Plan S for Shock

Front matter

PLAN S

FOR SHOCK

SCIENCE.

Contents

Acknowledgements vii Foreword ix Introduction xi Part One 1 1.1 Welcome to the world of academic publishing 5 1.2 What exactly is open access anyway? 7 A note on licensing 9 1.3 Why OA? 9 Reason 1: It’s the principle 9 Reason 2: It makes economic sense 11 Reason 3: It makes research more accessible - which benefits society 13 Reason 4: Open access makes the research process faster and more efficient 14 Reason 5: Open access improves the quality and trustability of research 16 Reason 6: Its in the public interest 18 Reason 7: It makes research more inclusive 21 Reason 8: It allows for inclusiveness and connectivity 24 Reason 9: It helps the Global South 24 Reason 10: Academic research was always intended to be open 26 1.4 Academic publishing: a brief history 27 History repeating 29 Publishing becomes big business 30 1.5 The internet and OA: the early pioneers 32 The European campaign 36 A new era for academic publishing 36 1.6 The Wellcome Trust and Gates Foundation pave the way for OA 37 1.7 The Finch Report: taking OA to a political level 42

1.8 Brussels gets involved; the momentum picks up 43

1.9 Slow progress: the move towards OA stagnates

Part Two 2.13

2.14 2.15

2.16 2.17

2.18

‘The open access envoy

Forming a plan

‘The impact on smaller publishers

Warning bells

Gaining allies

The European tour

Support arrives from the universities

Gaining support from the younger generation of researchers Compromises, compromises

The Coalition is born

The first setbacks

Putting the Science Europe face on; Plan S makes its first headlines September 2018: The launch

To the movies

October 2018: the US road trip

You win some, you lose some

A breakdown of the common criticisms to Plan S APCs and the quality debate

Lack of global awareness/coordination

An attack on academic freedom?

Towards a Plan S implementation guidance Berlin 2018: a radical intervention

China shocks the world at OA2020 in Berlin Transforming the narrative

Celebrating rebels

47 52 53 57 61 63

2.19 Berlin take two: entering the lion’s den 123

2.20 Latin America speaks out 124 2.21 Big interest from big players ... and another withdrawal 127 2.22 The goodbye 129 Part Three 131 3.1 Changing the narrative 131 1. Transformative agreements: a valid solution? 132

A mixed reception 134

2. New publishing platforms 138

3. Copyright reigns supreme ... 139

... But publishers won't give up copyright without a fight 142

3.2 Reimagining publisher business models 144 The big five today: appetite for change? 146

The fall of publisher power 153

3.3 The future of academic publishing 155 Idea 1: Journals will be dead 155

Idea 2: Articles will be dead - well, almost 158

Idea 3: New technologies will lead the way ... 161

... If data is made open 161

Idea 4: Attitudes towards cost will change ... 163

... And journals will have to get creative ... 164

... But not all will survive 165

3.4 Navigating the data-led future 167 The role of funders and institutions 168 Managing academic data 170 Europes role in protecting academic data 171

The impact of Covid 174 Putting power back into the hands of experts 178

3.5 Plan S as a continued source of debate 179 No silver bullet 180 Changing the culture in academia with each new generation 182 Money remains a sticking point 185

The final word on hybrids 186

Looking beyond the APC model Will the US make a move on OA? 3.6 Open science: the new normal 3.7 Taking stock of the legacy

Epilogue: Seven Lessons Learned 1. Make a plan 2. Seek out allies 3. Listen to your peers 4. Communicate, and stay in the news 5. Engage with your opponents 6. Learn to be resilient

7. Know when it is done; plan an exit

Index

188 188 191 192

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to sincerely thank everyone who has given their time to contribute towards this book. For some this meant several hours of interviews; for others it was the painful task of digging through documents from several years ago to provide sources, figures or background information. Thank you for your valuable insights and patience.

All the publishers mentioned in the text were contacted with a request for an interview and given the right to respond to content. A special thanks to those who chose to respond.

We would especially like to thank Frederick Fenter, Lia Noce, Agata Zaza and the rest of the team at Frontiers, without whom this book would not have been possible. Frontiers paid for Rachael's time spent writing the book, but had no influence over its content or editorial direction.

Finally, this book was written with the intention of prompting debate as part of the continuing conversations happening around open access, and we welcome readers’ comments and observations.

Foreword

Scientific publication has undergone a significant transformation as a result of our now universal dependence on electronic communication. In order to survive, publishers and journals have increasingly turned away from print in favour of online access. With the advent of online publication, the speed of dissemination and wide access to research findings has challenged the traditional business model of subscription. Scientific societies and commercial publishers have struggled to maintain control of their copyrighted work in the face of easy access to preprint archives and wide dissemination of pdf copies of publications that previously were held behind paywalls available only to subscribers.

A relatively new model, open access, where the author pays for wide and immediate dissemination of their work, has challenged the hegemony of the subscription model. In open access, the true costs, and profits, of publication are made transparent as the author is directly responsible for the full expense. The advantages of open access are obvious and have become apparent to all with the immediate and open disclosure of Covid-19-related publications made available by commercial and not-for-profit publishers during the pandemic. But to many scholars in research subject areas or geographic locations where the expense of open access may be prohibitive, the downside of this model is also obvious. For the model to be adopted internationally, some form of subsidy must be developed at the level of the publisher or the institutional sponsor.

In spite of the advantages of open access, the model has been slow to take hold, primarily because of opposition from commercial publishers and certain x Plan S for Shock large scientific societies where the financial gains from the subscription model has produced a huge profit incentive. The most selective scientific journals wield considerable influence among scholars who seek career advancement on the strength of publication in brand name journals such as Nature, Science and in the life sciences, Cell. The power of branding has been enhanced by the use of an alluringly simple metric, the Journal Impact Factor, which is advertised as a measure of the quality of individual research articles published by a selective journal. Unfortunately, this number, which was created to be used by librarians to help guide the selection of journals for subscription, has been promoted by commercial concerns to be used as a measure of scholarship where in fact it is more of an indication of the popularity and timeliness of an individual contribution.

The issues of open access and measures of journal impact are addressed head-on in this book by Robert-Jan Smits and Rachael Pells. Ms Pells and Mr Smits present the issues from both sides with particular emphasis on the efforts of formal and informal groups of scholars and academic leaders who seek to promote the adoption of open access by all publishers. Among these groups, a particularly successful organisation, cOAlition S (https://www.coalition -s.org), has advanced the cause with the promotion of Plan S, an effort to encourage all government and private funding agencies to move forward to adopt open access for the publication of all supported research. Plan S calls for a gradual but deliberate shift away from the subscription model. As a result of these efforts, several major private funding agencies such as the Wellcome Trust, the Gates foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have adopted the guidelines of Plan S. No doubt in response to the pressure applied by these and other funding agencies, a number of commercial publishers have agreed to transition to fully open access models in the years ahead.

At the same time, journals have been challenged to adopt other measures of scientific impact and to eschew the use of such simple metrics as impact factor. Ms Pells and Mr Smits describe the role of a group of journal editors who developed a Declaration of Research Assessment (DORA; https://sfdora.org) to encourage all in the business of research dissemination to view scholarship more broadly with a mission to “To advance practical and robust approaches to research assessment globally”.

With all these efforts, it remains in the control of individual scholars and their institutions who assess research achievement, to adapt to the changes motivated by open access. The power of journal brand name and false measures of impact remain deeply embedded in the culture of scientific publication. This book offers a compelling look at how the necessary changes may advance.

Randy Schekman

Department of Molecular and Cell Biology Howard Hughes Medical Institute University of California, Berkeley

Introduction

If global crises have taught us anything, it is that access to information is king. At the time of writing this book, we are slowly coming out of a pandemic that has directly claimed around five and a half million lives, and indirectly millions more. Covid-19 has thrown communities and economies into freefall. The one thing that feels certain at a time like this is the need for certainty: by way of facts and figures; reassurances about what is happening to the world around us; knowledge that allows experts to find the best solutions to bring us out of the crisis.

When news of the mysterious and contagious new virus spread across China around the 2019-20 New Year, world health authorities were quick to raise the alarm. Researchers around the globe raced to find a vaccine, their pace made possible by the prompt decision from scientists in China to share the genetic code of the disease. They made the information open - in sharing the secrets of the problem, the problem was tackled by thousands more international colleagues.

Governments, too, have shifted in attitudes towards making the results of publicly funded research free - search ‘Covid-19 and you will be able to read the latest peer-reviewed findings on a virus that we knew nothing of until 2020. The shared crisis we now face has shone a spotlight on our ability as a species to club together and find solutions to benefit everyone, and it is a really positive story.

In decades to come, when the pandemic becomes a memory and not a lived experience, the idea that such information was not always freely and easily accessible will seem crazy. It might sound crazy to you even now. But despite all the lessons learned during this crisis - and from the many previous global

How to cite this book chapter:

Smits, R-J. and Pells, R. 2022. Plan S for Shock: Science. Shock. Solution. Speed. Pp. xi-xiii. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bcq.a. License: CC-BY-NC xii Plan S for Shock health and economic crises - we are still living in a world where access to expert research is not guaranteed. Today, as many as two thirds? of academic research papers are hidden behind a paywall: those are the health findings, the social reflections and philosophies, possible cures for illnesses and solutions to the threats presented by climate change, the clues that already exist to improve our quality of life.

One of the clearest examples of this in recent times was illustrated in an open letter published by the New York Times in 2015. In “Yes, We Were Warned about Ebola? a group of senior health researchers including the chief medical officer of Liberia wrote that the devastating spread of Ebola could have been prevented. In fact, they pointed out, the epidemic had been predicted way back in 1982 - but the relevant research was published in a subscription-only journal with limited readership. Not enough people had access to the information to learn about it or conduct the necessary further research to work towards preventing the problem.

It will likely be several years before we can come to understand the true extent of the disruption, chaos and trauma caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is important we learn from our mistakes. If we can bring together stakeholders from across continents and industries to agree to make the results of Covid-19 research freely available - and we did manage it extremely quickly - why can the same not be done for research into climate change, cancer research, social inequality and food security? All these issues and more will continue to present major challenges to human health and the future of our planet over the coming decades.

Crucial to communities’ social and economic recovery will be ease of access to the increasing body of multidisciplinary research surrounding this global crisis - from the scientific immunology reports to studies into social care and justice. Whether or not Covid-19 will be the final push needed to break the publishing cycle, only time will tell. In the meantime, it is vital that free access to information is safeguarded - more than this, that the output of research funded by the public for the public good is available for the public to read.

This is a book about a bold initiative that helped to expose a broken system, an initiative that set out to flip an archaic academic publishing model on its head. Each year, taxpayers contribute over $2 trillion? towards the world’s

! European Commission. Trends for open access to publications. European Commission; 2019. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and -innovation/strategy/goals-research-and-innovation-policy/open-science /open-science-monitor/trends-open-access-publications_en.

2 Dahn B, Mussah V, Nutt C. Yes, we were warned about Ebola. New York Times, 7 April 2015. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08 /opinion/yes-we-were-warned-about-ebola.html (accessed 13 March 2021).

> Worldbank.org. Research and development expenditure (% of GDP) | Data. World Bank; 2019. Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator /GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS (accessed 13 March 2021).

Introduction xiii research and development, helping to produce around 2.5 million scholarly articles per year - and taxpayers have access to just a fraction of that output. Meanwhile, commercial publishers are turning that public funding into private profit: in 2017, the five largest academic publishing houses boasted a turnover of $19bn.* It is a public scandal that rarely receives the mainstream public attention it deserves.

Plan S was founded on the principles that scientific publications resulting from research funded by public grants must be published immediately and in fully compliant open access journals or platforms for all to read. For 30 years, publishers and researchers alike have agreed that these principles - making research ‘open access’ - should be adhered to. But progress has been slow. Tired of waiting for publishers to comply with the transition towards making journals open, Robert-Jan Smits dared to propose a plan that would shock the sector into action.

Since it was first unveiled, on 4 September 2018, Plan S has received backing from 27 signatories and counting. Additional spoken commitments towards making research open extend almost as far, with statements of intent from the likes of India, China and a number of Latin American and African countries made in recent months. But the real impact of Plan S, it could be said, is the positive change seen in the attitudes of researchers, academic leaders, funders and other decision makers themselves.

This book does not set out to be an academic scholarly work. It is a record, told from the perspective of Robert-Jan Smits, the architect of Plan S, about the story of the open access movement and Plan S more specifically. At the same time, we have approached the writing of this book as a piece of journalism: methodically, with an open mind and seeking to include as many voices as possible from those who were also involved and have an interest in the academic publishing system.

Sometimes it was not possible to include all the perspectives we would have liked - and it is a sad fact that both academic publishing and the world of European policymaking are still dominated by men. But there are so many more people working tirelessly behind the scenes to improve the research system for all. To all those who have fought for open access, we are grateful, and dedicate this book.

t Solomon N. The profits from publishing: authors’ perspective. The Bookseller; 2018. Retrieved from https://www.thebookseller.com/blogs/profits -publishing-authors-perspective-743226 (accessed 13 March 2021). See also: Buranyi S. Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? The Guardian, 27 June 2017. Retrieved from https:// www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific -publishing-bad-for-science (accessed 13 March 2021).

Part One

Pam Callaway had been feeling unwell for some time, but even after plenty of tests her doctors were not sure what to diagnose. ‘At first they thought my elevated heart rate was due to a medication side effect, so they took me off it? she recalls. “Then, when I came back in, still feeling off and short of breath, they manually checked for blood clots in my legs but didn't find any:

Pam did in fact have a blood clot so large that it was eventually spotted on a chest X-ray. “Typically, something that shows up in the lungs like that, coupled with shortness of breath, is diagnosed as pneumonia, so they gave me antibiotics; she says. “Three days later, I was so short of breath that I called 911 in a panic, saying I couldn't breathe. They asked if I was having a panic attack, well - I got so mad that I started stomping across the living room and promptly passed out?

By this time, Pam’s husband, Tom, was on his way back from work. ‘I came home and there was an ambulance and she was being loaded into it; he says. ‘I felt incredibly helpless ... a feeling that was reinforced as time passed?

Pam had suffered a pulmonary embolism - a blockage in an artery in her lungs - a life-threatening condition that came on ‘suddenly, unexpectedly’ All her tests came back inconclusive, with future tests contradicting the results of previous tests; no one could say why she had a pulmonary embolism or what caused it. ‘You can't fix something when you don't know what’s broken. It could have been her birth control, it could have been genetics, it could be a blood disease or a disorder, but no one was sure. The only consistent thing we kept hearing was that she was statistically at a greater risk of having another one, says Tom.

‘Tt was extraordinarily frustrating to not have any conclusive answers; Pam adds. ‘I wanted to know what my risk was for another blood clot, and what to tell my family about their risk. I wanted to know everything about the tests, the mechanism of blood clotting, and why this was happening. My haematologist spent a lot of time talking to me about what was known, but, in my case, he could only explain how the blood clots form and not why?

How to cite this book chapter: Smits, R-J. and Pells, R. 2022. Plan S for Shock: Science. Shock. Solution. Speed. Pp. 1-64. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bcq.b. License: CC-BY-NC

Desperate to find some answers, Pam and Tom set about searching for academic research papers online from their home in North Carolina in the hope that they might learn more about Pam’s condition. Tm a smart guy, says Tom, ‘and, while Pm not a doctor or scientist, I thought, if I could see what researchers were discovering, it might open up more options for her.

‘Science is a series of incremental discoveries. I didn’t expect to find a paper that had “this is the reason that Pam got sick and here is how to fix it” bured inside of it, but I wanted to be able to ask informed questions to experts about things they may not have considered. Was there a genetic factor that we could test for?’

It was not long before the Callaways came up against a problem: most of the research papers they wanted to read were stuck behind a paywall. “The paywalls just teased us; says Tom. “They'd show us an abstract that seemed like it would be a factor we could ask about, but we couldn't be sure. We certainly couldn't afford to buy them to find out - the medical expenses were already a burden on us, even with insurance; he adds, far too familiar with the challenges of US healthcare costs.

Tom works in open-source software, which he explains is ‘software where the source code is open for everyone to see, modify, remix and so om: It was therefore ‘especially frustrating to come against all of this valuable medical “source code” and not be able to see it. I wanted to fix the bug that was in her source code, and all of these tools and datasets were locked up in a glass display case. It sucks to feel helpless, and then have that reinforced bya paywall’

Sadly, the Callaways’ story is by no means unique. We live in a world dominated by smart technology and search engine algorithms that make information available to us at the push of a button. At the same time, it is estimated that at least two thirds of the world’s publicly funded research, and an even higher majority of the world’s total research content,° is hidden from view behind a paywall. These paywalls are blocking quite literally millions of people from accessing the information they want or need - that might be in order to learn more about themselves or a loved one’s health condition, or simply to further their education or understanding of the world. But there are plenty of other reasons — some obvious, some less so — as to why free access to scientific information benefits all of us. We'll explore some of them in this chapter, but first: a brief introduction to the world of academic publishing.

Research findings, for the uninitiated, are predominantly published in some form of article, or academic paper - which more often than not are collated as part of an academic journal specialising in a particular subject. The publishing of those papers is most often handled by a publishing company, which requires a fee for their work. So far, so simple.

5 European Commission. Trends for open access to publications. European Commission; n.d. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and -innovation/strategy/goals-research-and-innovation-policy/open-science /open-science-monitor/trends-open-access-publications_en.

The short explanation for why the academic system exists this way is because, centuries ago, scholarly societies began to outsource the distribution of their scientific work to external publishers. Before the advent of the internet, the distribution of physical paper copies was the only way to disseminate scientific knowledge - but researchers had to concede the ownership of the intellectual property of their own work in exchange for the service of distribution.

Over time, these publishers also took it upon themselves to decide the rules of the game: pricing, copyright and access to content have all become factors crucial to the publication process, but are ultimately out of the control of the researchers whose work is published.

Today, many of these publishers operate independently as large, commercial businesses with their own financial agendas to adhere to - the cost of publishing must be covered somehow, ideally for them in a way that suits their business models. As a consequence, publication through these organisations is typically paid for on a subscription basis - hence the term ‘subscription journal’

A subscription-based journal requires its readers to pay for the content they wish to read. In the digital world, this translates into a paywall for non-subscribing readers, much in the same way one might choose to subscribe to their favourite magazine or a pay-to-access news site.

The introduction of the subscription model for academic journals allowed the costs of publishing to be shared across thousands of institutions, which proved effective for a long time. The disruptive technology of the internet should have turned this world upside down, allowing the same information to be validated and distributed at a fraction of the original cost. But its invention also presented a problem for publishers, who wanted to maintain their revenue stream as they moved (slowly) to this new technology. How could they ensure that quality content - the paid-for distribution of which had been so easy to control in printed form - was not stolen from them by being free online? The result was the paywall: a barrier to licensed content on large platforms, that requires access to be paid for, most often with annual subscriptions.

For most academic scholars, the cost of this access tends to be handled by their university library or research institution, the managers of which will typically review subscriptions periodically, signing contracts with the suppliers of the journals they wish their library to stock or have online access to for the coming year. The financial burden is therefore invisible to the average scholar, who can (in theory) log into their library portal to access the papers they want, or perhaps make a request for access to one they do not already have through the librarians themselves.°

6 While most larger research universities and institutions (particularly in the Global North) will have bulk-style subscriptions to most of the big ‘hitters, it is worth noting that this is not a given - the scholar’s library might not necessarily subscribe to the journal that contains the paper the scholar wants access to.

University libraries (the biggest journal subscribers) will almost always pay an agreed sum for all the journals they wish to access as part of a larger subscription deal. These deals are individually agreed upon and shrouded in secrecy — publishers often requiring libraries to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) upon agreement of the price. At any rate, these costs quoted are largely irrelevant - the price here is indicative and is intended to give librarians a sense of why their annual platform subscription costs millions for the bundle. But more on this suspicious state of affairs later on.

The back catalogue tends to be provided as part of the ‘value’ of the electronic subscription. In the past, libraries bought physical copies, which were then the property of the library (which could sell them on, for example). When the platform bundle came along, the model switched to licensed access to content, which locked the libraries into the ‘big deal’ bundles forever, if they wanted to maintain access to existing scientific literature.

Given the distance between the typical researcher and the burden of negotiating access, it is easy to see how, for decades, this existing subscription-based access culture has quietly ticked on without too much question. Researchers are by default passionate about their own subject, whether that be art history or astrophysics, and will dedicate most of their working (and non-working) hours to that effect. Spending time thinking about something so dry and bureaucratic as library budgets and subscriptions is unlikely to be a priority. But the fact that the consumer of services is so separate from the person tasked with negotiating and paying for it provides an additional advantage to the publisher.

Non-academic readers, meanwhile, endure a tougher time if they wish to have access to a piece of scholarly writing or the latest scientific findings. It is true that lay readers like Pam and Tom Callaway can access the content of many of these subscription journals, but only if they are willing to pay a great deal of money. The cost of full access to just one prestigious medical journal will often creep into the tens of thousands - a price list for 2019 from the academic publishing company Elsevier quotes a year’s subscription to the journal of Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews at $11,283, for example.’ A subscription to the full back catalogue of articles is no doubt out of the question for most readers.

Meanwhile, many publishers will allow individuals to download a copy of a paper on a pay-per-view basis. But what if the purchased paper doesn't offer the answers the reader had hoped for? Even a modest survey of the existing literature on any subject will require accessing hundreds if not thousands of articles. At one point, Pam admits she ‘considered paying the ridiculous sums of money required to gain access. But, as Tom adds, “The risk was definitely real that we were looking at something that wasn't useful, and the cost per download made it functionally impossible to dig deeper’

A typical scientific paper published behind the paywall of a journal website hosted by Elsevier, for example (the largest and most dominant academic

7 Elsevier.com. Print price list. Elsevier; 2021. Retrieved from https://www .elsevier.com/books-and-journals/journal-pricing/print-price-list (accessed 13 March 2021).

publisher) will, at the time of writing, incur a one-off download cost of around $39.99. The lay researcher curious about their own health condition cannot typically afford to download more than a handful of those papers before facing a very large bill. And why should they, when in all likelihood their taxes have gone towards paying for that research in the first place? It is an injustice that continues to fuel the fire of campaigners.

In practice, most academic authors will respond to an email request from any interested stranger or colleague asking them to share their published paper or ‘preprint’® with them for free - why would they not, when what most researchers want is for more people to engage with their work? Publishers may not like it, but even they cannot control a casual email conversation between two individuals on an informal basis.

Regardless, a barrier still remains in that, in order to request a paper from an author, the interested reader still has to be able to find that paper - or, rather, stumble across it and wonder whether or not it might be worthwhile. And, in a case of one human being versus the internet, that in itself can be a daunting and frustrating endeavour.