Plan S must respect journal brand values, says Lancet editor

The editor in chief of the medical journal The Lancet has told funders backing the controversial open-access initiative Plan S that top-ranked journals such as his are worth paying extra for.

But Richard Horton admitted that editors will need to prove it to those holding the purse strings.

In an editorial published on 6 June, Horton welcomed many aspects of Plan S, under which a group of funders called Coalition S will require the research they support to be made openly available immediately from 2021. But he said that his views differ from those of Coalition S on the important issue of whether funders should be prepared to pay for the “brand value” of journals.