Coalition S (cOAlition S)

Coalition S (cOAlition S)
Name	Coalition S (cOAlition S)
Formation	2018
Type	Consortium
Purpose	Open access publishing initiative
Headquarters	Europe
Region served	International
Leader title	Coordinator

Coalition S (cOAlition S) is an international consortium of research funding agencies and organizations established to accelerate the transition to full and immediate open access to scholarly publications. The initiative was announced to mandate open access for funded research and to reform publishing arrangements among stakeholders such as European Commission, Wellcome Trust, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Max Planck Society, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. It engaged publishers, research institutions, and libraries including Elsevier, Springer Nature, University of Oxford, Harvard University, and MIT in debates over copyright, licensing, and business models.

Background and Formation

Coalition S originated from discussions among funders represented at meetings in Paris, Berlin, and Brussels and was formally launched by funders such as Science Europe, Research Councils UK, Swedish Research Council, National Institutes of Health (United States), and European Research Council with advocacy links to organizations like SPARC and Open AIRE. Influences included campaigns by Public Library of Science, Directory of Open Access Journals, and historical movements related to the Budapest Open Access Initiative and Berlin Declaration on Open Access. Early proponents cited the experience of projects such as Plan S predecessor initiatives and policies from institutions like Wellcome Trust and crises like disputes involving Elsevier subscriptions and negotiations with consortia including Projekt DEAL.

Plan S Principles and Requirements

The core policy, known as Plan S, requires immediate open access under permissive licenses such as Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY), mandates open repositories like PubMed Central and Zenodo, and insists on transparent article processing charges (APCs) with cost disclosures similar to mandates from Horizon 2020 and later Horizon Europe. Plan S enumerated principles on copyright retention, machine readability, text and data mining rights linked to technologies and standards from ORCID, Crossref, DataCite, and identifiers like DOI. It sought to end the subscription model used by publishers such as Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and SAGE Publications, while supporting alternative routes through transformative agreements exemplified by deals in Germany, Switzerland, and negotiations like Publish-and-Read accords.

Implementation and Compliance

Implementation involved member funders enforcing mandates for grantees from bodies like UK Research and Innovation, Science Foundation Ireland, Swiss National Science Foundation, and Agence Nationale de la Recherche. Compliance mechanisms referenced repositories and infrastructures such as Europe PMC, HAL (France), and institutional repositories at University College London and University of Cambridge, while monitoring relied on metadata standards championed by Crossref and OpenAIRE. Publishers responded with varied models: pure open access journals like PLOS and eLife embraced Plan S, hybrid journals from Nature Publishing Group and Cell Press required transitional arrangements, and commercial publishers negotiated transformative agreements with consortia such as Jisc and BIBSAM. Legal challenges and alignment involved national laws and funder policies in jurisdictions including United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Sweden, and United States.

Impact on Scholarly Publishing

The initiative accelerated shifts among major publishers like Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley-Blackwell, and platforms including Scopus and Web of Science toward open access offerings, altered revenue streams influenced by APC models similar to those used by Frontiers and MDPI, and prompted reevaluation of editorial and peer review workflows at journals such as The Lancet and Nature. Institutional repositories at Max Planck Society, University of California, and ETH Zurich increased deposits, while metrics providers like Altmetric and Dimensions adjusted to more open metadata. Plan S influenced related initiatives such as the cOAlition S transformative agreements, the expansion of diamond open access journals supported by university presses like Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press, and debates in policy fora including UNESCO and OECD.

Criticisms and Controversies

Critics from publisher groups including International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers and some learned societies such as American Chemical Society and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers warned about financial sustainability and impacts on society journals, while stakeholders like ResearchGate and Academia.edu highlighted platform tensions. Concerns were raised by researchers at institutions such as Princeton University and Stanford University about APC affordability, equity for scholars in low- and middle-income countries represented by bodies like Cochrane and INASP, and effects on disciplines with expensive publishing models such as High-energy physics and Medicine. Debates encompassed legal matters in national courts, negotiations exemplified by Projekt DEAL and controversies over hybrid journal statuses involving Nature Communications and Science Advances.

Member Organizations and Governance

Members included national funders and organizations like Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, European Commission, Wellcome Trust, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CNRS, FNRS, GSK (where relevant to research funding), and international consortia such as Science Europe. Governance structures referenced advisory bodies and working groups with participation from SPARC Europe, OpenAIRE, Crossref, and representatives from major research institutions including Max Planck Society and Karolinska Institutet. Oversight mechanisms aligned with funding mandates from agencies like UK Research and Innovation and harmonization efforts with regional programs such as Horizon Europe.

Category:Open access Category:Scholarly publishing