CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: Horizon Europe open access

  • cOAlition S Monographs: What the Open Access Policy Requires

    University presses tracking funder mandates often conflate two distinct policy layers. cOAlition S monographs guidance — the coalition-wide recommendations issued by the group of research funders behind Plan S — is not the same instrument as the Horizon Europe monograph mandate that already binds beneficiaries of European Commission grants. The two are related but legally and operationally distinct, and the gap matters for any press negotiating embargoes, licences, or rights-retention clauses with an academic author.

    This explainer sets out what cOAlition S itself asks of its 20-plus funder members regarding academic books, how that differs from the binding Horizon Europe rules, and where university presses need to track both.

    What cOAlition S Actually Recommends for Monographs

    Plan S, launched in 2018, was built around Principle 7, which acknowledged that “the timeline to achieve Open Access for monographs and book chapters will be longer and requires a separate and due process” than for journal articles. cOAlition S formalised its position on academic books — defined broadly to include monographs, book chapters, edited collections, and critical editions — in a dedicated statement published on 2 September 2021.

    Crucially, that statement is framed as a set of recommendations, not a uniform mandate. Individual cOAlition S organisations are asked to adopt the following within their own remits:

    • Academic books based on funded original research should be made open access on publication.
    • Authors or their institutions should retain sufficient intellectual property rights to enable open access and re-use.
    • Books should be published under a Creative Commons licence.
    • Embargo periods should be as short as possible and must never exceed 12 months.
    • Funders should financially support open access book publishing through dedicated schemes.

    This is a coordination framework, not a single rulebook. Each member funder — UKRI, Wellcome, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Science Foundation Ireland, and others — then writes its own policy inside those boundaries, which is precisely why embargo lengths and licence choices still vary from funder to funder.

    Timeline: How the Monograph Statement Emerged

    The gap between journal and book policy was deliberate, not an oversight. Plan S’s original 2018 principles applied in full to peer-reviewed journal articles from 1 January 2021, but books were explicitly carved out for a “separate and due process.” cOAlition S’s Implementation Guidance committed the coalition to issuing a books-specific statement “by the end of 2021” — a deadline it met with the September 2021 publication.

    Since then, cOAlition S has continued developing technical guidance for open access books in collaboration with existing infrastructure providers, including the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and the OAPEN open access books toolkit, rather than imposing a single technical standard by decree.

    Licensing and Embargo Rules Compared Across Funders

    Because cOAlition S sets a ceiling rather than a fixed rule, the practical requirements a university press encounters depend entirely on which funder supported the underlying research. The table below compares the coalition-wide recommendation with several member funders’ actual policies, including the European Commission’s Horizon Europe rules.

    Funder / Framework Scope Maximum embargo Licence
    cOAlition S (coalition recommendation) Academic books based on funded original research 12 months Any Creative Commons licence
    Horizon Europe (European Commission) All books, monographs and long-text outputs, if peer-reviewed 0 months (immediate) CC BY, CC BY-ND or CC BY-NC (or equivalent)
    UKRI Monographs, book chapters, edited collections (from 1 Jan 2024) 12 months Any Creative Commons licence
    Wellcome Scholarly monographs and book chapters 6 months CC BY preferred; other CC licences permitted
    FWF (Austria) Peer-reviewed research results of FWF-funded research 12 months (only if FWF has not financially supported the book) CC BY and CC BY-NC required
    Research Council of Norway Academic books, monographs, edited collections, anthology chapters 12 months (immediate recommended) CC BY, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC or equivalent

    The pattern is consistent: Horizon Europe is the strictest implementation of the cOAlition S framework, not a separate policy philosophy. As an EU funding programme whose managing body sits within cOAlition S, Horizon Europe simply exercises the option every member funder has — to set its own embargo and licence rules inside the coalition’s 12-month ceiling — and chooses the tightest possible setting: zero embargo.

    Where cOAlition S and Horizon Europe Overlap — and Diverge

    The overlap is principled: both frameworks require Creative Commons licensing, both expect rights retention sufficient to enable re-use, and both trace back to the same Plan S lineage. The divergence is procedural and binding. cOAlition S’s book statement is aspirational guidance that individual funders “will seek to adopt,” whereas the Horizon Europe rules sit inside the Model Grant Agreement that every beneficiary signs — making non-compliance a contractual, auditable matter rather than a best-practice lapse.

    What is Plan S?

    Plan S is an open access initiative launched in 2018 by cOAlition S, a group of national and international research funders. It requires immediate open access to peer-reviewed journal articles from funded research, with a separate, later-developed framework for monographs and book chapters.

    Does cOAlition S require open access for monographs?

    cOAlition S recommends rather than mandates open access for monographs. Its September 2021 statement asks member funders to adopt open access on publication, Creative Commons licensing, and a maximum 12-month embargo within their own policies — leaving each funder to set the binding rule.

    How does the Horizon Europe monograph mandate differ from cOAlition S?

    Horizon Europe imposes a binding, zero-embargo open access requirement for peer-reviewed monographs funded under the programme, embedded in its Model Grant Agreement. cOAlition S’s own statement is coalition-wide guidance permitting member funders up to a 12-month embargo, making Horizon Europe the strictest single implementation of that broader framework.

    What licence does cOAlition S recommend for open access books?

    cOAlition S recommends publication under any Creative Commons licence, without mandating a single variant. Horizon Europe narrows this for its own grantees to CC BY, CC BY-ND or CC BY-NC (or a licence with equivalent rights), reflecting the sector’s greater sensitivity around commercial and derivative rights for books than for journal articles.

    Implications for University Presses and Institutions

    For presses and library publishing units, the practical task is to identify the funder, not the coalition, before setting contract terms. A monograph funded partly by Horizon Europe money is bound by the zero-embargo rule regardless of what cOAlition S’s general statement permits; a monograph funded by an FWF grant that did not directly support book production may carry a 12-month embargo instead.

    Several operational consequences follow:

    • Contracts and rights-retention clauses should be drafted per funder, not per generic “Plan S compliance” assumption.
    • Long-term data preservation and hosting arrangements matter as much as the embargo date — cOAlition S technical guidance points presses toward trusted infrastructure such as DOAB and OAPEN, mirroring the repository requirements it already sets for journal articles and datasets.
    • Mixed-funding books (part Horizon Europe, part national funder) should default to the strictest applicable rule to avoid inadvertent non-compliance.
    • Research administration teams should track funder-specific embargo tables rather than relying on a single “Plan S” checklist, since the coalition itself does not enforce one.

    Institutions with dedicated research administration functions are best placed to reconcile these variations before contracts are signed, rather than after a book has gone to press. CASRAI’s broader work on funder compliance and research administration processes is directly relevant to teams building these internal checklists.

    What Comes Next

    cOAlition S has signalled it is moving toward a more flexible, multi-model approach to open access generally, following its own December 2025 strategy review — a shift chronicled by outlets including Chemistry World. For monographs specifically, this makes near-term convergence toward a single binding coalition-wide rule unlikely; the recommendation-based structure suits the genuine diversity of book publishing economics across disciplines and countries far better than a uniform mandate would.

    University presses should therefore expect the current two-tier reality to persist: a coalition-wide floor of open access, Creative Commons licensing and a 12-month embargo cap, with individual funders — Horizon Europe most prominently — free to set stricter terms for their own grantees. Tracking both layers, rather than treating “Plan S” as one monolithic rule, remains the only reliable compliance strategy.

  • cOAlition S Scales Back: Inside the Open Access Commitment Reset

    On 12 November 2025, cOAlition S published a statement titled “cOAlition S reinforces Open Access commitment while advancing next strategic phase.” The framing was affirmative, but the substance was a retreat. The cOAlition S open access commitment for 2026-2030 drops the all-funder compliance mandate that defined Plan S since 2018 in favour of three broader, less prescriptive priorities — and December 2025 trade coverage, including Chemistry World, read the move for what it is: a narrowing of ambition after seven years of uneven enforcement.

    For research administrators who built compliance workflows, journal-checker integrations, and funder-reporting templates around the original all-or-nothing mandate, this is not a footnote. It is a structural change in what “Plan S compliant” means going forward.

    What cOAlition S actually announced in November 2025

    cOAlition S — the international consortium of research funders formed in 2018, coordinated through Science Europe — published its Strategy 2026-2030 alongside the November statement. Mari Sundli Tveit, Chief Executive of the Research Council of Norway and Chair of the cOAlition S Leaders Group, said the coalition remains “determined to accelerate full and immediate Open Access,” while explicitly widening the mission to include transparency, equity, and the trustworthiness of scientific knowledge.

    Three strategic priorities now anchor the plan:

    • Strengthening the foundations for full, immediate, sustainable, and equitable open access to peer-reviewed scholarly articles.
    • Supporting the digital infrastructure that underpins open access publishing.
    • Exploring financially sustainable, equitable publishing systems while monitoring their progress and impact.

    Notably, the statement does not repeat the 2018 promise of a single, enforced compliance deadline for all member funders. Instead it describes “extensive member consultation” and implementation that will “unfold collaboratively over the following months” — language that signals coordination rather than a mandate with teeth.

    Plan S 2018 versus the 2026-2030 strategy: what changed

    Plan S launched in September 2018 with twelve founding funders and a hard requirement: from 2021, all peer-reviewed publications resulting from grants awarded by cOAlition S members had to appear in fully open access journals or platforms, or be deposited immediately in a repository without embargo, under a CC BY licence. It was designed as an all-or-nothing mandate — no partial credit, no member opt-outs on the core requirement.

    The clearest concrete break in the 2026-2030 strategy is the end of coalition-wide financial support for “transformative arrangements” (read-and-publish and similar hybrid-journal deals), which member funders had already agreed to stop funding after 2024. Those agreements were originally sold as a bridge to full open access; cOAlition S’s own strategy materials now treat their expiry as settled, while the harder question — what replaces them at scale — is deferred to the “exploring financially sustainable, equitable publishing systems” priority rather than answered outright.

    Dimension Plan S (2018 launch) cOAlition S Strategy 2026-2030
    Compliance model Single mandatory deadline (2021) for all member-funded outputs Coordinated priorities, member-level implementation timelines
    Core licence requirement CC BY, no embargo Unchanged — still CC BY, no embargo, where applicable
    Transformative agreements Tolerated as a temporary bridge Coalition funding ended after 2024
    Scope of mission Full and immediate open access Adds transparency, equity, trustworthiness, AI-era research integrity
    Governance framing Uniform mandate across members “Diverse national and international contexts,” unified advocacy rather than enforcement

    What has not changed, per cOAlition S’s own materials: the underlying licensing requirement (CC BY, no embargo) still applies where a member funder’s policy invokes it. What has changed is the coalition-level machinery that once stood behind that requirement as a shared, enforced deadline.

    What enforcement looks like now

    The 2018 model relied on a shared Journal Checker Tool, coordinated funder policies, and the implicit threat of a synchronised 2021 deadline across all members. The 2026-2030 model relies instead on individual funder policies operating inside a shared strategic direction — each cOAlition S member (among them UKRI, the Wellcome Trust, and the European Commission via Horizon Europe) continues to set and enforce its own grant conditions, but the coalition itself is stepping back from presenting those conditions as a single synchronised mandate.

    This is a meaningful distinction for anyone doing compliance work:

    • Funder-level open access requirements (UKRI’s policy, Horizon Europe’s Open Research mandate, Wellcome’s policy) remain in force and are not softened by the coalition statement.
    • What is softened is the coalition-wide narrative that all of this adds up to one enforced standard with one compliance bar.
    • Institutions should expect continued policy divergence between funders rather than the convergence Plan S originally promised.

    Common questions about the open access commitment

    What is Plan S in open access?

    Plan S is the 2018 open access mandate from cOAlition S requiring that peer-reviewed publications funded by member grants be made immediately available, without embargo, under a CC BY licence — either via a compliant open access venue or an institutional repository.

    Has cOAlition S dropped its open access mandate?

    No — cOAlition S has not dropped the underlying licensing requirement. What changed is the coalition-level enforcement model: the Strategy 2026-2030 replaces a single all-funder compliance deadline with three broader strategic priorities and funder-level implementation.

    Who are the cOAlition S funders?

    cOAlition S launched in 2018 with twelve national and international research funders and has since grown; current members include research councils and funding bodies coordinated through Science Europe, alongside participants such as the European Commission via Horizon Europe. Membership composition is published on coalition-s.org.

    Are transformative agreements still funded under Plan S?

    No. cOAlition S member funders confirmed the end of financial support for transformative arrangements such as read-and-publish deals after 2024, treating them as an expired transitional measure rather than a permanent open access route.

    Implications for institutional compliance workflows

    Institutions that built compliance infrastructure — journal-checker integrations, repository deposit workflows, funder-reporting dashboards — around the assumption of one synchronised cOAlition S standard now need to re-map that infrastructure to individual funder policies. The practical risk is not that requirements have loosened; UKRI, Wellcome, and Horizon Europe policies are each still active and still require licence and embargo compliance on their own terms. The risk is assuming coalition-level messaging still functions as a single compliance proxy for all of them.

    Research offices should treat the 2026-2030 strategy as a signal to audit funder policies individually rather than defer to a “Plan S compliant” shorthand that no longer maps cleanly onto one enforced standard. That audit work sits alongside related contributor-transparency and authorship-attribution practices that institutions are already tracking — for example through the CRediT contributor role taxonomy, which CASRAI originated in 2014 and which is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, and through broader research administration compliance frameworks.

    The next twelve months matter. cOAlition S has said implementation of the new strategy will “unfold collaboratively” — which means the concrete compliance detail research offices actually need (updated guidance, any revised Journal Checker Tool logic, member-by-member timelines) is still being written. Institutions that wait for a single unified answer, as they could under the 2018 framing, are likely to be waiting through most of 2026. The more defensible posture is to track each funder’s policy directly and treat the coalition strategy as directional context rather than an enforceable standard in its own right.