{"id":3725,"date":"2021-01-22T17:51:14","date_gmt":"2021-01-22T17:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/aaas-aligns-with-plan-s-announces-open-access-policy-for-science-journals\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T15:24:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T09:54:42","slug":"aaas-aligns-with-plan-s-announces-open-access-policy-for-science-journals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/aaas-aligns-with-plan-s-announces-open-access-policy-for-science-journals","title":{"rendered":"AAAS aligns with Plan S; announces open access policy for Science journals"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a non-profit publisher that publishes the Science<\/i> group of journals, recently announced a new policy to align itself with Plan S<\/a> \u2013 an initiative by cOAlition S to\u00a0expedite immediate and open access of scientific literature. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

cOAlition S\u00a0 mandates that an author accepted manuscript must comply with\u00a0CC BY 4.0 license or a CC BY-ND license. Therefore, as part of the updated policy, AAAS will allow authors funded by cOAlition S organizations to reuse and distribute their accepted manuscripts with a required license immediately. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

To comply with Plan S, which came into effect from January 1, 2021, several subscription based journals have come forth with various plans. While many require authors to pay article processing charges, AAAS believes this could put added pressure on authors. Structural biologist Stephen Curry at Imperial College London said: \u201cIt\u2019s a bold move to go for a green OA solution to meeting Plan S requirements, and notable that they are pointing to the inequities associated with the article-processing-charge business model.<\/a>\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A report<\/a> published by Clarivate Analytics states that \u201c31% of articles published in Science<\/i> in 2017 acknowledged grants from a Plan S funder.\u201d While authors publishing in Science <\/i>journals who aren\u2019t funded by cOAlition S would not be part of the new policy. Commenting on this, Lisa Hinchliffe, a librarian at the University of Illinois, said<\/a>: \u201cIt is unfortunate that this perpetuates the differentials we see in the ecosystem, where some publishing pathways\u2019 privileges are extended to certain scholars but not others.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

AAAS intends to pilot the green open access model for a year to understand whether it is a sustainable option for its paywalled journals. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Related reading:<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n