Plan S / NCN Policy
Plan S is a set of guidelines for open access to scholarly publications. It was developed by cOAlition S, an initiative of research funding agencies and foundations supported by the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC). The National Science Center has been a member of this coalition since its inception.
The Plan S Principles:
Authors or their institutions retain copyright to their publications. All publications must be published under an open license, preferably the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY), in order to fulfil the requirements defined by the Berlin Declaration.
The Funders will develop robust criteria and requirements for the services that high-quality Open Access journals, Open Access platforms, and Open Access repositories must provide.
In cases where high-quality Open Access journals or platforms do not yet exist, the Funders will, in a coordinated way, provide incentives to establish and support them when appropriate; support will also be provided for Open Access infrastructures where necessary.
Where applicable, Open Access publication fees are covered by the Funders or research institutions, not by individual researchers; it is acknowledged that all researchers should be able to publish their work Open Access.
The Funders support the diversity of business models for Open Access journals and platforms. When Open Access publication fees are applied, they must be commensurate with the publication services delivered and the structure of such fees must be transparent to inform the market and facilitate the potential standardisation and capping of payments of fees.
The Funders encourage governments, universities, research organisations, libraries, academies, and learned societies to align their strategies, policies, and practices, notably to ensure transparency.
The above principles shall apply to all types of scholarly publications, but it is understood that the timeline to achieve Open Access for monographs and book chapters will be longer and requires a separate due process.
The Funders do not support the ‘hybrid’ model of publishing. However, as a transitional pathway towards full Open Access within a clearly defined timeframe, and only as part of transformative arrangements, Funders may contribute to financially supporting such arrangements.
The Funders will monitor compliance and sanction non-compliant beneficiaries/grantees.
The Funders commit that when assessing research outputs during funding decisions they will value the intrinsic merit of the work and not consider the publication channel, its impact factor (or other journal metrics), or the publisher.
Plan S – original document in English (on cOAlition S website)
NCN Policy
The Polish document that applies on behalf of NCN vis-à-vis Plan S is – NCN Policy on Open Access and the instruction to this document.
Documents:
Key issue of open access pathways in NCN policy
AAM (Author Accepted Manuscript) – is the final author-created version of the manuscript, which includes any changes made after peer-review and has been accepted for publication by the journal.
APC (Article Processing Charges) – are charged to authors of scholarly articles during the publication process.
VoR (Version of Record) – is the version that has been published in a journal, in print and/or online.
Open publication paths until further notice
| Path 1 | Path 2 | Path 3 | |
| Journal type | Full-open access | Subscription | Transformative – list, covered by a license agreement – information |
| Manuscript type | Online or alternatively AAM/VoR version available in repository | Paper published on the journal’s website + preprint (as soon as paper is published) with the assigned PID (e.g. DOI) made available in the repository + AAM/VoR version made available in the repository after the embargo is over | Online on the journal’s website or alternatively AAM/VoR version available in the repository |
| Temporary embargo on AAM | Does not concern if article was published according to conditions of Path 1 | Possible embargo on AAM/VoR | Does not concern if article was published according to conditions of Path 3 |
| License | All CC 4.0 licences are accepted, CC BY 4.0 preferred | Preprint – CC-BY 4.0 AAM/VoR – CC-BY 4.0 or CC BY-ND 4.0 (in justified cases after consultation with NCN) | CC-BY 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC BY-ND 4.0 (in justified cases after consultation with NCN) |
| Publishing eligible costs | APC)– paper published under a CC BY 4.0 or CC BY-ND 4.0 licence (where justified) | non-eligible costs | Article Processing Charges (APC) (if an article was accepted for publication or published before 31.12.2024) |
| Additional conditions | The journal must be registered with the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) | The repository where the preprint and AAM/VoR will be placed must be registered with openDOAR | Publishing eligible costs till 31.12.2024. Journal has to be under programme included in the ESAC list (ESAC) |
Where to check if a journal complies with the requirements of Plan S?
- Journal Checker Tool – a tool to check the compliance of scientific journals and publishing platforms with Plan S.
- Jisc’s open policy finder – is a free service, which allowed you to check the journal’s policy according to copyright and open access
Please note
If you want to check a full publishing policy, please visit the website of the selected journal, to be sure, that its policy meets Plan S requirements.