CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: open access mandates

  • 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 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.