Comments

We have received several comments from signatories via the Google Form. These have been provided, unedited, below. Comments have been provided in the order in which they were received.

"In physics, there are many high-quality publishes that use Hybrid OA, Including American physical society and the Institute of Physics (UK). It would be absurd to prohibit publication in those journals."

"Work can be accessed through preprints - and by contacting the author(s), which is much easier today with e-mail, than using the printed cards to be mailed, as was the practice a few decades ago."

"Open access is a worthy goal. Plan S is not the way to do it."

"We should be free to publish where we want. If the public want access they only have to ask for a copy from the author. They will be provided a free copy of the article from the corresponding author."

"I think that some points on the plan are valid and audacious, yet require more dialogue, and reformulation as it stands to avoid triggering unforseen negative effects on the chemical community."

"I fully support the content of this letter."

"I support open access, but Plan S is not the solution. More focus should be put on quality control and stricter restrictions on journal indexing, especially of open access journals. There is simply too much junk published and there will be more with Plan S."

"Many journals published by the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) can be added to the list of highly valued Society hybrid journals."

"Open preprint publication should be recognised as open access."

"The vast majority of leading journals in chemistry, i.e., those known for distinguished editorial boards and rigorous refereeing, do not conform to Plan S and, as far as I can discern, have no plans to do so either. Nor for that matter does the American Chemical Society, which arguably publishes a majority of the chemistry's leading journals. If we are tied by plan S, we will lose collaborators based in American and Asia."

"Even though it's written from a chemistry perspective this letter sums up many of my own concerns as a scholar of the Humanities."

"Too Far, Too Risky indeed: this will likely have a contra-productive result benefiting commercial publishers, while weakening well-functioning volunteer based organizations like IEEE and weakening Europe's traditionally strong position in scientific fields."

"I hope that the petition, initiated by chemists, opens to other scientists as well."

"While I support open access in principle, the most important component of scientific publishing is the quality of the peer review system and the final published works. This could be seriously jeopardized by the current plan under consideration."

"Research can not be the prerogative of those who have the money to pay for it. This discrimination would be the end of free thought and science."

"This plan may also significantly impact the funding model of scientific societies."

"Most scientists support the idea of open publishing but banning us from publishing with not-for-profit scholarly societies has the potential to hurt our careers and our collaborations."

"Thanks for doing this!"

"I think it is really a bad idea to ban scientists to publish freely."

"Change should be slow and smooth."

"Would like to continue publishing (and reading!) in RSC and ACS journals."

"I certainly like the idea of OA but not in the way of plan S."

"Open access to scientific work is highly appreciated but this war shouldn´t be fought at the expense of Ph.D. students and postdocs!"

"I am also the editor of a major medical journal. Compulsory OA discriminates against authors who are experiencing hardship in funding. It also discriminates against those in developing countries who wish to publish in mainstream international journals (whose APCs are high). Hybrid or subscription-only journals need to be maintained while we transition to a suitable solution."

"I sign the letter because I prefer to NOT have plan S than to have it. If I may add, I believe that the letter misses to make a clear distinction between non-profit journals driven by professional societies (e.g APS, ACS) and for-profit journals driven by private companies (e.g. Elsevier, Nature). These for-profit journals make large amounts of money on publicly-funded research and referees serving them for free. Moreover, there is rarely a board of scientists overseeing the decisions of the Editors, as it occurs in an appeal in the APS, for example. I believe that addressing the scientific and economic issues related to such a publication model is far more important than banning hybrid OA journals..."

"I support "open-access" but not "enforced open-access"; society journals play such a big role in training the next generation and many cannot be open-access for various reasons. There should be space for all flavours in science."

"Other plans should be possible. Consider citing only open access articles for example, by doing so the impact factor of non open access journals will fall while others climb."

"I fully support the letter"

"Initiative of the Plan S for the scientific research in general is good, yet it needs to be more carefully and scientifically planed, otherwise it can hinder science and the mankind a lot"

"I support the goals of Plan S, but I find it too hurried and not sufficiently thought through. Let's take baby steps first before trying to run!"

"Plan S does not provide a workable solution."

"I support OA, but not reaching it through scorched-earth tactics. Fighting the influence of impact factors and other faulty methods is good too - and crucially needed for Plan S. But the funding agencies provide no ideas whatsoever on how to transition to a better global system of evaluating scientists."

"If Plan S will get finally implemented, I will accept to serve as a reviewer for an editorial office once receiving a payment."

"Universities and active researchers should run the Plan S process - not bureaucrats and administrators from the European research councils."

"Plan S goes to far, too fast also for fields other than Chemistry as it does not take the negative impact of such bans on (young) scholars who want to freely participate in scientific debates at the highest level into account, nor the problems it creates in international collaborations or for us as employers in hiring the best talents in the field."

"Particular problems also for researchers and research in African countries."

"There are hardly any serious open access journals in my field of research. Plan S would mean a publication stop, book chapters or predatory journals."

"I fully support the Plan S Open letter"

"These plans will have detrimental effects on the careers of young researchers, when competing with researchers from countries where Plan S is not applicable. When applying to those countries where Plan S is not known, scientists from the UK will be unfairly disadvantaged. Employers will prefer to hire candidates with publications in high impact and well known journals, which have proven track record of good peer review. They will be unaware of the fact that the researcher was forced to publish in lower impact journals by the researcher's funding body. Research of high calibre will appear to be of lower quality. The paid journals will not change their payment model anytime soon, and the impact factors of open access journals will not rise quickly enough, disadvantaging the current group of young scientists for years to come."

"Plan S has strong additional disadvantages for the social sciences and the humanities."

"I am a massive supporter of open science (see https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-015-0669-2) but plan S has not been thought through."

"Availability of pre-prints from institutional data bases: Why would this not be sufficient for open access?"

"Open Access may have some virtues, of course, but many of the arguments in favour of it I do not support because they are incorrect or highly ideological. The Open Access Movement is borne by some, what I call "Internet mentality" - get everything instantaneously and get everything for free. I am afraid that this lacks the desireable sustainability - just to use another now fashionable expression. Everyone wants to get paid, but no one wants to pay."

"The open access approaches are a classic example of ideas with generally good intentions creating unintentional disastrous outcomes. Anything which leads to incentives for journals to publish papers based on criteria other than scholarly merit was likely to have perverse outcomes and so it is proving."

"I am very concerned about the paucity of consultation and genuine collaboration on this important topic."

"Will lead to unfortunate constipation of high-quality publications in EU countries with drastic effects on young researchers' careers in Europe - maybe an argument for exiting EU?"

"In my opinion the optimum solution is to keep the peer review system as it is (tolerating subscriptions and paywalls) but funding bodies should require parallel publication in open repositories (like arXiv). As far as I know, global publishers have nothing against (or have to tolerate) such practices. Any researcher who wants (or is compelled) to make his outcome open to general public - can make it open. Even now."

"In the United States, we decided that education was a right when we started requiring education for all children. Part of reducing inequality has to come from giving free-access to already taxpayer funded research. William Ervin"

"I trust traditional publications run by professional society the most."

"Matter precedes Thought, we are part of the Matter of the Universe, we all own Thought."

"Indeed, too risky."

"I strongly support the letter, because Plan S indeed restricts the scientific freedom, and is dangerous for the most prestigious high JIF physical journals using hybrid model of publication, the only model that allows publication for the scientists from moderate and low-income countries. So Plan S is completely unfair for the scientists from moderate and low-income countries..."

"I am far from being against open access, but we still have no clear policy and no study of how this will affect disciplines, notably in the SSH, countries, including 'better off ones' that maintain low research budgets in the SSH, and academic freedom to publish where the researcher deems best. Bad OA policy, or total lack thereof, shoots social impact in the foot."

"It's incredible that this was passed with zero consultation and wider thought for the broad-reaching implications. I fully support open-access publication but a top-down approach that is not even well implemented will only serve to harm Swedish science and put Sweden at a competitive disadvantage while bringing little or no material gain in terms of access to research."

"You might also consider what about open source publication of results obtained with public funding after the funding has expired."

"Each of my recent (10-yr) papers are found, online (on arXiv), as preprint (before publication), and FREE for the public (to read or download). Some of them are made available by the journals, online, and free to the readers, after ONE YEAR (the same tiered policy, as if you want to buy a cheap or luxurious airline ticket or a cheap or luxurious opera seat). Plan S supporters do not give a solution for paying the salaries of the workers at the publishing journals (who deal with scientific merit, normal costs, etc)."

"Plan S is terrible for independent researchers as well."

"Plan S sounds democratic but will kill academic quality."

"I'm ultimately in favor of open access but not via this proposed route."

"The plan S should be stopped!!"

"Strongly support."

"Not until there are established and high quality OA journals."

"However well-intentioned, Plan-S in its current form presents plain overreach, micromanaging the publication process to an absurd degree."

""Open access" means paying thousands of $ to a private company for sending the MS to a couple of "experts" and put a document in a web server. It was invented for dealing with a (de facto) non-existing problem (the free access to the scientific literature) and it's allowing/favoring the existence of predatory journals. Everything disguised as "openness" and "political correctness"."

"Strongly against as presented."

"Open Access is fine, but then the organization requiring it should bear the cost."

"This plan threatens high quality science in Europe."

"Too far, make it balanced."

"The guidelines of Plan S constitute a serious infringement on academic freedom. Furthermore, it is not clear how the proposed open-access system of publication improves upon current practices; in fact, it threatens to destroy a well-functioning system of knowledge dissemination built over centuries, since at least the invention of printing."

"Scientists need choice. As an independent scientist, I cannot afford to publish in most Open Access journals. I reject the totalitarian intentions of Plan S."

"I have made similar arguments into the UK’s House of Lords Science and Technology Commitee investigation on Open Access, see https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldselect/ldsctech/122/12209.htm"

"Plan S will cause a flood of predatory publishers of which we have too many already."

"An author-pays model is disturbing for a junior academic. I am expected to publish say five papers per year in order to get tenure. At a high of 2000 euros per publication this could amount to up to 50,000 euros over the course of my five to six year assistant professorship and is a very substantial proportion of my startup funds. In addition to the concerns raised in the letter, junior academics without large grants will be put in an uncomfortable position in which we can not get major funding without publications but we cannot get publications without major funding."

"Plan S would hurt scientists who are not funded from a national science foundation as well as independent researchers."

"I agree on the vast majority of issues raised in this letter.I'm really all for Open Access, but in a less destructive way for (young) scientists than is proposed in Plan S."

"Slecht idee!"

"Public knowledge to all ! Spread the flame to share the light don’t hold it !"

"The current plan brings on too large risks for European science and for the careers of scientists."

"Let's not go in the same direction as the "free" news."

"Hybrid journals are fine."

"I can't believe they're shooting themselves in the foot like that."

"As Editor of a Journal emanating from a Scientific Society, I see great danger for the future of scholarly publication. The fact that the institutions backing the S-plan represent a mere ~4% of the world's scientific publication suggest that background lobbying from Publishers to favour the S-plan is a reasonable working hypothesis."

"Plan S has unforseen consequences for all of us, and particularly for young upcoming scientists."

"Strongly against."

"It is too risky at moment. We need to connect more research communities around the world and then take a decision as once. Otherwise, we will be isolated and it will not create an impact what we want."

"Agree in letter."

"I sign the Plan S Open Letter."

"I fully agree."

"The inventors of Plan S appear to be sidestepping the nasty question of who pays for it outside the Plan S-subscribing countries, of which mine is not one."

"Plan S is against academic freedom. Also, it will hurt those who want to publish in high-quality journals in economics, as the overwhelming majority of these journals is not compatible with Plan S."

"Is there an analysis of likely impact available for wide access?"

"As a young researcher looking to apply for fellowships the implementation of PlanS concerns me. The language used suggests they will roll this out regardless of any concerns. A push to publish in open access journals is a positive goal but why not incentivize publishing in these journals instead of forcing it? It will then gradually become the norm in a more fluid manner, avoiding "punishments". For a second there I thought we were back in primary school, but no we are all adults.

PlanS will affect funding and collaboration whilst giving even more power to obsolete journals who will most likely seize this opportunity to increase publication fees knowing academics are being forced to publish with them.

Why not just go one step further and remove the middle man, the journal staff? Journals held an important role in a pre-internet society, but from experience academics now conduct 99.9% of all the work, even as far as correctly formatting to the journals' required template formats; whilst being charged extortionate fees for this "privilege"; having their impact factor dangled in-front of us as the incentive.

If PlanS goes ahead without addressing these concerns then I will advocate and push towards open-access, peer review and publishing independent of obsolete journals, in-line with a more modern scientific world."

"Totally agree, implementation of this plan would be a good example of the unintended consequences. Paid journals usually mean quality, since they have strict peer review and are not eager to accept low quality articles in exchange for a fee. While there are several good quality open journals, their publication fees are not by any measure cheap, a situation that limits the number of publications and thus information."

"While there are items in Plan S with which ANS agrees—such as supporting Open Access (OA) and publishing OA journals—we have concerns about the implications the plan would have, particularly with the restrictions it would place on the freedom of researchers to choose where to publish their papers. There also is concern that the plan would not support high-quality peer-review and dissemination of published research and that its implementation would disrupt scholarly communications."

"Only way out from the anglo-saxon publication mafia: create a full-range of modern, open-access, non-profit European science journals managed on European public funds with an obligation for research funded by EU money to be published in these journals (to guarantee that they will have good impact factors)."