Wellcome’s Kiley to take lead on Plan S

Robert Kiley, head of open research at the UK-based philanthropic research funder the Wellcome Trust, is to take over the leadership of the controversial open-access initiative Plan S on an interim basis.

Kiley is to become interim coordinator of Coalition S, the group of funders that has signed up to implementing Plan S, according to a Science Europe announcement on 27 February. Science Europe, an association of research funders and performers, provides a secretariat for Plan S, whose signatory funders will require the researchers they support to make their papers openly available immediately from 2020.

Leadership of Plan S is changing because the initiative’s “champion” Robert-Jan Smits is to end his term as the European Commission’s special envoy for open access on 28 February. He will begin his next role, as president of the executive board of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, on 1 March.