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ORSU: Open Research Support Unit

ORSU: Open Research Support Unit

Increasingly, research funders are mandating that outputs of publicly funded research be freely available to all. 

 

What is Plan S?

Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing which is supported by cOAlition S, a group of research funders and research organisations. Plan S requires that, from 2021 onward, publications funded by cOAlition S members must be made Open Access immediately upon publication.

Researchers must make their publications open access either by: publishing them in an Open Access journal OR publishing an Open Access article in a subscription journal under a ‘transformative agreement’ and/or making their accepted manuscript available in an Open Access repository.

What is required?

If you are in receipt of research funding from one of the cOAlition S member organisations, you will need to make sure that your journal articles are made Open Access immediately*.

There are multiple ways to make your work Open Access and comply with Plan S. You can find more information on how to comply at this link: https://www.coalition-s.org/faq-theme/compliance/

COAlition S funders will actively monitor publications to ensure that they are open access (and that they are properly compliant with Plan S). In order to avoid negative communications from funders, time-consuming retrospective 'fixes', and possible penalties, it is strongly advised that researchers ensure that all of their funded journal articles (and any other publications possible) are made open access and Plan S-compliant as soon they are accepted for publication.

What you must do:

Inform your publisher that your authors accepted manuscript is open access under a creative commons license.  When submitting to a journal you should include the following information.

  • Name of your funder and your grant number
  • Text to indicate that any AAM arising from the submission is already licensed CC BY. For example:

“This work was funded by [funder name] [grant number] For the purpose of Open Access the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.”

Check your own grant agreement or the cOAlition S organisations’ implementation webpage for details: https://www.coalition-s.org/plan-s-funders-implementation/

Transformative Agreements’ with publishers

A transformative agreement is an agreement between a library or library consortium and a publisher, which aims to move away from subscription-based access to publications, and towards Open Access publishing.

In Ireland, the IREL consortium has negotiated  ‘open access agreements’ with a number of publishers e been reached with these publishers. In most cases, these agreements mean that you can publish an Open Access article in one of the publisher's journals, and any Open Access fees will be covered by the agreement.

Check this site for full details of each of these deals: https://irel.ie/open-access/

How to Comply

Use the Journal CheckerTool to check if the journal is compliant with Plan S

Regardless of the route you choose to comply with Plan S, you should:

  • Add your publication details (including funder name and grant number) to Arrow@Tudublin
  • Upload your Author's Accepted Manuscript (after peer review) to Arrow@Tudublin. [You may upload the final published pdf instead if you have published in an Open Access journal].

In this way, you will immediately make your publication compliant with both Plan S and the Open Access Policy for Publications and Data for Technological University Dublin. You will also have a record of your compliance that you can use for internal and external reporting.

Most major funders will now mandate that both publications and data be made open access.  This is important to ensure that scholarship is now hidden behind paywalls and available only to those whose libraries can afford expensive subscriptions.

The following funding agencies have open access requirements pertaining to publications arising from your research and your data:

Some funding agencies now provide platforms for open access publishing of funded research through the Open Research Central platform in collaboration with F1000 including: