June 17, 2020

Prepared by Kathleen Shearer, Executive Director, COAR

Executive Summary

In 2019, a group of funders known as cOAlition S adopted Plan S, a set of principles and requirements for full and immediate Open Access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications resulting from the research they fund, beginning in 2021. One of the routes for complying with Plan S is for authors to make the final published version (Version of Record, VoR) or the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) openly available with an open license in a Plan S compliant repository with immediate OA from the date of publication.

In order to support compliance with Plan S, repository software platforms, repository managers and researchers (who use the repositories) will need to be aware of the requirements and, in some cases, adopt new practices and functionalities. In April/May 2020 the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), in consultation with cOAlition S, conducted a survey of repository platforms in order to assess their current ability and intention to support Plan S requirements, and to identify any specific challenges related to their implementation.

The survey found that most repository platforms currently support compliance with Plan S mandatory criteria and, in the few cases where they do not, there are plans to adopt this functionality. In addition, many of the highly recommended criteria are also already supported by the platforms. As a next step, COAR and cOAlition S will continue to work together to ensure that repositories are well represented and develop more detailed guidance that assists them in supporting the major functionalities envisioned in Plan S.