implementation to 1 January 2021 after an initial consultation period.

    Plan S’s core requirements are that funded research articles be made immediately open access, that CC BY be the default licence, and that funders will not pay article processing charges (APCs) for publication in hybrid subscription journals unless the journal is covered by a recognised transformative agreement with a defined sunset date. UKRI’s article policy is, in effect, the UK national implementation of these ten principles — which is why the two frameworks track each other closely on articles but diverge once monographs, long-form outputs and national assessment exercises enter the picture.

    Where UKRI rules are stricter than Plan S

    On research articles, UKRI does not soften Plan S — if anything it tightens the funding mechanics. Plan S allows transitional arrangements more broadly during a coalition-wide transition period; UKRI has set explicit end dates for some of these routes.

    • Transformative journal funding ended earlier than the coalition-wide norm: per Jisc’s UKRI compliance guidance, research organisations could no longer use UKRI open access block grants to pay for publication in Jisc-approved transformative journals after 31 December 2024, even though the underlying journal remained policy-compliant.
    • A mandatory data access statement is required in every UKRI-funded article, regardless of whether underlying data exists or is accessible — a specific administrative requirement that Plan S’s high-level principles do not spell out.
    • Rights Retention Strategy is codified into submission workflow: UKRI requires a standardised statement in the manuscript submission confirming the CC BY licence will apply to the author’s accepted manuscript, operationalising Plan S’s rights-retention principle into a specific, auditable author action.

    Where UKRI is looser than the strict Plan S ideal is long-form publications: Plan S principles were written primarily with journal articles in mind, and UKRI’s 12-month embargo allowance and trade-book, training-grant and third-party-permissions exemptions for monographs are UKRI-specific accommodations rather than direct Plan S requirements.

    REF 2029 vs UKRI vs Plan S: comparing the three frameworks

    The framework UK grant holders most often confuse with UKRI’s funder policy is the separate REF 2029 open access policy, which governs eligibility for the Research Excellence Framework rather than grant compliance. The two policies apply to overlapping but distinct sets of outputs, on different timelines, with different tolerances for embargoes and licensing.

    Requirement Plan S (cOAlition S baseline) UKRI open access policy REF 2029 open access policy
    Governs International funder mandate UKRI grant terms and conditions UK research assessment eligibility
    Applies from 1 January 2021 (full implementation) 1 April 2022 (articles); 1 January 2024 (long-form) 1 January 2026 (revised policy, outputs to 31 December 2028)
    Embargo permitted None, for articles None for articles; up to 12 months for monographs Up to 6 months (Panels A and B); up to 12 months (Panels C and D)
    Licence CC BY default CC BY mandatory for articles CC BY preferred; CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND and CC BY-NC-ND also accepted
    Deposit route Gold or Green, rights retention Gold (Route 1) or Green (Route 2) with rights retention statement AAM deposit within 3 months of first publication
    Hybrid-journal APC funding Not funded outside transformative agreements Not funded after 31 December 2024 even for former transformative journals Not applicable — REF assesses accessibility, not funding route

    The practical consequence is that an article can satisfy REF 2029’s eligibility bar with a 6- or 12-month embargo and a non-CC-BY licence, yet still fail UKRI’s own funder policy, which recognises no embargo at all. A grant holder publishing UKRI-funded work must therefore treat the two as separate compliance checks, not a single hurdle.

    Common questions on UKRI’s open access policy

    What is the UKRI open access review?

    The UKRI open access review was UKRI’s stakeholder consultation process to replace the individually varying open access policies of its constituent research councils with a single, unified policy. It ran through extensive sector engagement and produced the current policy that took effect for articles on 1 April 2022.

    Do authors have to pay for open access?

    Not necessarily. UKRI provides open access block grants to eligible institutions to cover article processing charges for Route 1 (Gold) publication, and Route 2 (Green, self-archiving the accepted manuscript) carries no publication charge at all. Authors should check institutional block-grant eligibility before assuming a charge applies.

    What outputs are eligible for REF 2029?

    REF 2029’s open access policy applies specifically to journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN published within the eligible window. Monographs and other long-form outputs remain out of scope for the 2029 exercise and are expected to be brought into REF’s open access requirements no earlier than the assessment cycle that follows.

    What is the open access policy?

    An open access policy is a funder, institutional or assessment-body requirement that research outputs be made freely available online, typically under a specified licence and within a defined embargo limit. UKRI’s, Plan S’s and REF’s versions differ in scope, licensing tolerance and embargo length, which is why grant holders must check each one separately.

    For institutions and grant holders, the practical implication is that UKRI open access compliance, Plan S alignment and REF 2029 eligibility require three separate checks rather than one — a single embargo-free, CC BY article will clear all three, but any deviation (a 12-month embargo, a non-CC-BY licence, a hybrid journal outside a transformative agreement) can pass one framework while failing another. As REF 2029’s transitional period runs alongside UKRI’s steady-state policy, research offices should track compliance against each framework independently through at least the 2026–2028 output window.

  • cOAlition S Members in 2026: Which Funders Still Mandate Immediate Open Access

    cOAlition S is a coalition of 28 national research funders, charitable foundations, and international agencies that endorse Plan S, the requirement that publications from funded research be made openly accessible without embargo. Not every one of those coalition s members still enforces that requirement in the same way. Some, like UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Wellcome Trust, still apply the Rights Retention Strategy to force immediate access regardless of publisher policy. Others — most visibly the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — have adopted 2024-era policies that no longer mandate an openly accessible accepted manuscript, and the coalition itself formally broadened its accepted routes to compliance under its 2026-2030 strategy, published 12 November 2025.

    cOAlition S is an informal alliance of research funders and research-performing organisations, launched in September 2018, that coordinates funding conditions requiring full and immediate open access to the peer-reviewed publications it supports. This article gives the current 2026 roster, distinguishes funders that still hold a full immediate-OA mandate from those that have relaxed enforcement, and explains what changed under the coalition’s newest strategic phase.

    Contents

    Who are the current cOAlition S members?

    cOAlition S began in 2018 with twelve founding organisations. According to the coalition’s own Strategy 2026-2030 document, that founding group “has developed into a robust network of 28 funders, encompassing agencies from Europe, North America, Jordan, Zambia, South Africa, and Australia.” The European Research Council (ERC) engaged at launch but formally withdrew support in July 2020.

    Founding and long-standing members include UKRI and Wellcome Trust (UK), the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), France’s Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), the Dutch Research Council (NWO), the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Science Foundation Ireland, Luxembourg’s Fonds National de la Recherche (FNR), Poland’s National Science Centre (NCN), Portugal’s Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), the Research Council of Norway, Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council, the South African Medical Research Council, Jordan’s Higher Council for Science and Technology, Zambia’s National Science and Technology Council, and US philanthropic funders including the Gates Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Templeton World Charity Foundation.

    Which funders still hold a full immediate open-access mandate?

    A small group of cOAlition S members still enforces the original, strict version of Plan S: immediate open access with no embargo, secured through the Rights Retention Strategy, which requires grantees to apply a CC BY licence to the author accepted manuscript regardless of what the publisher’s own copyright policy says.

    • UKRI requires a CC BY-licensed accepted manuscript deposited with no embargo (or a compliant gold route), enforced through its funding assurance processes.
    • Wellcome Trust applies its own Rights Retention Statement, requiring immediate open access on acceptance.
    • National European funders such as FWF, ANR, NWO, and SNSF have kept their domestic OA policies aligned with the coalition’s founding principles.

    The coalition’s commissioned review, Galvanising the open access community: A study on the impact of Plan S (2024), credits the Rights Retention Strategy as the mechanism with the most “game-changing effect,” since institutions have since adopted it independently, beyond the original funder mandate.

    Which members have relaxed enforcement?

    The clearest case of a member funder relaxing its own mandate is the Gates Foundation. In 2024 it announced a “preprint-centric” open access policy and confirmed it would stop paying article processing charges (APCs). Per Wikipedia’s sourced summary of the change, this policy is “not entirely in line with cOAlition S,” because it no longer requires that an accepted manuscript itself be made openly accessible — it instead relies on preprint deposit, which is a materially weaker guarantee than the coalition’s founding immediate-OA principle.

    Two organisations exited or declined the coalition outright rather than relaxing in place:

    • Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden) was a member in 2018 but left in 2019 over concerns about Plan S’s implementation timeline.
    • India publicly declined to join cOAlition S in October 2019, despite earlier supportive signals from its Department of Biotechnology.
    • The European Research Council withdrew its formal backing in July 2020, even though the European Commission remains engaged with the coalition’s wider work.

    Separately, cOAlition S confirmed in 2024 that it would end financial support for “transformative agreements” altogether, removing 1,589 of 2,326 journals (68%) from its transformative journals scheme in 2023. That decision tightened one enforcement lever even as the coalition’s broader 2026-2030 strategy loosened others — illustrating that “enforcement” at cOAlition S is not moving in a single direction.

    Funder-by-funder status at a glance

    Funder 2026 status Basis
    UKRI (United Kingdom) Full mandate, active Rights Retention Strategy; no-embargo CC BY requirement
    Wellcome Trust (United Kingdom) Full mandate, active Own Rights Retention Statement
    FWF, ANR, NWO, SNSF (Austria, France, Netherlands, Switzerland) Full mandate, active Domestic OA policy aligned to founding principles
    Gates Foundation (United States) Relaxed in 2024 Preprint-centric policy; APCs no longer funded; accepted manuscript OA not required
    Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden) Departed 2019 Left over Plan S implementation timeline
    European Research Council Withdrew support, 2020 Formal withdrawal in July 2020
    India (Department of Biotechnology) Never joined Declined membership, October 2019

    What changed under the 2026-2030 strategy?

    cOAlition S published its Strategy 2026-2030 on 12 November 2025, organised around three priorities: strengthening the foundations for “full, immediate, sustainable, and equitable” open access; supporting shared digital infrastructure (including a joint position on AI training uses of CC BY content); and exploring financially sustainable publishing models.

    Chemistry World’s reporting on the strategy quotes Lidia Borrell-Damián, chair of the coalition’s executive steering group and secretary general of Science Europe, describing a shift toward embracing “a range of open access models” — including publish-review-curate (PRC), diamond open access, and preprints — rather than insisting on one route. Researcher commentary quoted in the same piece characterised this as the coalition “scaling back its ambitions” from the original single 2021 target of full immediate Gold/Green access. Per the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) OA Dashboard, cited in that coverage, the global share of articles published immediately open access (gold) rose from 14% in 2014 to 40% in 2024, while subscription-only publication fell from 70% to 54% over the same decade.

    The coalition also changed its own governance in this period. In December 2025 it issued a tender for a new host secretariat, backed by an annual budget of roughly €0.8 million, after the European Science Foundation’s hosting arrangement wound down. Curt Rice — previously rector of two Norwegian universities — was appointed cOAlition S’s new director in May 2026, with Operas confirmed as the new host secretariat managing the coalition’s funds and communications.

    What does this mean for institutions and researchers?

    Research administrators advising authors funded by a cOAlition S member should not assume uniform enforcement across the roster. UKRI- and Wellcome-funded authors still face a hard Rights Retention requirement with no embargo tolerance. Gates Foundation-funded authors now face a materially different, preprint-centric expectation. The coalition’s collective policy language has shifted from “full and immediate” as the only route toward a “multitude of routes to open access” — compliance officers should check each funder’s own published policy rather than treating the cOAlition S label as a proxy for one uniform rule.

    For research administration teams tracking funder compliance, and for anyone verifying open access terminology in the CASRAI dictionary, the practical takeaway is that “cOAlition S member” is now a looser designation of shared principle rather than a guarantee of identical mandate terms.

    Answer-first Q&A

    What is cOAlition S?

    cOAlition S is an alliance of national research funders, charitable foundations, and international agencies, launched in September 2018, that coordinates Plan S — the requirement that publications from the research they fund be made openly accessible without embargo, typically via the Rights Retention Strategy.

    How many funders are in cOAlition S in 2026?

    cOAlition S counts 28 member funders as of its 2026-2030 strategy, spanning Europe, North America, Jordan, Zambia, South Africa, and Australia, up from the twelve founding organisations that launched Plan S in 2018.

    Have any funders left cOAlition S?

    Yes. Riksbankens Jubileumsfond left in 2019 over Plan S’s timeline, India declined to join in 2019, and the European Research Council withdrew formal support in July 2020, though the European Commission remains engaged.

    Is Plan S still mandatory for cOAlition S members in 2026?

    Core members such as UKRI and Wellcome Trust still enforce immediate open access with no embargo, but the coalition’s 2026-2030 strategy formally recognises additional routes — preprints, diamond open access, and publish-review-curate models — alongside the original mandate, rather than treating “full and immediate” as the only compliant route.

    Looking ahead

    With Curt Rice now leading the coalition and Operas installed as host secretariat, cOAlition S enters 2026-2027 — the first phase of its new strategy — with a wider tent of acceptable open access routes than it had in 2018. The roster of 28 funders remains largely intact, but “cOAlition S member” increasingly describes a shared aspiration rather than one uniform compliance rule. Institutions should track each funder’s own published policy directly rather than inferring mandate strength from coalition membership alone.