The document regulating the principles and implementation of Plan S describes three mechanisms to encourage publishers operating in the subscription model to switch to open access.
Transformation agreements
The implementation of Plan S aims to transform the current publishing system, replacing the subscription business model with new models that ensure that research results are open and reusable, and the costs of dissemination are transparent and sustainable. To accelerate the transition to open access, a strategy was adopted to systematically withdraw financial support for publishing sites charging for access and to allocate these funds to support OA publishing.
cOAlition S encourages institutions and consortia to develop new transformative agreements. Agreements concluded after 1 January 2021 will only receive financial support if they comply with the guidelines and are registered in the register maintained by ESAC.
The ICM publishing house in 2021 has made available a report on the situation in the field of transformation agreements - understood as a way to move from the subscription model of scientific publications to full and immediate open access. The report is available under the CC BY 4.0 license:
Transformative Agreements: Overview, Case Studies, and Legal Analysis
Transformative model agreements
Support for publishing houses run by scientific societies and small and medium-sized publishers, currently not bound by transformation agreements. cOAlition S will work with all stakeholders to develop new open access agreement models avoiding double payment (subscription and publication fees).
Transformative journals
Subscription and hybrid journals where the share of open content is progressively increased and subscription costs are offset by revenue from publishing fees (to avoid duplicate payments) and where the journal clearly commits to moving to full open access within an agreed timeframe.
The current guidelines define the threshold which, when exceeded, obliges the publisher to introduce full open access - from 50% to 75%. The date of complete transformation, previously set for the end of 2024, has been removed. Moreover, the Transformation Journal will need to show an annual increase in open content share of 5% in absolute value and at least 15% in relative value.
The list of journals that have been awarded the status of transforming journal and annual Transformative Journals analyses are available on the cOAlition S website.
