Dear Colleagues,

OA2020 Mainland China signatory libraries held a meeting recently in NSL/CAS 
and discussed their response to Plan S Guidance on Implementation. The 
participants understood that the formal feedback deadline has passed but, 
realizing China has been an active and important partner in the global research 
enterprise and in the global open access movement, it is critical for Chinese 
research and library communities to get involved and to be heard in development 
of the future scholarly communications ecosystem. 


The following (and the attached file) is the report: 


OA2020 Mainland China Signatory Libraries Discussed a Response To Plan S 
Guidance on Implementation


Mainland China signatory libraries of OA2020 Initiative Expression of Interest 
held a meeting March 26, 2019, at the National Science Library, Chinese Academy 
of Sciences, in Beijing, to discuss a response to Plan S Guidance on 
Implementation. The participants represented the following institutions: 
National Science and Technology Library, National Library of Science (Chinese 
Academy of Sciences), National Agricultural Library (Chinese Academy of 
Agricultural Sciences), Peking University Library, Tsinghua University Library, 
Fudan University Library, Sichuan University Library, ShanghaiTech University 
Library, China University of Mining and Technology Library, Xi’an 
Jiaotong-Liverpool University Library, Southern University of Science and 
Technology Library, Guangdong Science and Technology Library, Guangxi 
University of Science and Technology Library, Guangxi University of Chinese 
Medicine Library, Nanjing Normal University Library. 


Plan S is an initiative for open access by the cOAlition S that requires 
immediate and complete open access from 2020 of scientific publications 
resulting from research funded by cOAlition S members. cOAlition S has issued 
the 10 principles of Plan S and then, for comment, a Guidance for 
Implementation. The participants understood that the formal feedback deadline 
has passed but, realizing China has been an active and important partner in the 
global research enterprise and in the global open access movement, it is 
critical for Chinese research and library communities to get involved and to be 
heard in development of the future scholarly communications ecosystem. 


The participants listened an analysis of Plan S Principles and its Guidance on 
Implementation and a summary of feedbacks to Plan S Guidance from researchers, 
universities, libraries, publishers, and learned societies. Based on their own 
situations and concerns, the participants discussed their responses to Plan S 
Guidance on Implementation. They expressed their strong support to open access, 
strong willingness to participate in implementation of open access, and strong 
willingness to participate in international rule setting of open access and 
open knowledge ecosystem and in development of related infrastructural tools. 
They call upon all the related parties to facilitate the implementation of open 
access and development of related open knowledge infrastructure. 


The followings are the discussed response to Plan S Guidance on Implementation. 


01 We are in broad support of Plan S and its goals to ensure immediate and 
complete open access to journal articles resulting from publicly funded 
research to the world. We applaud the effort of Plan S to provide strong 
incentives to make research open access. We support an international effort to 
achieve this goal worldwide as soon as possible. 


02 We fully recognize that the need for forceful and accountable policies by 
public funders in research, education, and libraries, to facilitate open access 
against various entrenched interests or the inertia of the status quo. We urge 
all in research, education, publishing, platforms, repositories, and libraries 
to engage diligently in transformative efforts abreast with time to meet the 
challenges.  


03 We support the Final Conference Statement of the 14th Berlin Conference on 
Open Access with its commitments. We urge all the publishers to work with the 
global research community to effect complete and immediate open access 
according to the Statement. 


04 We support the principles and roadmaps of OA2020 Initiative which aims to 
transform a majority of today’s scholarly journals from subscription to OA 
publishing, while continues to support new forms of OA publishing. We believe 
the transition process can be realized within the framework of currently 
available resources. We see no legitimate reasons for, and will object to, any 
attempts to increase spending from the original subscribing institutions in the 
transformation. 


05 We support that authors retain copyrights of their publications in open 
access publishing through journals or open access platforms.


06 We support that open access publications are made under open licenses. We 
support the use of the CC_BY license as the preferred one but recommend that 
other CC licenses also be allowed as compliant to Plan S. 


07 We recognize the strong need for compliant requirements, agreed by the 
research communities, for open access journals and platforms. We agree that 
infrastructural instruments like DOAJ and OpenDOAR can be utilized to help 
identifying and signaling compliance, but we urge that cOAlition S and other 
funders recognize and support other appropriate mechanisms for the purpose and 
require any such instruments are put under international oversight by the 
global research community to ensure their no-for-profit nature, inclusiveness, 
objectiveness, integrity, and efficiency.  


08 We commend the recognition by Plan S that there exist different models of 
financing and paying for Open Access publication. We support an inclusive range 
of immediate open access publishing approaches. We support the transparency and 
monitoring of open access publication costs and fees. 


09 We urge that cOAlition S and other funders, through Plan S or other means, 
provide financial support for no-fee OA journals. The wide range of support 
approaches to no-fee OA journals should be encouraged to enhance the diversity 
of open access publishing and competiveness of publishing market, and to avoid 
the perverse effect of giving no-fee journals an incentive to start charging 
fees. While the support can start with general term statements, measures can be 
timely designed and tested to encourage quality, integrity, transparency and 
openness, and increasing host investment and other diverse and appropriate 
income.  


10 We support that where article processing charges (APCs) apply, efforts are 
made to establish a fair and reasonable APC level, including equitable waiver 
policies, that reflects the costs involved in the quality assurance, editing, 
and publishing process and how that adds value to the publication. We hold it 
very important that any such effort should take into consideration of the 
diversity in the world to ensure applicability and affordability of any such 
measures across countries and disciplines. 


11 We commend the support and requirements of Plan S for financing APCs for 
open access publication in subscription journals (‘hybrid Open Access’) only 
under transformative agreements. These agreements should be temporary and 
transitional, with a shift to full open access within a very few years.  


12 We understand the purposes and the benefits of using ORCIDs in journal 
publications. Considering different paces of adopting ORCID in different 
regions and disciplines, we recommend that it is implemented as a preferred 
condition, at least in the short beginning years. We recommend the same 
treatment for using DOI. 


13 We support the Plan S recommendation that “all publications and also other 
research outputs deposited in open repositories.” We recommend that Plan S make 
full acknowledge and use of the full range of capabilities of open repositories 
to support open access, long-term preservation, research management, and 
re-use. 


14 We encourage that Plan S takes the transformative green OA mechanism as one 
of venues to implement open access, as long as the embargo period of compliant 
green OA repositories should be reduced to zero in a short time. 


15 We understand the purposes and the benefits of automatic ingest of 
publications, JATS XML format, Open API to allow others (including machines) to 
access, QA process to integrate full text with core abstract and indexing 
services. We support the efforts to work toward adapting to these or equivalent 
techniques for more efficient processing and better use of open access content. 
We call on publishers and libraries to strive for this. However, at the 
beginning, we recommend that these are implemented as preferred measures. Other 
means of ingest, different machine-readable publication formats, alternative 
Open APIs or even temporarily lacking of Open APIs, and other means of QA 
should be allowed as compliant. At the same time common best practice 
guidelines and infrastructural support should be developed with international 
consultation to make the best and easy use of these or other equivalent methods 
or techniques. 


16 We recommend that Plan S add as a requirement that, either by national laws 
or regulations, or by grant contract requirements, that funded authors retain 
sufficient and non-exclusive rights to deposit their publications into open 
repositories. 


17 We commend and support the intention of cOAlition S and other public funders 
to support mechanisms for establishing Open Access journals, platforms, and 
infrastructures where necessary in order to provide routes to open access 
publication in all disciplines. We encourage efforts by funders to increase the 
innovation and competitiveness of open access publishing and open access 
infrastructural instruments. 


via Xiaolin Zhang
--Xiaolin Zhang National Science Library, CAS 33 Beisihuan Xilu, Beijing, 
100190, China Tel: 86-10-82628347; Fax 86-10-82626600 zhan...@mail.las.ac.cn 

Attachment: 190329-OA2020 Mainland China signatory libraries discussed a response to Plan S Guidance-English.docx
Description: MS-Word 2007 document

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