Plan S at BMJ for authors

What is Plan S? (and what does it mean for me as an author?)
Plan S is an initiative to drive wider adoption of open access publishing that was launched in 2018 by cOAlition S, an international consortium of organisations who fund or carry out research. The first and main objective was to require that, from 2021, publicly-funded research must only be published in journals or on platforms on an open access basis without embargo.

There are three routes for authors to be compliant with Plan S and BMJ supports all three routes:

• Publish in open access journals or platforms – A third of our journals are fully open access. In this model, authors pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) levied upon acceptance to make the article immediately available on publication. cOAlition S funders will continue to financially support APCs in open access journals. Browse our full list of open access journals.
• Publish open access in a subscription journal under a transformative arrangement – Either publish in one of the 36 BMJ journals which have now received TJ status from cOAlition S or under your institution’s ‘Read and Publish’ agreement with BMJ, where one exists. Find out more about transformative journals and browse the full list. Find out if you are eligible for institutional funding.
• Publish in subscription journals AND make the article available in an open access repository, but cOAlition S funders will not cover any open access charges involved.

There are 10 further principles of Plan S covering the way in which all stakeholders should work together towards an optimal open access future, drive service standards, promote greater transparency around costs and charges, and more fairly assess the merits of research outputs.

See our corporate website for further information about Plan S and related topics.