Plan S

The aim of the European Open Access initiative Plan S is to secure full and immediate Open Access (OA) to scholarly journal articles. The plan also encourages increased OA for scholarly books.

Plan S​ was initiated by e.g. the EU, the Research Council of Norway (RCN)​ and other European research funders, together forming cOAlition S. The plan requires immediate Open Access to all research the coalition is funding. Plan S applies to calls from 1 January 2021.

In September 2021 the coalition launched a set of recommendations for Open Access (OA) publishing of scholarly books. EU and RCN have already implemented requirements for OA publishing of books (read more on requirements by e.g. EU and RCN on own website).

Plan S requirements: Journal articles

As a result of the implementation of Plan S, the following changes concerning Open Access apply:

  • All articles should be made openly accessible immediately upon publication, including those published in subscription-based journals
  • The peer-reviewed version (Author's Accept​ed Manuscript, AAM) of all articles may be made openly accessible (self-archived) through an open repository (e.g. Norwegian Research Information Repository - Nasjonalt vitenarkiv, NVA)
  • Researchers retain copyright to their articles instead of transferring this right to the publisher​
  • Articles must be published with an open (Creative Commons) licence facilitating free re-use of publications: CC BY as a standard, alternatively CC BY-SA or CC0, or CC BY-ND as an exception​​​
    • CC BY 4.0​ is the preferred licence of Plan S. The licence entails that everyone is free to re-use (e.g. share and adapt) the article, while requiring attribution to the author
    • ​CC BY-SA (Share Alike) is the alternative Plan S-compliant licences. This license is equivalent to CC BY, except that any adaptations must be provided with the same license and be shared on the same terms as the original publication
    • CC0 (Universal / Public Domain Dedication) is a tool that Plan S accepts as alternative to an open licence. CC0 entails that the publication is public domain, i.e. that it is not subject to any copyright restrictions
    • CC BY-ND​ (No Derivatives) is Plan S-compliant in exceptional cases. This ​​entails that the publication may be shared, but not adapted, and this licence may be used if special reasons apply (solely on academic grounds). This may be an option if a researcher sees a need to limit the possibilities to adapt a published text.​​

Plan S recommendations: Books

cOAlition S acknowledges that book publishing is important for scholars - particularly within the Humanities and Social Sciences. Accordingly, they have the following recommendations for Open Access publishing of scholarly books:

  1. All scholarly books based on original research funded by cOAlition S organisations should be made OA on publication.
  2. Authors or their institutions should retain sufficient intellectual property rights (IPR) to make books OA and to allow for re-use.
  3. Books should be published OA under a Creative Commons​ licence.
  4. Any embargo periods should be as short as possible and not more than 12 months.
  5. cOAlition S funders should use their funding schemes to support books and separately fund OA publishing business models​.

How do I comply with Plan S?

​You may ensure compliance with Plan S by publishing in one of the following four ways:

  • Pure OA journals (gold or diamond OA)
    Publish your article in a pure OA journal. These are journals where all the articles are immediately openly accessible. Researchers can publish for free in many of those (diamond OA), while other journals charge OA fees (gold OA). Publishing fees may be covered either through your research project funds or - if you do not have funding for this - by filing an application to Nord's OA Fund
  • Transformative OA publishing agreements
    Publish via one of Nord's OA publishing agreements to get any OA fees covered or to get a discount on the fee 
  • Self-archiving in open repositories
    If you are unable to publish in a pure OA journal or via one of Nord's OA agreements, you may still achieve OA by self-archiving the accepted manuscript versjon (AAM version) of your publication in the Norwegian Research Information Repository (Nasjonalt vitenarkiv, NVA). According to cOAlition S' rights retention strategy, a CC BY licence must be applied to the AAM version and the AAM must be made available immediately (at the time of publication). 
  • Open Research Europe (ORE)
    For researchers with EU projects: Publish your article for free on the EU's electronic OA publishing platform, Open Research Europe​. The platform publishes preprints (after thorough checks), offers transparent and open peer review, and ensures indexing in databases of articles that have passed peer review​. ORE is approved by HK-dir on level 1 and registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals​. ​​

​Journal Checker Tool

For researchers receiving funding from cOAlition S partners like the EU (Horizon Europe) or The Research Council of Norway, cOAlition S​ launched the Journal Checker Tool (JCT).​ ​By using JCT you can check whether the journal where you wish to publish is Plan S-compliant.

How to use JCT

There are two ways of using JCT:

  • Check that the journal is listed on levels 1 or 2 in the channel register of the Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-dir)​​ to ensure credit in the Norwegian financing system for scholarly publications. JCT has been integrated into the directory, thus ​when you search for a specific journal, you will find the tool ​below the Open Access heading. ​Fill in funder information, and information about Plan S compliance will appear
  • ​Go to Journal Checker Tool​ and fill in the names of your chosen journal, research funder (cOAlition S partner) and your own institution (Nord University)
Plan S implementation guide
Rights retention strategy (journal articles)
Plan S recommendations: OA books
RCN and Plan S

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