Open Access Publishing
Open access ensures that scientific publications are accessible to everyone free of charge.
Plan S
Plan S is an open access initiative launched by research funders. At its core is the objective that all scholarly articles resulting from publicly funded research must be published immediately open access under open license.
Plan S has two primary goals
- to make scientific publications that result from publicly funded research accessible to everyone and
- to implement open access without unreasonable costs
What does Plan S mean in practice?
Plan S means that researchers funded by the Coalition S partners need to follow in their research projects. In practice there are three ways of publishing articles open access (Source: ): 
-
Open access journals or platforms
- Immediate open access under by publishing article in an open access journal or platform
-
Transformative open access agreements and journals
- Immediate open access under by publishing article:
- under a transformative open access agreement in a subscription (hybrid) journal, or
- in
- Immediate open access under by publishing article:
-
Manuscript route
- Immediate open access under for the author accepted manuscript (AAM) by:
- publishing article in a subscription journal behind the paywall, and
- sharing the AAM in a trusted repository (e.g. ACRIS in Aalto University) immediately after publication with CC BY license
- Immediate open access under for the author accepted manuscript (AAM) by:
Please note:
- Currently, only few publishers (e.g. and ) allow the combination of CC BY license and zero-embargo for author accepted manuscripts (AAMs).
- Publishers usually offer the option of publishing the article gold open access or via transformative open access agreements to comply with Plan S principles. Authors are always encouraged to check publishers’ Plan S compliant options before submitting their papers.
- Use the to search for Plan S compliant journals.
Both European Commission (Horizon Europe) and Research Council of Finland (former Academy of Finland) are participating in Plan S.
Some publishers have detailed guidelines on how to comply with Plan S principles when publishing in their journals, some publishers have more general open access policies.
If you are unsure of the open access policy by a certain publisher and possibilities to comply with Plan S, please contact Open Science and ACRIS team at acris@aalto.fi for guidance and help. In addition, you can use the to search for Plan S compliant journals.
cOAlition S has published a in autumn 2021. cOAlition S recognizes that academic book publishing is very different from journal publishing, and instead of an uniform policy, a set of recommendations regarding academic books have been formulated. These recommendations are in line with Plan S principles and give funders an opportunity to issue their own recommendations for academic books.
More detailed information about funders' Plan S requirements
Remember to log in to see the internal content.
Funders' open science requirements
Explore the open science requirements set by major research funders.
Contact information
For any questions, please don't hesitate to contact Open Science and ACRIS team at acris@aalto.fi.
