On 4 September 2018 Science Europe, a group of national research funding organisations, and Robert-Jan Smits, Senior Advisor on Open Access at the European Commission, announced the launch of Plan S. The target of this plan is that:

“by 2020 scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants provided by participating national and European research councils and funding bodies must be published in compliant Open Access Journals or on compliant Open Access Platforms.”

In addition the plan consists of 10 principles outlining ambitions with respect to, among others, copyright and licenses, fees and funding, quality open access journals and the role of open archives and repositories.

The Dutch research funder NWO is one of the participants of the coalition implementing the plan.

Much is yet unknown about the implementation of ‘Plan S’, details are currently being finalised and will be publicly released when ready. The impact of the plan on the publishing options for researchers also depends on the response of publishers to the plan.