Robin Crewe: I don’t see why SA needs to join Plan S

A former president of the Academy of Science of South Africa has questioned the need for South African funders to adopt Plan S, the controversial open-access publishing initiative predominantly supported by European funders.

Robin Crewe said in an interview posted on the International Council for Science blog that he believes South Africa already has the means for academics to publish in open access journals and fulfil the principles behind Plan S without nailing the country’s flag to the initiative’s mast.

“I think that Plan S is a grand plan, but the devil is in the detail, and the detail is the specific way in which funding takes place in a country like South Africa. […] I think we need to interrogate this much more carefully,” he said.