Plan S transparency push gains tentative publisher buy-in

Companies including Springer Nature join pricing pilot despite concerns

Academic publishers have taken tentative steps towards embracing the transparency over their pricing being demanded by the funders behind the Plan S open access initiative.   

The call for more transparency over journal publishing has been backed by a report prepared for the initiative based on surveys of publishers, universities and libraries. But it comes amid increasingly vocal pushback from publishers towards Plan S, which is pushing for all research to be immediately accessible openly from 2021.