cOAlition S confirms price transparency requirements for OA

International research funding consortium cOAlition S has confirmed the price transparency requirements it will be requiring all publishers to adhere to from July 2022.

Publishers will have to provide data in line with either the Breakdown of Publication Services and Fees developed by the Fair Open Access Alliance, which has been implemented by Frontiers, MIT Press, Copernicus and MPDI, or the Plan S Price and Transparency Framework developed by Information Power, which has been piloted by Annual Reviews, Brill, The Company of Biologists, EMBO Press, European Respiratory Society, F1000 Research, Hindawi, IOP Publishing, PLOS and Springer Nature.

"In line with the Plan S guidance, cOAlition S will only support Open Access publication fees which are fair and reasonable", the coalition said. When Open Access publication fees are applied, they must be commensurate with the publication services delivered and the structure of such fees must be transparent, it added.

Robert Kiley, head of Open Research at Wellcome, co-ordinating comment from cOAlition S, said: “Providing this information is an opportunity for publishers to demonstrate their commitment to open models and business cultures, to build awareness of their services and value, to build trust with their customers and to be more responsive to their needs. Providing this data also enables publishers to qualify for OA funding under Plan S."

At Springer Nature, chief publishing officer Steven Inchcoombe said: “Springer Nature participated in the steering group overseeing the exploration and drafting of the Plan S Price and Transparency Framework, developed by Information Power last year, as we believed this would be good for competition and importantly help improve understanding and trust in the market place. To ensure the framework worked in practice, we participated in the pilot which has been taking place during the first quarter of this year.

"We remain supportive and have been working with cOAlition S to establish a means via which this transparency will, we believe, be compatible with competition law. We look forward to continue working with cOAlition S, Information Power and any data aggregators and analytics service providers to deliver this increased transparency. With respect to Nature and Nature-branded research journals we think this extra transparency will help other stakeholders understand their value and differences from most other journals and therefore be helpful in establishing their transition path to OA.”

A Taylor & Francis spokesperson said: "We are constructively engaged with cOAlition S and are analysing the transparency requirements, but have no comment on specific details at the moment."